While the Billy Boils
by
Henry Lawson




[Transcriber's note: In 'A Day on a Selection' a speech is attributed
to "Tom"--in first edition as well as recent ones--which clearly
belongs to "Corney" alias "neighbour". This has been noted in
loc.]




CONTENTS


First Series


An Old Mate of Your Father's

Settling on the Land

Enter Mitchell

Stiffner and Jim (Thirdly, Bill)

When the Sun Went Down

The Man who Forgot

Hungerford

A Camp-fire Yarn

His Country--After All

A Day on a Selection

That There Dog of Mine

Going Blind

Arvie Aspinall's Alarm Clock

Stragglers

The Union Buries its Dead

On the Edge of a Plain

In a Dry Season

He's Come Back

Another of Mitchell's Plans

Steelman

Drifted Back

Remailed

Mitchell Doesn't Believe in the Sack

Shooting the Moon

His Father's Mate

An Echo from the Old Bark School

The Shearing of the Cook's Dog

"Dossing Out" and "Camping"

Across the Straits

Some Day

Brummy Usen



Second Series


The Drover's Wife

Steelman's Pupil

An Unfinished Love Story

Board and Residence

His Colonial Oath

A Visit of Condolence

In a Wet Season

"Rats"

Mitchell: A Character Sketch

The Bush Undertaker

Our Pipes

Coming Across

The Story of Malachi

Two Dogs and a Fence

Jones's Alley

Bogg of Geebung

She Wouldn't Speak

The Geological Spieler

Macquarie's Mate

Baldy Thompson

For Auld Lang Syne





First Series


AN OLD MATE OF YOUR FATHER'S


You remember when we hurried home from the old bush school how we were
sometimes startled by a bearded apparition, who smiled kindly down on
us, and whom our mother introduced, as we raked off our hats, as "An
old mate of your father's on the diggings, Johnny."  And he would pat
our heads and say we were fine boys, or girls--as the case may have
been--and that we had our father's nose but our mother's eyes, or the
other way about; and say that the baby was the dead spit of its
mother, and then added, for father's benefit: "But yet he's like you,
Tom."  It did seem strange to the children to hear him address the
old man by his Christian name---considering that the mother always
referred to him as "Father."  She called the old mate Mr So-and-so,
and father called him Bill, or something to that effect.

Occasionally the old mate would come dressed in the latest city
fashion, and at other times in a new suit of reach-me-downs, and yet
again he would turn up in clean white moleskins, washed tweed coat,
Crimean shirt, blucher boots, soft felt hat, with a fresh-looking
speckled handkerchief round his neck.  But his face was mostly round
and brown and jolly, his hands were always horny, and his beard grey.
Sometimes he might have seemed strange and uncouth to us at first, but
the old man never appeared the least surprised at anything he said or
did--they understood each other so well--and we would soon take to
this relic of our father's past, who would have fruit or lollies for
us--strange that he always remembered them--and would surreptitiously
slip "shilluns" into our dirty little hands, and tell us stories
about the old days, "when me an' yer father was on the diggin's, an'
you wasn't thought of, my boy."

Sometimes the old mate would stay over Sunday, and in the forenoon or
after dinner he and father would take a walk amongst the deserted
shafts of Sapling Gully or along Quartz Ridge, and criticize old
ground, and talk of past diggers' mistakes, and second bottoms, and
feelers, and dips, and leads--also outcrops--and absently pick up
pieces of quartz and slate, rub them on their sleeves, look at them in
an abstracted manner, and drop them again; and they would talk of some
old lead they had worked on: "Hogan's party was here on one side of
us, Macintosh was here on the other, Mac was getting good gold and so
was Hogan, and now, why the blanky blank weren't we on gold?"  And
the mate would always agree that there was "gold in them ridges and
gullies yet, if a man only had the money behind him to git at it."
And then perhaps the guv'nor would show him a spot where he intended
to put down a shaft some day--the old man was always thinking of
putting down a shaft.  And these two old fifty-niners would mooch
round and sit on their heels on the sunny mullock heaps and break clay
lumps between their hands, and lay plans for the putting down of
shafts, and smoke, till an urchin was sent to "look for his father
and Mr So-and-so, and tell 'em to come to their dinner."

And again--mostly in the fresh of the morning--they would hang about
the fences on the selection and review the live stock: five dusty
skeletons of cows, a hollow-sided calf or two, and one shocking piece
of equine scenery--which, by the way, the old mate always praised.
But the selector's heart was not in farming nor on selections--it was
far away with the last new rush in Western Australia or Queensland, or
perhaps buried in the worked-out ground of Tambaroora, Married Man's
Creek, or Araluen; and by-and-by the memory of some half-forgotten
reef or lead or Last Chance, Nil Desperandum, or Brown Snake claim
would take their thoughts far back and away from the dusty patch of
sods and struggling sprouts called the crop, or the few discouraged,
half-dead slips which comprised the orchard.  Then their conversation
would be pointed with many Golden Points, Bakery Hill, Deep Creeks,
Maitland Bars, Specimen Flats, and Chinamen's Gullies.  And so they'd
yarn till the youngster came to tell them that "Mother sez the
breakfus is gettin' cold," and then the old mate would rouse himself
and stretch and say, "Well, we mustn't keep the missus waitin',
Tom!"

And, after tea, they would sit on a log of the wood-heap, or the
edge of the veranda--that is, in warm weather--and yarn about
Ballarat and Bendigo--of the days when we spoke of being on a place
oftener than at it: _on_ Ballarat, _on_ Gulgong, _on_ Lambing Flat,
on _Creswick_--and they would use the definite article before the
names, as: "on The Turon; The Lachlan; The Home Rule; The Canadian
Lead."  Then again they'd yarn of old mates, such as Tom Brook, Jack
Henright, and poor Martin Ratcliffe--who was killed in his golden
hole--and of other men whom they didn't seem to have known much
about, and who went by the names of "Adelaide Adolphus," "Corney
George," and other names which might have been more or less
applicable.

And sometimes they'd get talking, low and mysterious like, about "Th'
Eureka Stockade;" and if we didn't understand and asked questions,
"what was the Eureka Stockade?" or "what did they do it for?"
father'd say: "Now, run away, sonny, and don't bother; me and Mr
So-and-so want to talk."  Father had the mark of a hole on his leg,
which he said he got through a gun accident when a boy, and a scar on
his side, that we saw when he was in swimming with us; he said he got
that in an accident in a quartz-crushing machine.  Mr So-and-so had a
big scar on the side of his forehead that was caused by a pick
accidentally slipping out of a loop in the rope, and falling down a
shaft where he was working.  But how was it they talked low, and their
eyes brightened up, and they didn't look at each other, but away over
sunset, and had to get up and walk about, and take a stroll in the
cool of the evening when they talked about Eureka?

And, again they'd talk lower and more mysterious like, and perhaps
mother would be passing the wood-heap and catch a word, and asked:

"Who was she, Tom?"

And Tom--father--would say:

"Oh, you didn't know her, Mary; she belonged to a family Bill knew at
home."

And Bill would look solemn till mother had gone, and then they would
smile a quiet smile, and stretch and say, "Ah, well!" and start
something else.

They had yarns for the fireside, too, some of those old mates of our
father's, and one of them would often tell how a girl--a queen of the
diggings--was married, and had her wedding-ring made out of the gold
of that field; and how the diggers weighed their gold with the new
wedding-ring--for luck--by hanging the ring on the hook of the scales
and attaching their chamois-leather gold bags to it (whereupon she
boasted that four hundred ounces of the precious metal passed through
her wedding-ring); and how they lowered the young bride, blindfolded,
down a golden hole in a big bucket, and got her to point out the drive
from which the gold came that her ring was made out of.  The point of
this story seems to have been lost--or else we forget it--but it was
characteristic.  Had the girl been lowered down a duffer, and asked to
point out the way to the gold, and had she done so successfully, there
would have been some sense in it.

And they would talk of King, and Maggie Oliver, and G. V. Brooke, and
others, and remember how the diggers went five miles out to meet the
coach that brought the girl actress, and took the horses out and
brought her in in triumph, and worshipped her, and sent her off in
glory, and threw nuggets into her lap.  And how she stood upon the
box-seat and tore her sailor hat to pieces, and threw the fragments
amongst the crowd; and how the diggers fought for the bits and thrust
them inside their shirt bosoms; and how she broke down and cried, and
could in her turn have worshipped those men--loved them, every one.
They were boys all, and gentlemen all.  There were college men,
artists, poets, musicians, journalists--Bohemians all.  Men from all
the lands and one.  They understood art--and poverty was dead.

And perhaps the old mate would say slyly, but with a sad, quiet smile:

"Have you got that bit of straw yet, Tom?"

Those old mates had each three pasts behind them.  The two they told
each other when they became mates, and the one they had shared.

And when the visitor had gone by the coach we noticed that the old man
would smoke a lot, and think as much, and take great interest in the
fire, and be a trifle irritable perhaps.

Those old mates of our father's are
getting few and far between, and only happen along once in a way to
keep the old man's memory fresh, as it were.  We met one to-day, and
had a yarn with him, and afterwards we got thinking, and somehow began
to wonder whether those ancient friends of ours were, or were not,
better and kinder to their mates than we of the rising generation are
to our fathers; and the doubt is painfully on the wrong side.




SETTLING ON THE LAND


The worst bore in Australia just now is the man who raves about
getting the people on the land, and button-holes you in the street
with a little scheme of his own.  He generally does not know what he
is talking about.

There is in Sydney a man named Tom Hopkins who settled on the land
once, and sometimes you can get him to talk about it.  He did very
well at his trade in the city, years ago, until he began to think that
he could do better up-country.  Then he arranged with his sweetheart
to be true to him and wait whilst he went west and made a home.  She
drops out of the story at this point.

He selected on a run at Dry Hole Creek, and for months awaited the
arrival of the government surveyors to fix his boundaries; but they
didn't come, and, as he had no reason to believe they would turn up
within the next ten years, he grubbed and fenced at a venture, and
started farming operations.

Does the reader know what grubbing means?  Tom does.  He found the
biggest, ugliest, and most useless trees on his particular piece of
ground; also the greatest number of adamantine stumps.  He started
without experience, or with very little, but with plenty of advice
from men who knew less about farming than he did.  He found a soft
place between two roots on one side of the first tree, made a narrow,
irregular hole, and burrowed down till he reached a level where the
tap-root was somewhat less than four feet in diameter, and not quite
as hard as flint: then he found that he hadn't room to swing the axe,
so he heaved out another ton or two of earth--and rested.  Next day he
sank a shaft on the other side of the gum; and after tea, over a pipe,
it struck him that it would be a good idea to burn the tree out, and
so use up the logs and lighter rubbish lying round.  So he widened the
excavation, rolled in some logs, and set fire to them--with no better
result than to scorch the roots.

Tom persevered.  He put the trace harness on his horse, drew in all
the logs within half a mile, and piled them on the windward side of
that gum; and during the night the fire found a soft place, and the
tree burnt off about six feet above the surface, falling on a
squatter's boundary fence, and leaving the ugliest kind of stump to
occupy the selector's attention; which it did, for a week.  He waited
till the hole cooled, and then he went to work with pick, shovel, and
axe: and even now he gets interested in drawings of machinery, such as
are published in the agricultural weeklies, for getting out stumps
without graft.  He thought he would be able to get some posts and
rails out of that tree, but found reason to think that a cast-iron
column would split sooner--and straighter.  He traced some of the
surface roots to the other side of the selection, and broke most of
his trace-chains trying to get them out by horse-power--for they had
other roots going down from underneath.  He cleared a patch in the
course of time and for several seasons he broke more ploughshares than
he could pay for.

Meanwhile the squatter was not idle.  Tom's tent was robbed several
times, and his hut burnt down twice.  Then he was charged with
killing some sheep and a steer on the run, and converting them to his
own use, but got off mainly because there was a difference of opinion
between the squatter and the other local J.P. concerning politics and
religion.

Tom ploughed and sowed wheat, but nothing came up to speak of--the
ground was too poor; so he carted stable manure six miles from the
nearest town, manured the land, sowed another crop, and prayed for
rain.  It came.  It raised a flood which washed the crop clean off the
selection, together with several acres of manure, and a considerable
portion of the original surface soil; and the water brought down
enough sand to make a beach, and spread it over the field to a depth
of six inches.  The flood also took half a mile of fencing from along
the creek-bank, and landed it in a bend, three miles down, on a dummy
selection, where it was confiscated.

Tom didn't give up--he was energetic.  He cleared another piece of
ground on the siding, and sowed more wheat; it had the rust in it, or
the smut--and averaged three shillings per bushel.  Then he sowed
lucerne and oats, and bought a few cows: he had an idea of starting a
dairy.  First, the cows' eyes got bad, and he sought the advice of a
German cocky, and acted upon it; he blew powdered alum through paper
tubes into the bad eyes, and got some of it snorted and butted back
into his own.  He cured the cows' eyes and got the sandy blight in his
own, and for a week or so be couldn't tell one end of a cow from the
other, but sat in a dark corner of the hut and groaned, and soaked his
glued eyelashes in warm water.  Germany stuck to him and nursed him,
and saw him through.

Then the milkers got bad udders, and Tom took his life in his hands
whenever he milked them.  He got them all right presently--and butter
fell to fourpence a pound.  He and the aforesaid cocky made
arrangements to send their butter to a better market; and then the
cows contracted a disease which was known in those parts as "plooro
permoanyer," but generally referred to as "th' ploorer."

Again Tom sought advice, acting upon which he slit the cows' ears, cut
their tails half off to bleed them, and poured pints of "pain
killer" into them through their nostrils; but they wouldn't make an
effort, except, perhaps, to rise and poke the selector when he tried
to tempt their appetites with slices of immature pumpkin.  They died
peacefully and persistently, until all were gone save a certain
dangerous, barren, slab-sided luny bovine with white eyes and much
agility in jumping fences, who was known locally as Queen Elizabeth.

Tom shot Queen Elizabeth, and turned his attention to agriculture
again.  Then his plough horses took bad with some thing the Teuton
called "der shtranguls."  He submitted them to a course of treatment
in accordance with Jacob's advice--and they died.

Even then Tom didn't give in--there was grit in that man.  He borrowed
a broken-down dray-horse in return for its keep, coupled it with his
own old riding hack, and started to finish ploughing.  The team wasn't
a success.  Whenever the draught horse's knees gave way and he
stumbled forward, he jerked the lighter horse back into the plough,
and something would break.  Then Tom would blaspheme till he was
refreshed, mend up things with wire and bits of clothes-line, fill his
pockets with stones to throw at the team, and start again.  Finally he
hired a dummy's child to drive the horses.  The brat did his best he
tugged at the head of the team, prodded it behind, heaved rocks at it,
cut a sapling, got up his enthusiasm, and wildly whacked the light
horse whenever the other showed signs of moving--but he never
succeeded in starting both horses at one and the same time.  Moreover
the youth was cheeky, and the selector's temper had been soured: he
cursed the boy along with the horses, the plough, the selection, the
squatter, and Australia.  Yes, he cursed Australia.  The boy cursed
back, was chastised, and immediately went home and brought his father.

Then the dummy's dog tackled the selector's dog and this precipitated
things.  The dummy would have gone under had his wife not arrived on
the scene with the eldest son and the rest of the family.  They all
fell foul of Tom.  The woman was the worst.  The selector's dog chawed
the other and came to his master's rescue just in time---or Tom
Hopkins would never have lived to become the inmate of a lunatic
asylum.

Next year there
happened to be good grass on Tom's selection and nowhere else, and he
thought it wouldn't be a bad idea--to get a few poor sheep, and fatten
them up for market: sheep were selling for about seven-and-sixpence a
dozen at that time.  Tom got a hundred or two, but the squatter had a
man stationed at one side of the selection with dogs to set on the
sheep directly they put their noses through the fence (Tom's was
not a sheep fence).  The dogs chased the sheep across the selection
and into the run again on the other side, where another man waited
ready to pound them.

Tom's dog did his best; but he fell sick while chawing up the fourth
capitalistic canine, and subsequently died.  The dummies had robbed
that cur with poison before starting it across--that was the only way
they could get at Tom's dog.

Tom thought that two might play at the game, and he tried; but his
nephew, who happened to be up from the city on a visit, was arrested
at the instigation of the squatter for alleged sheep-stealing, and
sentenced to two years' hard; during which time the selector himself
got six months for assaulting the squatter with intent to do him
grievous bodily harm-which, indeed, he more than attempted, if a
broken nose, a fractured jaw, and the loss of most of the squatters'
teeth amounted to anything.  The squatter by this time had made peace
with the other local Justice, and had become his father-in-law.

When Tom came out there was little left for him to live for; but he
took a job of fencing, got a few pounds together, and prepared to
settle on the land some more.  He got a "missus" and a few cows
during the next year; the missus robbed him and ran away with the
dummy, and the cows died in the drought, or were impounded by the
squatter while on their way to water.  Then Tom rented an orchard up
the creek, and a hailstorm destroyed all the fruit.  Germany happened
to be represented at the time, Jacob having sought shelter at Tom's
but on his way home from town.  Tom stood leaning against the door
post with the hail beating on him through it all.  His eyes were very
bright and very dry, and every breath was a choking sob.  Jacob let
him stand there, and sat inside with a dreamy expression on his hard
face, thinking of childhood and fatherland, perhaps.  When it was over
he led Tom to a stool and said, "You waits there, Tom.  I must go
home for somedings.  You sits there still and waits twenty minutes;"
then he got on his horse and rode off muttering to himself; "Dot man
moost gry, dot man moost gry."  He was back inside of twenty minutes
with a bottle of wine and a cornet under his overcoat.  He poured the
wine into two pint-pots, made Tom drink, drank himself, and then took
his cornet, stood up at the door, and played a German march into the
rain after the retreating storm.  The hail had passed over his
vineyard and he was a ruined man too.  Tom did "gry" and was all
right.  He was a bit disheartened, but he did another job of fencing,
and was just beginning to think about "puttin' in a few vines an'
fruit-trees" when the government surveyors--whom he'd forgotten all
about--had a resurrection and came and surveyed, and found that the
real selection was located amongst some barren ridges across the
creek.  Tom reckoned it was lucky he didn't plant the orchard, and he
set about shifting his home and fences to the new site.  But the
squatter interfered at this point, entered into possession of the farm
and all on it, and took action against the selector for
trespass--laying the damages at L2500.

Tom was admitted to the lunatic asylum at Parramatta next year, and
the squatter was sent there the following summer, having been ruined
by the drought, the rabbits, the banks, and a wool-ring.  The two
became very friendly, and had many a sociable argument about the
feasibility--or otherwise--of blowing open the flood-gates of Heaven
in a dry season with dynamite.

Tom was discharged a few years since.  He knocks about certain suburbs
a good deal.  He is seen in daylight seldom, and at night mostly in
connection with a dray and a lantern.  He says his one great regret is
that he wasn't found to be of unsound mind before he went up-country.



ENTER MITCHELL


The Western train had just arrived at Redfern railway station with a
lot of ordinary passengers and one swagman.

He was short, and stout, and bow-legged, and freckled, and sandy.  He
had red hair and small, twinkling, grey eyes, and--what often goes
with such things--the expression of a born comedian.  He was dressed
in a ragged, well-washed print shirt, an old black waistcoat with a
calico back, a pair of cloudy moleskins patched at the knees and held
up by a plaited greenhide belt buckled loosely round his hips, a pair
of well-worn, fuzzy blucher boots, and a soft felt hat, green with
age, and with no brim worth mentioning, and no crown to speak of.  He
swung a swag on to the platform, shouldered it, pulled out a billy and
water-bag, and then went to a dog-box in the brake van.

Five minutes later he
appeared on the edge of the cab platform, with an anxious-looking
cattle-dog crouching against his legs, and one end of the chain in his
hand.  He eased down the swag against a post, turned his face to the
city, tilted his hat forward, and scratched the well-developed back of
his head with a little finger.  He seemed undecided what track to
take.

"Cab, Sir!"

The swagman turned slowly and regarded cabby with a quiet grin.

"Now, do I look as if I want a cab?"

"Well, why not?  No harm, anyway--I thought you might want a cab."

Swaggy scratched his head, reflectively.

"Well," he said, "you're the first man that has thought so these
ten years.  What do I want with a cab?"

"To go where you're going, of course."

"Do I look knocked up?"

"I didn't say you did."

"And I didn't say you said I did....Now, I've been on the track this
five years.  I've tramped two thousan' miles since last Chris'mas, and
I don't see why I can't tramp the last mile.  Do you think my old dog
wants a cab?"

The dog shivered and whimpered; he seemed to want to get away from the
crowd.

"But then, you see, you ain't going to carry that swag through the
streets, are you?" asked the cabman.

"Why not?  Who'll stop me!  There ain't no law agin it, I b'lieve?"

"But then, you see, it don't look well, you know."

"Ah!  I thought we'd get to it at last."

The traveller up-ended his bluey against his knee, gave it an
affectionate pat, and then straightened himself up and looked fixedly
at the cabman.

"Now, look here!" he said, sternly and impressively, "can you see
anything wrong with that old swag o' mine?"

It was a stout, dumpy swag, with a red blanket outside, patched with
blue, and the edge of a blue blanket showing in the inner rings at the
end.  The swag might have been newer; it might have been cleaner; it
might have been hooped with decent straps, instead of bits of
clothes-line and greenhide--but otherwise there was nothing the matter
with it, as swags go.

"I've humped that old swag for years," continued the bushman; "I've
carried that old swag thousands of miles--as that old dog knows--an'
no one ever bothered about the look of it, or of me, or of my old dog,
neither; and do you think I'm going to be ashamed of that old swag,
for a cabby or anyone else?  Do you think I'm going to study anybody's
feelings?  No one ever studied mine!  I'm in two minds to summon you
for using insulting language towards me!"

He lifted the swag by the twisted towel which served for a
shoulder-strap, swung it into the cab, got in himself and hauled the
dog after him.

"You can drive me somewhere where I can leave my swag and dog while I
get some decent clothes to see a tailor in," he said to the cabman.
"My old dog ain't used to cabs, you see."

Then he added, reflectively: "I drove a cab myself,
once, for five years in Sydney."



Stiffner and Jim

(Thirdly, Bill)


We were tramping down in Canterbury, Maoriland, at the time, swagging
it--me and Bill--looking for work on the new railway line.  Well, one
afternoon, after a long, hot tramp, we comes to Stiffner's
Hotel--between Christchurch and that other place--I forget the name of
it--with throats on us like sunstruck bones, and not the price of a
stick of tobacco.

We had to have a drink, anyway, so we chanced it.  We walked right
into the bar, handed over our swags, put up four drinks, and tried to
look as if we'd just drawn our cheques and didn't care a curse for any
man.  We looked solvent enough, as far as swagmen go.  We were dirty
and haggard and ragged and tired-looking, and that was all the more
reason why we might have our cheques all right.

This Stiffner was a hard customer.  He'd been a spieler, fighting man,
bush parson, temperance preacher, and a policeman, and a commercial
traveller, and everything else that was damnable; he'd been a
journalist, and an editor; he'd been a lawyer, too.  He was an ugly
brute to look at, and uglier to have a row with--about six-foot-six,
wide in proportion, and stronger than Donald Dinnie.

He was meaner than a gold-field Chinaman, and sharper than a sewer
rat: he wouldn't give his own father a feed, nor lend him a
sprat--unless some safe person backed the old man's I.O.U.

We knew that we needn't expect any mercy from Stiffner; but something
had to be done, so I said to Bill:

"Something's got to be done, Bill!  What do you think of it?"

Bill was mostly a quiet young chap, from Sydney, except when he got
drunk--which was seldom--and then he was a customer, from all round.
He was cracked on the subject of spielers.  He held that the
population of the world was divided into two classes--one was spielers
and the other was the mugs.  He reckoned that he wasn't a mug.  At
first I thought he was a spieler, and afterwards I thought that he was
a mug.  He used to say that a man had to do it these times; that he
was honest once and a fool, and was robbed and starved in consequences
by his friends and relations; but now he intended to take all that he
could get.  He said that you either had to have or be had; that men
were driven to be sharps, and there was no help for it.

Bill said:

"We'll have to sharpen our teeth, that's all, and chew somebody's
lug."

"How?" I asked.

There was a lot of navvies at the pub, and I knew one or two by sight,
so Bill says:

"You know one or two of these mugs.  Bite one of their ears.

"So I took aside a chap that I knowed and bit his ear for ten bob,
and gave it to Bill to mind, for I thought it would be safer with him
than with me.

"Hang on to that," I says, "and don't lose it for your natural
life's sake, or Stiffner'll stiffen us."

We put up about nine bob's worth of drinks that night--me and
Bill--and Stiffner didn't squeal: he was too sharp.  He shouted once
or twice.

By-and-by I left Bill and turned in, and in the morning when I woke up
there was Bill sitting alongside of me, and looking about as lively as
the fighting kangaroo in London in fog time.  He had a black eye and
eighteen pence.  He'd been taking down some of the mugs.

"Well, what's to be done now?" I asked.  "Stiffner can smash us
both with one hand, and if we don't pay up he'll pound our swags and
cripple us.  He's just the man to do it.  He loves a fight even more
than he hates being had."

"There's only one thing to be done, Jim," says Bill, in a tired,
disinterested tone that made me mad.

"Well, what's than" I said.

"Smoke!"

"Smoke be damned," I snarled, losing my temper.

"You know dashed well that our swags are in the bar, and we can't
smoke without them.

"Well, then," says Bill, "I'll toss you to see who's to face the
landlord."

"Well, I'll be blessed!" I says.  "I'll see you further first.  You
have got a front.  You mugged that stuff away, and you'll have to get
us out of the mess."

It made him wild to be called a mug, and we swore and growled at each
other for a while; but we daren't speak loud enough to have a fight,
so at last I agreed to toss up for it, and I lost.

Bill started to give me some of his points, but I shut him up quick.

"You've had your turn, and made a mess of it," I said.  "For God's
sake give me a show.  Now, I'll go into the bar and ask for the swags,
and carry them out on to the veranda, and then go back to settle up.
You keep him talking all the time.  You dump the two swags together,
and smoke like sheol.  That's all you've got to do."

I went into the bar, got the swags front the missus, carried them out
on to the veranda, and then went back.

Stiffner came in.

"Good morning!"

"Good morning, sir," says Stiffner.

"It'll be a nice day, I think?"

"Yes, I think so.  I suppose you are going on?"

"Yes, we'll have to make a move to-day."

Then I hooked carelessly on to the counter with one elbow, and looked
dreamy-like out across the clearing, and presently I gave a sort of
sigh and said: "Ah, well! I think I'll have a beer."

"Right you are!  Where's your mate?"

"Oh, he's round at the back.  He'll be round directly; but he ain't
drinking this morning."

Stiffner laughed that nasty empty laugh of his.  He thought Bill was
whipping the cat.

"What's yours, boss?" I said.

"Thankee!...Here's luck!"

"Here's luck!"

The country was pretty open round there--the nearest timber was better
than a mile away, and I wanted to give Bill a good start across the
flat before the go-as-you-can commenced; so I talked for a while, and
while we were talking I thought I might as well go the whole hog--I
might as well die for a pound as a penny, if I had to die; and if I
hadn't I'd have the pound to the good, anyway, so to speak.  Anyhow,
the risk would be about the same, or less, for I might have the spirit
to run harder the more I had to run for--the more spirits I had to run
for, in fact, as it turned out--so I says:

"I think I'll take one of them there flasks of whisky to last us on
the road."

"Right y'are," says Stiffner.  "What'll ye have--a small one or a
big one?"

"Oh, a big one, I think--if I can get it into my pocket."

"It'll be a tight squeeze," he said, and he laughed.

"I'll try," I said.  "Bet you two drinks I'll get it in."

"Done!" he says.  "The top inside coat-pocket, and no tearing."

It was a big bottle, and all my pockets were small; but I got it into
the pocket he'd betted against.  It was a tight squeeze, but I got it
in.

Then we both laughed, but his laugh was nastier than usual, because it
was meant to be pleasant, and he'd lost two drinks; and my laugh
wasn't easy--I was anxious as to which of us would laugh next.

Just then I noticed something, and an idea struck me--about the
most up-to-date idea that ever struck me in my life.  I noticed that
Stiffner was limping on his right foot this morning, so I said to him:

"What's up with your foot?" putting my hand in my pocket.  "Oh,
it's a crimson nail in my boot," he said.  "I thought I got the
blanky thing out this morning; but I didn't."

There just happened to be an old bag of shoemaker's tools in the bar,
belonging to an old cobbler who was lying dead drunk on the veranda.
So I said, taking my hand out of my pocket again:

"Lend us the boot, and I'll fix it in a minute.  That's my old
trade."

"Oh, so you're a shoemaker," he said.  "I'd never have thought
it."

He laughs one of his useless laughs that wasn't wanted, and slips off
the boot--he hadn't laced it up--and hands it across the bar to me.
It was an ugly brute--a great thick, iron-bound, boiler-plated navvy's
boot.  It made me feel sore when I looked at it.

I got the bag and pretended to fix the nail; but I didn't.

"There's a couple of nails gone from the sole," I said.  "I'll put
'em in if I can find any hobnails, and it'll save the sole," and I
rooted in the bag and found a good long nail, and shoved it right
through the sole on the sly.  He'd been a bit of a sprinter in his
time, and I thought it might be better for me in the near future if
the spikes of his running-shoes were inside.

"There, you'll find that better, I fancy," I said, standing the boot
on the bar counter, but keeping my hand on it in an absent-minded kind
of way.  Presently I yawned and stretched myself, and said in a
careless way:

"Ah, well!  How's the slate?" He scratched the back of his head and
pretended to think.

"Oh, well, we'll call it thirty bob."

Perhaps he thought I'd slap down two quid.

"Well," I says, "and what will you do supposing we don't pay you?"

He looked blank for a moment.  Then he fired up and gasped and choked
once or twice; and then he cooled down suddenly and laughed his
nastiest laugh--he was one of those men who always laugh when they're
wild--and said in a nasty, quiet tone:

"You thundering, jumped-up crawlers!  If you don't (something) well
part up I'll take your swags and (something) well kick your gory pants
so you won't be able to sit down for a month--or stand up either!"

"Well, the sooner you begin the better," I said; and I chucked the
boot into a corner and bolted.


He jumped the bar counter, got his boot, and came after me.  He paused
to slip the boot on--but he only made one step, and then gave a howl
and slung the boot off and rushed back.  When I looked round again
he'd got a slipper on, and was coming--and gaining on me, too.  I
shifted scenery pretty quick the next five minutes.  But I was soon
pumped.  My heart began to beat against the ceiling of my head, and my
lungs all choked up in my throat.  When I guessed he was getting
within kicking distance I glanced round so's to dodge the kick.  He
let out; but I shied just in time.  He missed fire, and the slipper
went about twenty feet up in the air and fell in a waterhole.

He was done then, for the ground was stubbly and stony.  I seen Bill
on ahead pegging out for the horizon, and I took after him and reached
for the timber for all I was worth, for I'd seen Stiffner's missus
coming with a shovel--to bury the remains, I suppose; and those two
were a good match--Stiffner and his missus, I mean.

Bill looked round once, and melted into the bush pretty soon after
that.  When I caught up he was about done; but I grabbed my swag and
we pushed on, for I told Bill that I'd seen Stiffner making for the
stables when I'd last looked round; and Bill thought that we'd better
get lost in the bush as soon as ever we could, and stay lost, too, for
Stiffner was a man that couldn't stand being had.

The first thing that Bill said when we got safe into camp was: "I
told you that we'd pull through all right.  You need never be
frightened when you're travelling with me.  Just take my advice and
leave things to me, and we'll hang out all right.  Now-."

But I shut him up.  He made me mad.

"Why, you--!  What the sheol did _you_ do?"

"Do?" he says.  "I got away with the swags, didn't I?  Where'd they
be now if it wasn't for me?"

Then I sat on him pretty hard for his pretensions, and paid him out
for all the patronage he'd worked off on me, and called him a mug
straight, and walked round him, so to speak, and blowed, and told him
never to pretend to me again that he was a battler.

Then, when I thought I'd licked him into form, I cooled down and
soaped him up a bit; but I never thought that he had three climaxes
and a crisis in store for me.

He took it all pretty cool; he let me have my fling, and gave me time
to get breath; then he leaned languidly over on his right side, shoved
his left hand down into his left trouserpocket, and brought up a
boot-lace, a box of matches, and nine-and-six.

As soon as I got the focus of it I gasped:

"Where the deuce did you get that?"

"I had it all along," he said, "but I seen at the pub that you had
the show to chew a lug, so I thought we'd save it--nine-and-sixpences
ain't picked up every day."

Then he leaned over on his left, went down into the other pocket,
and came up with a piece of tobacco and half-a-sovereign.

My eyes bulged out.

"Where the blazes did you get that from?" I yelled.

"That," he said, "was the half-quid you give me last night.
Half-quids ain't to be thrown away these times; and, besides, I had a
down on Stiffner, and meant to pay him out; I reckoned that if we
wasn't sharp enough to take him down we hadn't any business to be
supposed to be alive.  Anyway, I guessed we'd do it; and so we
did--and got a bottle of whisky into the bargain."

Then he leaned back, tired-like, against the log, and dredged his
upper left-hand waistcoat-pocket, and brought up a sovereign wrapped
in a pound note.  Then he waited for me to speak; but I couldn't.  I
got my mouth open, but couldn't get it shut again.

"I got that out of the mugs last night, but I thought that we'd want
it, and might as well keep it.  Quids ain't so easily picked up,
nowadays; and, besides, we need stuff more'n Stiffner does, and so--"

"And did he know you had the stuff?" I gasped.

"Oh, yes, that's the fun of it.  That's what made him so excited.  He
was in the parlour all the time I was playing.  But we might as well
have a drink!

"We did.  I wanted it."


Bill turned in by-and-by, and looked like a sleeping innocent in the
moonlight.  I sat up late, and smoked, and thought hard, and watched
Bill, and turned in, and thought till near daylight, and then went to
sleep, and had a nightmare about it.  I dreamed I chased Stiffner
forty miles to buy his pub, and that Bill turned out to be his nephew.

Bill divvied up all right, and gave me half a crown over, but I didn't
travel with him long after that.  He was a decent young fellow as far
as chaps go, and a good mate as far as mates go; but he was too far
ahead for a peaceful, easy-going chap like me.  It would have worn me
out in a year to keep up to him.

P.S.--The name of this should have been:
  'Bill and Stiffner (thirdly, Jim)'




WHEN THE SUN WENT DOWN


Jack Drew sat on the edge of the shaft, with his foot in the loop and
one hand on the rope, ready to descend.  His elder brother, Tom, stood
at one end of the windlass and the third mate at the other.  Jack
paused before swinging off, looked up at his brother, and impulsively
held out his hand:

"You ain't going to let the sun go down, are you, Tom?"

But Tom kept both hands on the windlass-handle and said nothing.

"Lower away!"

They lowered him to the bottom, and Tom shouldered his pick in silence
and walked off to the tent.  He found the tin plate, pint-pot, and
things set ready for him on the rough slab table under the bush shed.
The tea was made, the cabbage and potatoes strained and placed in a
billy near the fire.  He found the fried bacon and steak between two
plates in the camp-oven.  He sat down to the table but he could not
eat.  He felt mean.  The inexperience and hasty temper of his brother
had caused the quarrel between them that morning; but then Jack
admitted that, and apologized when he first tried to make it up.

Tom moved round uneasily and tried to smoke: he could not get Jack's
last appeal out of his ears--"You ain't going to let the sun go down,
Tom?"

Tom found himself glancing at the sun.  It was less than two hours
from sunset.  He thought of the words of the old Hebrew--or
Chinese--poet; he wasn't religious, and the authorship didn't matter.
The old poet's words began to haunt him "Let not the sun go down upon
your wrath--Let not the sun go down upon your wrath."

The line contains good, sound advice; for quick-tempered men are often
the most sensitive, and when they let the sun go down on the aforesaid
wrath that quality is likely to get them down and worry them during
the night.

Tom started to go to the claim, but checked himself, and sat down and
tried to draw comfort from his pipe.  He understood his brother
thoroughly, but his brother never understood him--that was where the
trouble was.  Presently he got thinking how Jack would worry about the
quarrel and have no heart for his work.  Perhaps he was fretting over
it now, all alone by himself, down at the end of the damp, dark drive.
Tom had a lot of the old woman about him, in spite of his unsociable
ways and brooding temper.

He had almost made up his mind to go below again, on some excuse, when
his mate shouted from the top of the shaft:

"Tom! Tom! For Christ's sake come here!"

Tom's heart gave a great thump, and he ran like a kangaroo to the
shaft.  All the diggers within hearing were soon on the spot.  They
saw at a glance what had happened.  It was madness to sink without
timber in such treacherous ground.  _The sides of the shaft were
closing in_.  Tom sprang forward and shouted through the crevice:

"To the face, Jack!  To the face, for your life!"

"The old Workings!" he cried, turning to the diggers.  "Bring a fan
and tools.  We'll dig him out."

A few minutes later a fan was rigged over a deserted shaft close by,
where fortunately the windlass had been left for bailing purposes, and
men were down in the old drive.  Tom knew that he and his mates had
driven very close to the old workings.

He knelt in the damp clay before the face and worked like a madman; he
refused to take turn about, and only dropped the pick to seize a
shovel in his strong hands, and snatch back the loose clay from under
his feet; he reckoned that he had six or, perhaps, eight feet to
drive, and he knew that the air could not last long in the new
drive--even if that had not already fallen in and crushed his brother.
Great drops of perspiration stood out on Tom's forehead, and his
breath began to come in choking sobs, but he still struck strong,
savage blows into the clay before him, and the drive lengthened
quickly.  Once he paused a moment to listen, and then distinctly heard
a sound as of a tool or stone being struck against the end of the new
drive.  Jack was safe!

Tom dug on until the clay suddenly fell away from his pick and left a
hole, about the size of a plate, in the "face" before him.  "Thank
God!" said a hoarse, strained voice at the other side.

"All right, Jack!"

"Yes, old man; you are just in time; I've hardly got room to stand
in, and I'm nearly smothered."  He was crouching against the "face"
of the new drive.

Tom dropped his pick and fell back against the man behind him.

"Oh, God! my back!" he cried.

Suddenly he struggled to his knees, and then fell forward on his hand
and dragged himself close to the hole in the end of the drive.

"Jack!" he gasped, "Jack!"

"Right, old man; what's the matter?"

"I've hurt my heart, Jack!--Put your hand--quick!...The sun's going
down."

Jack's hand came out through the hole, Tom gripped it, and then fell
with his face in the damp clay.

They half carried, half dragged him from the drive, for the roof was
low and they were obliged to stoop.  They took him to the shaft and
sent him up, lashed to the rope.

A few blows of the
pick, and Jack scrambled from his prison and went to the surface, and
knelt on the grass by the body of his brother.  The diggers gathered
round and took off their hats.  And the sun went down.



THE MAN WHO FORGOT


"Well, I dunno," said Tom Marshall--known as "The Oracle"--"I've
heerd o' sich cases before: they ain't commin, but--I've heerd o' sich
cases before," and he screwed up the left side of his face whilst he
reflectively scraped his capacious right ear with the large blade of a
pocket-knife.

They were sitting at the western end of the rouseabouts' hut, enjoying
the breeze that came up when the sun went down, and smoking and
yarning.  The "case" in question was a wretchedly forlorn-looking
specimen of the swag-carrying clan whom a boundary-rider had found
wandering about the adjacent plain, and had brought into the station.
He was a small, scraggy man, painfully fair, with a big, baby-like
head, vacant watery eyes, long thin hairy hands, that felt like pieces
of damp seaweed, and an apologetic cringe-and-look-up-at-you manner.
He professed to have forgotten who he was and all about himself.

The Oracle was deeply interested in this case, as indeed he was in
anything else that "looked curious." He was a big, simple-minded
shearer, with more heart than brains, more experience than sense, and
more curiosity than either.  It was a wonder that he had not profited,
even indirectly, by the last characteristic.  His heart was filled
with a kind of reverential pity for anyone who was fortunate or
unfortunate enough to possess an "affliction;" and amongst his mates
had been counted a deaf man, a blind man, a poet, and a man who "had
rats."  Tom had dropped across them individually, when they were down
in the world, and had befriended them, and studied them with great
interest--especially the poet; and they thought kindly of him, and
were grateful--except the individual with the rats, who reckoned Tom
had an axe to grind--that he, in fact, wanted to cut his (Rat's) liver
out as a bait for Darling cod--and so renounced the mateship.

It was natural, then, for The Oracle to take the present case under
his wing.  He used his influence with the boss to get the Mystery on
"picking up," and studied him in spare time, and did his best to
assist the poor hushed memory, which nothing the men could say or do
seemed able to push further back than the day on which the stranger
"kind o' woke up" on the plain, and found a swag beside him.  The
swag had been prospected and fossicked for a clue, but yielded none.
The chaps were sceptical at first, and inclined to make fun of the
Mystery; but Tom interfered, and intimated that if they were skunks
enough to chyack or try on any of their "funny business" with a
"pore afflicted chap," he (Tom) would be obliged to "perform."
Most of the men there had witnessed Tom's performance, and no one
seemed ambitious to take a leading part in it.  They preferred to be
in the audience.

"Yes," reflected The Oracle, "it's a curious case, and I dare say
some of them big doctors, like Morell Mackenzie, would be glad to give
a thousand or two to get holt on a case like this."

"Done," cried Mitchell, the goat of the shed.  "I'll go halves!--or
stay, let's form a syndicate and work the Mystery."

Some of the rouseabouts laughed, but the joke fell as flat with Tom as
any other joke.

"The worst of it is," said the Mystery himself, in the whine that
was natural to him, and with a timid side look up at Tom--"the worst
of it is I might be a lord or duke, and don't know anything about it.
I might be a rich man, with a lot of houses and money.  I might be a
lord."

The chaps guffawed.

"Wot'yer laughing at?" asked Mitchell.  "I don't see anything
unreasonable about it; he might be a lord as far as looks go.  I've
seen two."

"Yes," reflected Tom, ignoring Mitchell, "there's something in
that; but then again, you see, you might be Jack the Ripper.  Better
let it slide, mate; let the dead past bury its dead.  Start fresh with
a clean sheet."

"But I don't even know my name, or whether I'm married or not,"
whined the outcast.  "I might have a good wife and little ones."

"Better keep on forgetting, mate," Mitchell said, "and as for a
name, that's nothing.  I don't know mine, and I've had eight.  There's
plenty good names knocking round.  I knew a man named Jim Smith that
died.  Take his name, it just suits you, and he ain't likely to call
round for it; if he does, you can say you was born with it."

So they called him Smith, and soon began to regard him as a harmless
lunatic and to take no notice of his eccentricities.  Great interest
was taken in the case for a time, and even Mitchell put in his oar
and tried all sorts of ways to assist the Mystery in his weak,
helpless, and almost pitiful endeavours to recollect who he was.  A
similar case happened to appear in the papers at this time, and the
thing caught on to such an extent that The Oracle was moved to impart
some advice from his store of wisdom.

"I wouldn't think too much over it if I was you," said he to
Mitchell, "hundreds of sensible men went mad over that there
Tichborne case who didn't have anything to do with it, but just
through thinking on it; and you're ratty enough already, Jack.  Let it
alone and trust me to find out who's Smith just as soon as ever we cut
out."

Meanwhile Smith ate, worked, and slept, and borrowed tobacco and
forgot to return it--which was made a note of.  He talked freely about
his case when asked, but if he addressed anyone, it was with the air
of the timid but good young man, who is fully aware of the extent and
power of this world's wickedness, and stands somewhat in awe of it,
but yet would beg you to favour a humble worker in the vineyard by
kindly accepting a tract, and passing it on to friends after perusal.


One Saturday morning, about a fortnight before cut out, The Oracle
came late to his stand, and apparently with something on his mind.
Smith hadn't turned up, and the next rouseabout was doing his work, to
the mutual dissatisfaction of all parties immediately concerned.

"Did you see anything of Smith?" asked Mitchell of The Oracle.
"Seems to have forgot to get up this morning."

Tom looked disheartened and disappointed.  _"He's forgot
again_," said he, slowly and impressively.

"Forgot what?  We know he's blessed well forgot to come to graft."

"He's forgot again," repeated Tom.  "He woke up this morning and
wanted to know who he was and where he was."  Comments.

"Better give him best, Oracle," said Mitchell presently.  "If he
can't find out who he is and where he is, the boss'll soon find it out
for him."

"No," said Tom, "when I take a thing in hand I see it through."

This was also characteristic of the boss-over-the-board, though in
another direction.  He went down to the but and inquired for Smith.

"Why ain't you at work?"

"Who am I, sir?  Where am I?" whined Smith. "Can you please tell me
who I am and where I am?"

The boss drew a long breath and stared blankly at the Mystery; then he
erupted.

"Now, look here!" he howled, "I don't know who the gory sheol you
are, except that you're a gory lunatic, and what's more, I don't care
a damn.  But I'll soon show you where you are!  You can call up at the
store and get your cheque, and soon as you blessed well like; and then
take a walk, and don't forget to take your lovely swag with you."

The matter was discussed at the dinner-table.  The Oracle swore that
it was a cruel, mean way to treat a "pore afflicted chap," and
cursed the boss.  Tom's admirers cursed in sympathy, and trouble
seemed threatening, when the voice of Mitchell was heard to rise in
slow, deliberate tones over the clatter of cutlery and tin plates.

"I wonder," said the voice, "I wonder whether Smith forgot his
cheque?"

It was ascertained that Smith hadn't.

There was some eating and thinking done.  Soon Mitchell's voice was
heard again, directed at The Oracle.

It said "Do you keep any vallabels about your bunk, Oracle?"

Tom looked hard at Mitchell.  "Why?"

"Oh, nothin': only I think it wouldn't be a bad idea for you to look
at your bunk and see whether Smith forgot."

The chaps grew awfully interested.  They fixed their eyes on Tom, and
he looked with feeling from one face to another; then he pushed his
plate back, and slowly extracted his long legs from between the stool
and the table.  He climbed to his bunk, and carefully reviewed the
ingredients of his swag.  Smith hadn't forgot.

When The Oracle's face came round again there was in it a strange
expression which a close study would have revealed to be more of anger
than of sorrow, but that was not all.  It was an expression such as a
man might wear who is undergoing a terrible operation, without
chloroform, but is determined not to let a whimper escape him.  Tom
didn't swear, and by that token they guessed how mad he was.  'Twas a
rough shed, with a free and lurid vocabulary, but had they all sworn
in chorus, with One-eyed Bogan as lead, it would not have done justice
to Tom's feelings--and they realized this.

The Oracle took down his bridle from its peg, and started for the door
amid a respectful and sympathetic silence, which was only partly
broken once by the voice of Mitchell, which asked in an awed whisper:

"Going ter ketch yer horse, Tom?" The Oracle nodded, and passed on;
he spake no word--he was too full for words.

Five minutes passed, and then the voice of Mitchell was heard again,
uninterrupted by the clatter of tinware.  It said in impressive tones:

"It would not be a bad idea for some of you chaps that camp in the
bunks along there, to have a look at your things.  Scotty's bunk is
next to Tom's."

Scotty shot out of his place as if a snake had hold of his leg,
starting a plank in the table and upsetting three soup plates.  He
reached for his bunk like a drowning man clutching at a plank, and
tore out the bedding.  Again, Smith hadn't forgot.

Then followed a general overhaul, and it was found in most cases that
Smith had remembered.  The pent-up reservoir of blasphemy burst forth.

The Oracle came up with Smith that night at the nearest shanty, and
found that he had forgotten again, and in several instances, and was
forgetting some more under the influence of rum and of the flattering
interest taken in his case by a drunken Bachelor of Arts who happened
to be at the pub.  Tom came in quietly from the rear, and crooked his
finger at the shanty-keeper.  They went apart from the rest, and
talked together a while very earnestly.  Then they secretly examined
Smith's swag, the core of which was composed of Tom's and his mate's
valuables.

Then The Oracle stirred up Smith's recollections and departed.

Smith was about again in a couple of weeks.  He was damaged somewhat
physically, but his memory was no longer impaired.



HUNGERFORD


One of the hungriest cleared roads in New South Wales runs to within a
couple of miles of Hungerford, and stops there; then you strike
through the scrub to the town.  There is no distant prospect of
Hungerford--you don't see the town till you are quite close to it, and
then two or three white-washed galvanized-iron roofs start out of the
mulga.

They say that a past Ministry commenced to clear the road from Bourke,
under the impression that Hungerford was an important place, and went
on, with the blindness peculiar to governments, till they got to
within two miles of the town.  Then they ran short of rum and rations,
and sent a man on to get them, and make inquiries.  The member never
came back, and two more were sent to find him--or Hungerford.  Three
days later the two returned in an exhausted condition, and submitted a
motion of want-of-confidence, which was lost.  Then the whole House
went on and was lost also.  Strange to relate, that Government was
never missed.

However, we found Hungerford and camped there for a day.  The town is
right on the Queensland border, and an interprovincial rabbit-proof
fence--with rabbits on both sides of it--runs across the main street.

This fence is a standing joke with Australian rabbits--about the only
joke they have out there, except the memory of Pasteur and poison and
inoculation.  It is amusing to go a little way out of town, about
sunset, and watch them crack Noah's Ark rabbit jokes about that fence,
and burrow under and play leap-frog over it till they get tired.  One
old buck rabbit sat up and nearly laughed his ears off at a joke of
his own about that fence.  He laughed so much that he couldn't get
away when I reached for him.  I could hardly eat him for laughing.  I
never saw a rabbit laugh before; but I've seen a 'possum do it.

Hungerford consists of two houses and a humpy in New South Wales, and
five houses in Queensland.  Characteristically enough, both the pubs
are in Queensland.  We got a glass of sour yeast at one and paid
sixpence for it--we had asked for English ale.

The post office is in New South Wales, and the police-barracks in
Bananaland.  The police cannot do anything if there's a row going on
across the street in New South Wales, except to send to Brisbane and
have an extradition warrant applied for; and they don't do much if
there's a row in Queensland.  Most of the rows are across the border,
where the pubs are.

At least, I believe that's how it is, though the man who told me might
have been a liar.  Another man said he was a liar, but then _he_
might have been a liar himself--a third person said he was one.  I
heard that there was a fight over it, but the man who told me about
the fight might not have been telling the truth.

One part of the town swears at Brisbane when things go wrong, and the
other part curses Sydney.

The country looks as though a great ash-heap had been spread out
there, and mulga scrub and firewood planted--and neglected.  The
country looks just as bad for a hundred miles round Hungerford, and
beyond that it gets worse--a blasted, barren wilderness that doesn't
even howl.  If it howled it would be a relief.

I believe that Bourke and Wills found Hungerford, and it's a pity they
did; but, if I ever stand by the graves of the men who first travelled
through this country, when there were neither roads nor stations, nor
tanks, nor bores, nor pubs, I'll--I'll take my hat off.  There were
brave men in the land in those days.

It is said that the explorers gave the district its name chiefly
because of the hunger they found there, which has remained there ever
since.  I don't know where the "ford" comes in--there's nothing to
ford, except in flood-time.  Hungerthirst would have been better.  The
town is supposed to be situated on the banks of a river called the
Paroo, but we saw no water there, except what passed for it in a tank.
The goats and sheep and dogs and the rest of the population drink
there.  It is dangerous to take too much of that water in a raw state.

Except in flood-time you couldn't find the bed of the river without
the aid of a spirit-level and a long straight-edge.  There is a
Custom-house against the fence on the northern side.  A pound of tea
often costs six shillings on that side, and you can get a common lead
pencil for fourpence at the rival store across the street in the
mother province.  Also, a small loaf of sour bread sells for a
shilling at the humpy aforementioned.  Only about sixty per cent of
the sugar will melt.

We saw one of the storekeepers give a dead-beat swagman five
shillings' worth of rations to take him on into Queensland.  The
storekeepers often do this, and put it down on the loss side of their
books.  I hope the recording angel listens, and puts it down on the
right side of his book.

We camped on the Queensland side of the fence, and after tea had a
yarn with an old man who was minding a mixed flock of goats and sheep;
and we asked him whether he thought Queensland was better than New
South Wales, or the other way about.

He scratched the back of his head, and thought a while, and hesitated
like a stranger who is going to do you a favour at some personal
inconvenience.

At last, with the bored air of a man who has gone through the same
performance too often before, he stepped deliberately up to the fence
and spat over it into New South Wales.  After which he got leisurely
through and spat back on Queensland.

"That's what I think of the blanky colonies!" he said.

He gave us time to become sufficiently impressed; then he said:

"And if I was at the Victorian and South Australian border I'd do the
same thing."

He let that soak into our minds, and added: "And the same with West
Australia--and--and Tasmania."  Then he went away.

The last would have been a long spit--and he forgot Maoriland.

We heard afterwards that his name was Clancy and he had that day been
offered a job droving at "twenty-five shillings a week and find your
own horse."  Also find your own horse feed and tobacco and soap and
other luxuries, at station prices.  Moreover, if you lost your own
horse you would have to find another, and if that died or went astray
you would have to find a third--or forfeit your pay and return on
foot.  The boss drover agreed to provide flour and mutton--when such
things were procurable.

Consequently, Clancy's unfavourable opinion of the colonies.

My mate
and I sat down on our swags against the fence to talk things over.
One of us was very deaf.  Presently a black tracker went past and
looked at us, and returned to the pub.  Then a trooper in Queensland
uniform came along and asked us what the trouble was about, and where
we came from and were going, and where we camped.  We said we were
discussing private business, and he explained that he thought it was a
row, and came over to see.  Then he left us, and later on we saw him
sitting with the rest of the population on a bench under the hotel
veranda.  Next morning we rolled up our swags and left Hungerford to
the north-west.




A CAMP-FIRE YARN


"This girl," said Mitchell,
continuing a yarn to his mate, "was about the ugliest girl I ever saw,
except one, and I'll tell you about her directly.  The old man had a
carpenter's shop fixed up in a shed at the back of his house, and he
used to work there pretty often, and sometimes I'd come over and yarn
with him.  One day I was sitting on the end of the bench, and the old
man was working away, and Mary was standing there too, all three of
us yarning--she mostly came poking round where I was if I happened to
be on the premises--or at least I thought so--and we got yarning about
getting married, and the old cove said he'd get married again if the
old woman died.

"'_You_ get married again!' said Mary.  'Why, father,
you wouldn't get anyone to marry you--who'd have you?'

"'Well,' he said, 'I bet I'll get someone sooner than you, anyway.
You don't seem to be able to get anyone, and it's pretty near time you
thought of settlin' down and gettin' married.  I wish _someone_
would have you.'

"He hit her pretty hard there, but it served her right.  She got as
good as she gave.  She looked at me and went all colours, and then she
went back to her washtub.

"She was mighty quiet at tea-time--she seemed hurt a lot, and I
began to feel sorry I'd laughed at the old man's joke, for she was
really a good, hard-working girl, and you couldn't help liking her.

"So after tea I went out to her in the kitchen, where she was washing
up, to try and cheer her up a bit.  She'd scarcely speak at first,
except to say 'Yes' or 'No', and kept her face turned away from me;
and I could see that she'd been crying.  I began to feel sorry for her
and mad at the old man, and I started to comfort her.  But I didn't go
the right way to work about it.  I told her that she mustn't take any
notice of the old cove, as he didn't mean half he said.  But she
seemed to take it harder than ever, and at last I got so sorry for her
that I told her that _I'd_ have her if she'd have me."

"And what did she say?" asked Mitchell's mate, after a pause.

"She said she wouldn't have me at any price!"

The mate laughed, and Mitchell grinned his quiet grin.

"Well, this set me thinking," he continued.  "I always knew I was a
dashed ugly cove, and I began to wonder whether any girl would really
have me; and I kept on it till at last I made up my mind to find out
and settle the matter for good--or bad.

"There was another farmer's daughter living close by, and I met her
pretty often coming home from work, and sometimes I had a yarn with
her.  She was plain, and no mistake: Mary was a Venus alongside of
her.  She had feet like a Lascar, and hands about ten sizes too large
for her, and a face like that camel--only red; she walked like a
camel, too.  She looked like a ladder with a dress on, and she didn't
know a great A from a corner cupboard.

"Well, one evening I met her at the sliprails, and presently I asked
her, for a joke, if she'd marry me.  Mind you, I never wanted to marry
_her_; I was only curious to know whether any girl would have me.

"She turned away her face and seemed to hesitate, and I was just
turning away and beginning to think I was a dashed hopeless case,
when all of a sudden she fell up against me and said she'd be my
wife....And it wasn't her fault that she wasn't."

"What did she do?"

"Do!  What didn't she do?  Next day she went down to our place when I
was at work, and hugged and kissed mother and the girls all round, and
cried, and told mother that she'd try and be a dutiful daughter to
her.  Good Lord! You should have seen the old woman and the girls when
I came home.

"Then she let everyone know that Bridget Page was engaged to Jack
Mitchell, and told her friends that she went down on her knees every
night and thanked the Lord for getting the love of a good man.  Didn't
the fellows chyack me, though!  My sisters were raving mad about it,
for their chums kept asking them how they liked their new sister, and
when it was going to come off, and who'd be bridesmaids and best man,
and whether they weren't surprised at their brother Jack's choice; and
then I'd gammon at home that it was all true.

"At last the place got too hot for me.  I got sick of dodging that
girl.  I sent a mate of mine to tell her that it was all a joke, and
that I was already married in secret; but she didn't see it, then I
cleared, and got a job in Newcastle, but had to leave there when my
mates sent me the office that she was coming.  I wouldn't wonder but
what she is humping her swag after me now.  In fact, I thought you was
her in disguise when I set eyes on you first....You needn't get mad
about it; I don't mean to say that you're quite as ugly as she was,
because I never saw a man that was--or a woman either.  Anyway, I'll
never ask a woman to marry me again unless I'm ready to marry her."

Then Mitchell's mate told a yarn.

"I knew a case once something like the one you were telling me about;
the landlady of a hash-house where I was stopping in Albany told me.
There was a young carpenter staying there, who'd run away from Sydney
from an old maid who wanted to marry him.  He'd cleared from the
church door, I believe.  He was scarcely more'n a boy--about
nineteen--and a soft kind of a fellow, something like you, only
good-looking--that is, he was passable.  Well, as soon as the woman
found out where he'd gone, she came after him.  She turned up at the
boarding-house one Saturday morning when Bobbie was at work; and the
first thing she did was to rent a double room from the landlady and
buy some cups and saucers to start housekeeping with.  When Bobbie
came home he just gave her one look and gave up the game.

"'Get your dinner, Bobbie,' she said, after she'd slobbered over him
a bit, 'and then get dressed and come with me and get married!'

"She was about three times his age, and had a face like that picture
of a lady over Sappho Smith's letters in the Sydney _Bulletin_.

"Well, Bobbie went with her like a--like a lamb; never gave a kick or
tried to clear."

"Hold on," said Mitchell, "did you ever shear lambs?"

"Never mind.  Let me finish the yarn.  Bobbie was married; but she
wouldn't let him out of her sight all that afternoon, and he had to
put up with her before them all.  About bedtime he sneaked out and
started along the passage to his room that he shared with two or three
mates.  But she'd her eye on him.

"'Bobbie, Bobbie!' she says, 'Where are you going?'

"'I'm going to bed,' said Bobbie.  'Good night!'

"'Bobbie, Bobbie,' she says, sharply.  'That isn't our room;
_this_ is our room, Bobbie.  Come back at once!  What do you
mean, Bobbie?  _Do you hear me, Bobbie?_'

"So Bobbie came back, and went in with the scarecrow.  Next morning
she was first at the breakfast table, in a dressing-gown and curl
papers.  And when they were all sitting down Bobbie sneaked in,
looking awfully sheepish, and sidled for his chair at the other end of
the table.  But she'd her eyes on him.

"'Bobbie, Bobbie!' she said, 'Come and kiss me, Bobbie!'" And he
had to do it in front of them all.

"But I believe she made him a good wife."




HIS COUNTRY-AFTER ALL


The Blenheim coach was descending into the valley of the Avetere
River--pronounced Aveterry--from the saddle of Taylor's Pass.  Across
the river to the right, the grey slopes and flats stretched away to
the distant sea from a range of tussock hills.  There was no native
bush there; but there were several groves of imported timber standing
wide apart---sentinel-like--seeming lonely and striking in their
isolation.

"Grand country, New Zealand, eh?" said a stout man with a brown
face, grey beard, and grey eyes, who sat between the driver and
another passenger on the box.

"You don't call this grand country!" exclaimed the other passenger,
who claimed to be, and looked like, a commercial traveller, and might
have been a professional spieler--quite possibly both.  "Why, it's
about the poorest country in New Zealand!  You ought to see some of
the country in the North Island--Wairarapa and Napier districts, round
about Pahiatua.  I call this damn poor country."

"Well, I reckon you wouldn't, if you'd ever been in Australia--back
in New South Wales.  The people here don't seem to know what a grand
country they've got.  You say this is the worst, eh?  Well, this would
make an Australian cockatoo's mouth water-the worst of New Zealand
would."

"I always thought Australia was all good country," mused the
driver--a flax-stick.  "I always thought--"

"Good country!" exclaimed the man with the grey beard, in a tone of
disgust.  "Why, it's only a mongrel desert, except some bits round
the coast.  The worst dried-up and God-forsaken country I was ever
in."

There was a silence, thoughtful on the driver's part, and aggressive
on that of the stranger.

"I always thought," said the driver, reflectively, after the
pause--"I always thought Australia was a good country," and he
placed his foot on the brake.

They let him think.  The coach descended the natural terraces above
the river bank, and pulled up at the pub.


"So you're a native of Australia?" said the bagman to the
grey-beard, as the coach went on again.

"Well, I suppose I am.  Anyway, I was born there.  That's the main
thing I've got against the darned country."

"How long did you stay there?"

"Till I got away," said the stranger.  Then, after a think, he
added, "I went away first when I was thirty-five--went to the
islands.  I swore I'd never go back to Australia again; but I did.  I
thought I had a kind of affection for old Sydney.  I knocked about the
blasted country for five or six years, and then I cleared out to
'Frisco.  I swore I'd never go back again, and I never will."

"But surely you'll take a run over and have a look at old Sydney and
those places, before you go back to America, after getting so near?"

"What the blazes do I want to have a look at the blamed country
for?" snapped the stranger, who had refreshed considerably.  "I've
got nothing to thank Australia for--except getting out of it.  It's
the best country to get out of that I was ever in."

"Oh, well, I only thought you might have had some friends over
there," interposed the traveller in an injured tone.

"Friends!  That's another reason.  I wouldn't go back there for all
the friends and relations since Adam.  I had more than quite enough of
it while I was there.  The worst and hardest years of my life were
spent in Australia.  I might have starved there, and did do it half my
time.  I worked harder and got less in my own country in five years
than I ever did in any other in fifteen"--he was getting mixed--"and
I've been in a few since then.  No, Australia is the worst country
that ever the Lord had the sense to forget.  I mean to stick to the
country that stuck to me, when I was starved out of my own dear native
land--and that country is the United States of America.  What's
Australia?  A big, thirsty, hungry wilderness, with one or two cities
for the convenience of foreign speculators, and a few collections of
humpies, called towns--also for the convenience of foreign
speculators; and populated mostly by mongrel sheep, and partly by
fools, who live like European slaves in the towns, and like dingoes in
the bush--who drivel about 'democracy,' and yet haven't any more spunk
than to graft for a few Cockney dudes that razzle-dazzle most of the
time in Paris.  Why, the Australians haven't even got the grit to
claim enough of their own money to throw a few dams across their
watercourses, and so make some of the interior fit to live in.
America's bad enough, but it was never so small as that....Bah!  The
curse of Australia is sheep, and the Australian war cry is Baa!"

"Well, you're the first man I ever heard talk as you've been doing
about his own country," said the bagman, getting tired and impatient
of being sat on all the time.  "'Lives there a man with a soul so
dead, who never said--to--to himself'...I forget the darned thing."

He tried to remember it.  The man whose soul was dead cleared his
throat for action, and the driver--for whom the bagman had shouted
twice as against the stranger's once--took the opportunity to observe
that he always thought a man ought to stick up for his own country.

The stranger ignored him and opened fire on the bagman.  He proceeded
to prove that that was all rot--that patriotism was the greatest curse
on earth; that it had been the cause of all war; that it was the
false, ignorant sentiment which moved men to slave, starve, and fight
for the comfort of their sluggish masters; that it was the enemy of
universal brotherhood, the mother of hatred, murder, and slavery, and
that the world would never be any better until the deadly poison,
called the sentiment of patriotism, had been "educated" out of the
stomachs of the people.  "Patriotism!" he exclaimed scornfully.
"My country!  The darned fools; the country never belonged to them,
but to the speculators, the absentees, land-boomers, swindlers, gangs
of thieves--the men the patriotic fools starve and fight for--their
masters.  Ba-a!"

The opposition collapsed.

The coach had climbed the terraces on the south side of the river, and
was bowling along on a level stretch of road across the elevated flat.

"What trees are those?" asked the stranger, breaking the aggressive
silence which followed his unpatriotic argument, and pointing to a
grove ahead by the roadside.  "They look as if they've been planted
there.  There ain't been a forest here surely?"

"Oh, they're some trees the Government imported," said the bagman,
whose knowledge on the subject was limited.  "Our own bush won't grow
in this soil."

"But it looks as if anything else would--"

Here the stranger sniffed once by accident, and then several times
with interest.

It was a warm morning after rain.  He fixed his eyes on those trees.

They didn't look like Australian gums; they tapered to the tops, the
branches were pretty regular, and the boughs hung in shipshape
fashion.  There was not the Australian heat to twist the branches and
turn the leaves.

"Why!" exclaimed the stranger, still staring and sniffing hard.
"Why, dang me if they ain't (sniff) Australian gums!"

"Yes," said the driver, flicking his horses, "they are."

"Blanky (sniff) blanky old Australian gums!" exclaimed the
ex-Australian, with strange enthusiasm.

"They're not old," said the driver; "they're only young trees.  But
they say they don't grow like that in Australia--'count of the
difference in the climate.  I always thought--"

But the other did not appear to hear him; he kept staring hard at the
trees they were passing.  They had been planted in rows and
cross-rows, and were coming on grandly.

There was a rabbit trapper's camp amongst those trees; he had made a
fire to boil his billy with gum-leaves and twigs, and it was the scent
of that fire which interested the exile's nose, and brought a wave of
memories with it.

"Good day, mate!" he shouted suddenly to the rabbit trapper, and to
the astonishment of his fellow passengers.

"Good day, mate!"  The answer came back like an echo--it seemed to
him--from the past.

Presently he caught sight of a few trees which had evidently been
planted before the others--as an experiment, perhaps--and, somehow,
one of them had grown after its own erratic native fashion--gnarled
and twisted and ragged, and could not be mistaken for anything else
but an Australian gum.

"A thunderin' old blue-gum!" ejaculated the traveller, regarding the
tree with great interest.

He screwed his neck to get a last glimpse, and then sat silently
smoking and gazing straight ahead, as if the past lay before him--and
it _was_ before him.

"Ah, well!" he said, in explanation of a long meditative silence on
his part; "ah, well--them saplings--the smell of them gum-leaves set
me thinking."  And he thought some more.

"Well, for my part," said a tourist in the coach, presently, in a
condescending tone, "I can't see much in Australia.  The bally
colonies are--"

"Oh, that be damned!" snarled the Australian-born--they had finished
the second flask of whisky.  "What do you Britishers know about
Australia?  She's as good as England, anyway."


"Well, I suppose you'll go straight back to the States as soon as
you've done your business in Christchurch," said the bagman, when
near their journey's end they had become confidential.

"Well, I dunno.  I reckon I'll
just take a run over to Australia first.  There's an old mate of mine
in business in Sydney, and I'd like to have a yarn with him."



A DAY ON A SELECTION


The scene is a small New South Wales western selection, the holder
whereof is native-English.  His wife is native-Irish.  Time, Sunday,
about 8 a.m.  A used-up looking woman comes from the slab-and-bark
house, turns her face towards the hillside, and shrieks:

"T-o-o-m_may_!"

No response, and presently she draws a long breath and
screams again:

"_Tom_m-a-a-y!"

A faint echo comes from far up the siding where Tommy's presence is
vaguely indicated by half a dozen cows moving slowly--very
slowly--down towards the cow-yard.

The woman retires.  Ten minutes later she comes out again and screams:

"_Tom_my!

"Y-e-e-a-a-s-s!" very passionately and shrilly.

"Ain't you goin' to bring those cows down to-day?"

"Y-e-e-a-a-s-s-s!--carn't yer see I'm comin'?"

A boy is seen to run wildly along the siding and hurl a missile at a
feeding cow; the cow runs forward a short distance through the trees,
and then stops to graze again while the boy stirs up another milker.

An hour goes by.

The rising Australian generation is represented by a thin, lanky youth
of about fifteen.  He is milking.  The cow-yard is next the house, and
is mostly ankle-deep in slush.  The boy drives a dusty,
discouraged-looking cow into the bail, and pins her head there; then
he gets tackle on to her right hind leg, hauls it back, and makes it
fast to the fence.  There are eleven cows, but not one of them can be
milked out of the bail--chiefly because their teats are sore.  The
selector does not know what makes the teats sore, but he has an
unquestioning faith in a certain ointment, recommended to him by a man
who knows less about cows than he does himself, which he causes to be
applied at irregular intervals--leaving the mode of application to the
discretion of his son.  Meanwhile the teats remain sore.

Having made the cow fast, the youngster cautiously takes hold of the
least sore teat, yanks it suddenly, and dodges the cow's hock.  When
he gets enough milk to dip his dirty hands in, he moistens the teats,
and things go on more smoothly.  Now and then he relieves the monotony
of his occupation by squirting at the eye of a calf which is dozing in
the adjacent pen.  Other times he milks into his mouth.  Every time
the cow kicks, a burr or a grass-seed or a bit of something else falls
into the milk, and the boy drowns these things with a well-directed
stream--on the principle that what's out of sight is out of mind.

Sometimes the boy sticks his head into the cow's side, hangs on by a
teat, and dozes, while the bucket, mechanically gripped between his
knees, sinks lower and lower till it rests on the ground.  Likely as
not he'll doze on until his mother's shrill voice startles him with an
inquiry as to whether he intends to get that milking done to-day;
other times he is roused by the plunging of the cow, or knocked over
by a calf which has broken through a defective panel in the pen.  In
the latter case the youth gets tackle on to the calf, detaches its
head from the teat with the heel of his boot, and makes it fast
somewhere.  Sometimes the cow breaks or loosens the leg-rope and gets
her leg into the bucket and then the youth clings desperately to the
pail and hopes she'll get her hoof out again without spilling the
milk.  Sometimes she does, more often she doesn't--it depends on the
strength of the boy and the pail and on the strategy of the former.
Anyway, the boy will lam the cow down with a jagged yard shovel, let
her out, and bail up another.

When he considers that he has finished milking he lets the cows out
with their calves and carries the milk down to the dairy, where he has
a heated argument with his mother, who--judging from the quantity of
milk--has reason to believe that he has slummed some of the milkers.
This he indignantly denies, telling her she knows very well the cows
are going dry.

The dairy is built of rotten box bark--though there is plenty of good
stringy-bark within easy distance--and the structure looks as if it
wants to lie down and is only prevented by three crooked props on the
leaning side; more props will soon be needed in the rear for the dairy
shows signs of going in that direction.  The milk is set in dishes
made of kerosene-tins, cut in halves, which are placed on bark shelves
fitted round against the walls.  The shelves are not level and the
dishes are brought to a comparatively horizontal position by means of
chips and bits of bark, inserted under the lower side.  The milk is
covered by soiled sheets of old newspapers supported on sticks laid
across the dishes.  This protection is necessary, because the box bark
in the roof has crumbled away and left fringed holes--also because the
fowls roost up there.  Sometimes the paper sags, and the cream may
have to be scraped off an article on dairy farming.

The selector's wife removes the newspapers, and reveals a thick,
yellow layer of rich cream, plentifully peppered with dust that has
drifted in somehow.  She runs a forefinger round the edges of the
cream to detach it from the tin, wipes her finger in her mouth, and
skims.  If the milk and cream are very thick she rolls the cream over
like a pancake with her fingers, and lifts it out in sections.  The
thick milk is poured into a slop-bucket, for the pigs and calves, the
dishes are "cleaned"--by the aid of a dipper full of warm water and
a rag--and the wife proceeds to set the morning's milk.  Tom holds up
the doubtful-looking rag that serves as a strainer while his mother
pours in the milk.  Sometimes the boy's hands get tired and he lets
some of the milk run over, and gets into trouble; but it doesn't
matter much, for the straining-cloth has several sizable holes in the
middle.

The door of the dairy faces the dusty road and is off its hinges and
has to be propped up.  The prop is missing this morning, and Tommy is
accused of having been seen chasing old Poley with it at an earlier
hour.  He never seed the damn prop, never chased no cow with it, and
wants to know what's the use of always accusing him.  He further
complains that he's always blamed for everything.  The pole is not
forthcoming, and so an old dray is backed against the door to keep it
in position.  There is more trouble about a cow that is lost, and
hasn't been milked for two days.  The boy takes the cows up to the
paddock sliprails and lets the top rail down: the lower rail fits
rather tightly and some exertion is required to free it, so he makes
the animals jump that one.  Then he "poddies"-hand-feeds--the calves
which have been weaned too early.  He carries the skim-milk to the
yard in a bucket made out of an oil-drum--sometimes a kerosene-tin--
seizes a calf by the nape of the neck with his left hand, inserts the
dirty forefinger of his right into its mouth, and shoves its head down
into the milk.  The calf sucks, thinking it has a teat, and pretty
soon it butts violently--as calves do to remind their mothers to let
down the milk--and the boy's wrist gets barked against the jagged edge
of the bucket.  He welts that calf in the jaw, kicks it in the
stomach, tries to smother it with its nose in the milk, and finally
dismisses it with the assistance of the calf rope and a shovel, and
gets another.  His hand feels sticky and the cleaned finger makes it
look as if he wore a filthy, greasy glove with the forefinger torn
off.

The selector himself is standing against a fence talking to a
neighbour.  His arms rest on the top rail of the fence, his chin rests
on his hands, his pipe rests between his fingers, and his eyes rest on
a white cow that is chewing her cud on the opposite side of the fence.
The neighbour's arms rest on the top rail also, his chin rests on his
hands, his pipe rests between his fingers, and his eyes rest on the
cow.  They are talking about that cow.  They have been talking about
her for three hours.  She is chewing her cud.  Her nose is well up and
forward, and her eyes are shut.  She lets her lower jaw fall a little,
moves it to one side, lifts it again, and brings it back into position
with a springing kind of jerk that has almost a visible recoil.  Then
her jaws stay perfectly still for a moment, and you would think she
had stopped chewing.  But she hasn't.  Now and again a soft, easy,
smooth-going swallow passes visibly along her clean, white throat and
disappears.  She chews again, and by and by she loses consciousness
and forgets to chew.  She never opens her eyes.  She is young and in
good condition; she has had enough to eat, the sun is just properly
warm for her, and--well, if an animal can be really happy, she ought
to be.

Presently the two men drag themselves away from the fence, fill their
pipes, and go to have a look at some rows of forked sticks, apparently
stuck in the ground for some purpose.  The selector calls these sticks
fruit-trees, and he calls the place "the orchard."  They fool round
these wretched sticks until dinnertime, when the neighbour says he
must be getting home.  "Stay and have some dinner!  Man alive!  Stay
and have some dinner!" says the selector; and so the friend stays.

It is a broiling hot day in summer, and the dinner consists of hot
roast meat, hot baked potatoes, hot cabbage, hot pumpkin, hot peas, and
burning-hot plum-pudding.  The family drinks on an average four cups of
tea each per meal.  The wife takes her place at the head of the table
with a broom to keep the fowls out, and at short intervals she
interrupts the conversation with such exclamations as "Shoo! shoo!"
"Tommy, can't you see that fowl?  Drive it out!"  The fowls evidently
pass a lot of their time in the house.  They mark the circle described
by the broom, and take care to keep two or three inches beyond it.
Every now and then you see a fowl on the dresser amongst the crockery,
and there is great concern to get it out before it breaks something.
While dinner is in progress two steers get into the wheat through a
broken rail which has been spliced with stringy-bark, and a calf or two
break into the vineyard.  And yet this careless Australian selector,
who is too shiftless to put up a decent fence, or build a decent house
and who knows little or nothing about farming, would seem by his
conversation to have read up all the great social and political
questions of the day.  Here are some fragments of conversation caught
at the dinner-table.  Present--the selector, the missus, the neighbour,
Corney George--nicknamed "Henry George"--Tommy, Jacky, and the younger
children.  The spaces represent interruptions by the fowls and
children:

Corney George (continuing conversation): "But Henry George says, in
'Progress and Poverty,' he says--"

Missus (to the fowls): "Shoo! Shoo!"

Corney: "He says--"

Tom: "Marther, jist speak to this Jack."

Missus (to Jack): "If you can't behave yourself, leave the table."

Tom [Corney, probably]: "He says in Progress and--"

Missus: "Shoo!"

Neighbour: "I think 'Lookin' Backwards' is more--"

Missus: "Shoo! Shoo! Tom, can't you see that fowl?"

Selector: "Now I think 'Caesar's Column' is more likely--Just look
at--"

Missus: "Shoo! Shoo!"

Selector: "Just look at the French Revolution."

Corney: "Now, Henry George-"

Tom: "Marther! I seen a old-man kangaroo up on--"

Missus: "Shut up!  Eat your dinner an' hold your tongue.  Carn't
you see someone's speakin'?"

Selector: "Just look at the French--"

Missus (to the fowls): "Shoo!  Shoo!" (turning suddenly and
unexpectedly on Jacky): "Take your fingers out of the sugar!--Blast
yer! that I should say such a thing."

Neighbour: "But 'Lookin' Backwards"'

Missus: "There you go, Tom!  Didn't I say you'd spill that tea?  Go
away from the table!"

Selector: "I think 'Caesar's Column' is the only natural--"

Missus: "Shoo! Shoo!" She loses patience, gets up and fetches a
young rooster with the flat of the broom, sending him flying into the
yard; he falls with his head towards the door and starts in again.
Later on the conversation is about Deeming.

Selector: "There's no doubt the man's mad--"

Missus: "Deeming!  That Windsor wretch!  Why, if I was in the law I'd
have him boiled alive!  Don't tell me he didn't know what he was
doing!  Why, I'd have him--"

Corney: "But, missus, you--"

Missus (to the fowls): "Shoo!  Shoo!"



THAT THERE DOG O' MINE


Macquarie the shearer had met with an accident.  To tell the truth, he
had been in a drunken row at a wayside shanty, from which he had
escaped with three fractured ribs, a cracked head, and various minor
abrasions.  His dog, Tally, had been a sober but savage participator
in the drunken row, and had escaped with a broken leg.  Macquarie
afterwards shouldered his swag and staggered and struggled along the
track ten miles to the Union Town hospital.  Lord knows how he did it.
He didn't exactly know himself.  Tally limped behind all the way, on
three legs.

The doctors examined the man's injuries and were surprised at his
endurance.  Even doctors are surprised sometimes--though they don't
always show it.  Of course they would take him in, but they objected to
Tally.  Dogs were not allowed on the premises.

"You will have to turn that dog out," they said to the shearer, as
he sat on the edge of a bed.

Macquarie said nothing.

"We cannot allow dogs about the place, my man," said the doctor in a
louder tone, thinking the man was deaf.

"Tie him up in the yard then."

"No.  He must go out.  Dogs are not permitted on the grounds."

Macquarie rose slowly to his feet, shut his agony behind his set
teeth, painfully buttoned his shirt over his hairy chest, took up his
waistcoat, and staggered to the corner where the swag lay.

"What are you going to do?" they asked.

"You ain't going to let my dog stop?"

"No.  It's against the rules.  There are no dogs allowed on
premises."

He stooped and lifted his swag, but the pain was too great, and he
leaned back against the wall.

"Come, come now! man alive!"  exclaimed the doctor, impatiently.
"You must be mad.  You know you are not in a fit state to go out.
Let the wardsman help you to undress."

"No!" said Macquarie.  "No.  If you won't take my dog in you don't
take me.  He's got a broken leg and wants fixing up just--just as much
as--as I do.  If I'm good enough to come in, he's good enough--and--
and better."

He paused awhile, breathing painfully, and then went on.

"That--that there old dog of mine has follered me faithful and true,
these twelve long hard and hungry years.  He's about--about the only
thing that ever cared whether I lived or fell and rotted on the cursed
track."

He rested again; then he continued: "That--that there dog was pupped
on the track," he said, with a sad sort of a smile.  "I carried him
for months in a billy, and afterwards on my swag when he knocked
up....And the old slut--his mother--she'd foller along quite
contented--and sniff the billy now and again--just to see if he was
all right....She follered me for God knows how many years.  She
follered me till she was blind--and for a year after.  She follered me
till she could crawl along through the dust no longer, and--and then I
killed her, because I couldn't leave her behind alive!"

He rested again.

"And this here old dog," he continued, touching Tally's upturned
nose with his knotted fingers, "this here old dog has follered me
for--for ten years; through floods and droughts, through fair times
and--and hard--mostly hard; and kept me from going mad when I had no
mate nor money on the lonely track; and watched over me for weeks when
I was drunk--drugged and poisoned at the cursed shanties; and saved my
life more'n once, and got kicks and curses very often for thanks; and
forgave me for it all; and--and fought for me.  He was the only living
thing that stood up for me against that crawling push of curs when
they set onter me at the shanty back yonder--and he left his mark on
some of 'em too; and--and so did I."

He took another spell.

Then he drew in his breath, shut his teeth hard, shouldered his swag,
stepped into the doorway, and faced round again.

The dog limped out of the corner and looked up anxiously.

"That there dog," said Macquarie to the hospital staff in general,
"is a better dog than I'm a man--or you too, it seems--and a better
Christian.  He's been a better mate to me than I ever was to any
man--or any man to me.  He's watched over me; kep' me from getting
robbed many a time; fought for me; saved my life and took drunken
kicks and curses for thanks--and forgave me.  He's been a true,
straight, honest, and faithful mate to me--and I ain't going to desert
him now.  I ain't going to kick him out in the road with a broken leg.
I--Oh, my God! my back!"

He groaned and lurched forward, but they caught him, slipped off the
swag, and laid him on a bed.

Half an hour later the shearer was comfortably fixed up.

"Where's my dog!" he asked, when he came to himself.

"Oh, the dog's all right," said the nurse, rather impatiently.
"Don't bother.  The doctor's setting his leg out in the yard."




GOING BLIND


I met him in the Full-and-Plenty Dining Rooms.  It was a cheap place
in the city, with good beds upstairs let at one shilling per
night--"Board and residence for respectable single men, fifteen
shillings per week."  I was a respectable single man then.  I boarded
and resided there.  I boarded at a greasy little table in the greasy
little corner under the fluffy little staircase in the hot and greasy
little dining-room or restaurant downstairs.  They called it
dining-rooms, but it was only one room, and them wasn't half enough
room in it to work your elbows when the seven little tables and
forty-nine chairs were occupied.  There was not room for an
ordinary-sized steward to pass up and down between the tables; but our
waiter was not an ordinary-sized man--he was a living skeleton in
miniature.  We handed the soup, and the "roast beef one," and
"roast lamb one," "corn beef and cabbage one," "veal and stuffing
one," and the "veal and pickled pork," one--or two, or three, as
the case might be--and the tea and coffee, and the various kinds of
puddings--we handed them over each other, and dodged the drops as well
as we could.  The very hot and very greasy little kitchen was
adjacent, and it contained the bathroom and other conveniences, behind
screens of whitewashed boards.

I resided upstairs in a room where there were five beds and one
wash-stand; one candle-stick, with a very short bit of soft yellow
candle in it; the back of a hair-brush, with about a dozen bristles in
it; and half a comb--the big-tooth end--with nine and a half teeth at
irregular distances apart.

He was a typical bushman, not one of those tall, straight, wiry, brown
men of the West, but from the old Selection Districts, where many
drovers came from, and of the old bush school; one of those slight
active little fellows whom we used to see in cabbage-tree hats,
Crimean shirts, strapped trousers, and elastic-side boots--
"larstins," they called them.  They could dance well; sing
indifferently, and mostly through their noses, the old bush songs;
play the concertina horribly; and ride like--like--well, they
_could_ ride.

He seemed as if he had forgotten to grow old and die out with this old
colonial school to which he belonged.  They _had_ careless and
forgetful ways about them.  His name was Jack Gunther, he said, and
he'd come to Sydney to try to get something done to his eyes.  He had
a portmanteau, a carpet bag, some things in a three-bushel bag, and a
tin bog.  I sat beside him on his bed, and struck up an acquaintance,
and he told me all about it.  First he asked me would I mind shifting
round to the other side, as he was rather deaf in that ear.  He'd been
kicked by a horse, he said, and had been a little dull o' hearing on
that side ever since.

He was as good as blind.  "I can see the people near me," he said,
"but I can't make out their faces.  I can just make out the pavement
and the houses close at hand, and all the rest is a sort of white
blur."  He looked up: "That ceiling is a kind of white, ain't it?
And this," tapping the wall and putting his nose close to it, "is a
sort of green, ain't it?"  The ceiling might have been whiter.  The
prevalent tints of the wall-paper had originally been blue and red,
but it was mostly green enough now--a damp, rotten green; but I was
ready to swear that the ceiling was snow and that the walls were as
green as grass if it would have made him feel more comfortable.  His
sight began to get bad about six years before, he said; he didn't take
much notice of it at first, and then he saw a quack, who made his eyes
worse.  He had already the manner of the blind--the touch of every
finger, and even the gentleness in his speech.  He had a boy down with
him--a "sorter cousin of his," and the boy saw him round.  "I'll
have to be sending that youngster back," he said, "I think I'll send
him home next week.  He'll be picking up and learning too much down
here."

I happened to know the district he came from, and we would sit by the
hour and talk about the country, and chaps by the name of this and
chaps by the name of that--drovers mostly, whom we had met or had
heard of.  He asked me if I'd ever heard of a chap by the name of Joe
Scott--a big sandy-complexioned chap, who might be droving; he was his
brother, or, at least, his half-brother, but he hadn't heard of him
for years; he'd last heard of him at Blackall, in Queensland; he might
have gone overland to Western Australia with Tyson's cattle to the new
country.

We talked about grubbing and fencing and digging and droving and
shearing--all about the bush--and it all came back to me as we talked.
"I can see it all now," he said once, in an abstracted tone, seeming
to fix his helpless eyes on the wall opposite.  But he didn't see the
dirty blind wall, nor the dingy window, nor the skimpy little bed, nor
the greasy wash-stand; he saw the dark blue ridges in the sunlight,
the grassy sidings and flats, the creek with clumps of she-oak here
and there, the course of the willow-fringed river below, the distant
peaks and ranges fading away into a lighter azure, the granite ridge
in the middle distance, and the rocky rises, the stringy-bark and the
apple-tree flats, the scrubs, and the sunlit plains--and all.  I could
see it, too--plainer than ever I did.

He had done a bit of fencing in his time, and we got talking about
timber.  He didn't believe in having fencing-posts with big butts; he
reckoned it was a mistake.  "You see," he said, "the top of the
butt catches the rain water and makes the post rot quicker.  I'd back
posts without any butt at all to last as long or longer than posts
with 'em--that's if the fence is well put up and well rammed."  He
had supplied fencing stuff, and fenced by contract, and--well, you can
get more posts without butts out of a tree than posts with them.  He
also objected to charring the butts.  He said it only made more
work--and wasted time--the butts lasted longer without being charred.

I asked him if he'd ever got stringy-bark palings or shingles out of
mountain ash, and he smiled a smile that did my heart good to see, and
said he had.  He had also got them out of various other kinds of
trees.

We talked about soil and grass, and gold-digging, and many other
things which came back to one like a revelation as we yarned.

He had been to the hospital several times.  "The doctors don't say
they can cure me," he said, "they say they might, be able to improve
my sight and hearing, but it would take a long time--anyway, the
treatment would improve my general health.  They know what's the
matter with my eyes," and he explained it as well as he could.  "I
wish I'd seen a good doctor when my eyes first began to get weak; but
young chaps are always careless over things.  It's harder to get cured
of anything when you're done growing."

He was always hopeful and cheerful.  "If the worst comes to the worst,"
he said, "there's things I can do where I come from.  I might do a
bit o' wool-sorting, for instance.  I'm a pretty fair expert.  Or else
when they're weeding out I could help.  I'd just have to sit down and
they'd bring the sheep to me, and I'd feel the wool and tell them what
it was--being blind improves the feeling, you know."

He had a packet of portraits, but he couldn't make them out very well
now.  They were sort of blurred to him, but I described them and he
told me who they were.  "That's a girl o' mine," he said, with
reference to one--a jolly, good-looking bush girl.  "I got a letter
from her yesterday.  I managed to scribble something, but I'll get
you, if you don't mind, to write something more I want to put in on
another piece of paper, and address an envelope for me."

Darkness fell quickly upon him now--or, rather, the "sort of white
blur" increased and closed in.  But his hearing was better, he said,
and he was glad of that and still cheerful.  I thought it natural that
his hearing should improve as he went blind.

One day he said that he did not think he would bother going to the
hospital any more.  He reckoned he'd get back to where he was known.
He'd stayed down too long already, and the "stuff" wouldn't stand
it.  He was expecting a letter that didn't come.  I was away for a
couple of days, and when I came back he had been shifted out of the
room and had a bed in an angle of the landing on top of the staircase,
with the people brushing against him and stumbling over his things all
day on their way up and down.  I felt indignant, thinking that--the
house being full--the boss had taken advantage of the bushman's
helplessness and good nature to put him there.  But he said that he
was quite comfortable.  "I can get a whiff of air here," he said.

Going in next day I thought for a moment that I had dropped suddenly
back into the past and into a bush dance, for there was a concertina
going upstairs.  He was sitting on the bed, with his legs crossed, and
a new cheap concertina on his knee, and his eyes turned to the patch
of ceiling as if it were a piece of music and he could read it.  "I'm
trying to knock a few tunes into my head," he said, with a brave
smile, "in case the worst comes to the worst."  He tried to be
cheerful, but seemed worried and anxious.  The letter hadn't come.  I
thought of the many blind musicians in Sydney, and I thought of the
bushman's chance, standing at a corner swanking a cheap concertina,
and I felt sorry for him.

I went out with a vague idea of seeing someone about the matter, and
getting something done for the bushman--of bringing a little influence
to his assistance; but I suddenly remembered that my clothes were worn
out, my hat in a shocking state, my boots burst, and that I owed for a
week's board and lodging, and was likely to be thrown out at any
moment myself; and so I was not in a position to go where there was
influence.

When I went back to the restaurant there was a long, gaunt
sandy-complexioned bushman sitting by Jack's side.  Jack introduced
him as his brother, who had returned unexpectedly to his native
district, and had followed him to Sydney.  The brother was rather
short with me at first, and seemed to regard the restaurant
people--all of us, in fact--in the light of spielers who wouldn't
hesitate to take advantage of Jack's blindness if he left him a
moment; and he looked ready to knock down the first man who stumbled
against Jack, or over his luggage--but that soon wore off.  Jack was
going to stay with Joe at the Coffee Palace for a few weeks, and then
go back up-country, he told me.  He was excited and happy.  His
brother's manner towards him was as if Jack had just lost his wife, or
boy or someone very dear to him.  He would not allow him to do
anything for himself, nor try to--not even lace up his boot.  He
seemed to think that he was thoroughly helpless, and when I saw him
pack up Jack's things, and help him at the table and fix his tie and
collar with his great brown hands, which trembled all the time with
grief and gentleness, and make Jack sit down on the bed whilst he got
a cab and carried the trap down to it, and take him downstairs as if
he were made of thin glass, and settle with the landlord--then I knew
that Jack was all right.

We had a drink together--Joe, Jack, the cabman, and I.  Joe was very
careful to hand Jack the glass, and Jack made joke about it for Joe's
benefit.  He swore he could see a glass yet, and Joe laughed, but
looked extra troubled the next moment.

I felt their grips on my hand for five minutes after we parted.




Arvie Aspinall's Alarm Clock


In one of these years a paragraph appeared in a daily paper to the
effect that a constable had discovered a little boy asleep on the
steps of Grinder Bros' factory at four o'clock one rainy morning.
He awakened him, and demanded an explanation.

The little fellow explained that he worked there, and was frightened
of being late; he started work at six, and was apparently greatly
astonished to hear that it was only four.  The constable examined a
small parcel which the frightened child had in his hand.  It contained
a clean apron and three slices of bread and treacle.

The child further explained that he woke up and thought it was late,
and didn't like to wake mother and ask her the time "because she'd
been washin'."  He didn't look at the clock, because they "didn't
have one."  He volunteered no explanations as to how he expected
mother to know the time, but, perhaps, like many other mites of his
kind, he had unbounded faith in the infinitude of a mother's wisdom.
His name was Arvie Aspinall, please sir, and he lived in Jones's
Alley.  Father was dead.

A few days later the same paper took great pleasure in stating, in
reference to that "Touching Incident" noticed in a recent issue,
that a benevolent society lady had started a subscription among her
friends with the object of purchasing an alarm-clock for the little
boy found asleep at Grinder Bros' workshop door.

Later on, it was mentioned, in connection with the touching incident,
that the alarm-clock had been bought and delivered to the boy's
mother, who appeared to be quite overcome with gratitude.  It was
learned, also, from another source, that the last assertion was
greatly exaggerated.

The touching incident was worn out in another paragraph, which left no
doubt that the benevolent society lady was none other than a charming
and accomplished daughter of the House of Grinder.


It was late in the last day of the Easter Holidays, during which Arvie
Aspinall had lain in bed with a bad cold.  He was still what he called
"croopy."  It was about nine o'clock, and the business of Jones's
Alley was in full swing.

"That's better, mother, I'm far better," said Arvie, "the sugar and
vinegar cuts the phlegm, and the both'rin' cough gits out.  It got out
to such an extent for the next few minutes that he could not speak.
When he recovered his breath, he said:

"Better or worse, I'll have to go to work to-morrow.  Gimme the
clock, mother."

"I tell you you shall not go!  It will be your death."

"It's no use talking, mother; we can't starve--and--s'posin' somebody
got my place!  Gimme the clock, mother."

"I'll send one of the children round to say you're ill.  They'll
surely let you off for a day or two."

"Tain't no use; they won't wait; I know them--what does Grinder Bros
care if I'm ill?  Never mind, mother, I'll rise above 'em all yet.
_Give me the clock_, mother."

She gave him the clock, and he proceeded to wind it up and set the
alarm.

"There's somethin' wrong with the gong," he muttered, "it's gone
wrong two nights now, but I'll chance it.  I'll set the alarm at five,
that'll give me time to dress and git there early.  I wish I hadn't to
walk so far."

He paused to read some words engraved round the dial:

    Early to bed and early to rise
    Makes a man healthy and wealthy and wise.

He had read the verse often before, and was much taken with the swing
and rhythm of it.  He had repeated it to himself, over and over again,
without reference to the sense or philosophy of it.  He had never
dreamed of doubting anything in print--and this was engraved.  But now
a new light seemed to dawn upon him.  He studied the sentence awhile,
and then read it aloud for the second time.  He turned it over in his
mind again in silence.

"Mother!" he said suddenly, "I think it lies."  She placed the
clock on the shelf, tucked him into his little bed on the sofa, and
blew out the light.

Arvie seemed to sleep, but she lay awake thinking of her troubles.
Of her husband carried home dead from his work one morning; of her
eldest son who only came to loaf on her when he was out of jail;
of the second son, who had feathered his nest in another city,
and had no use for her any longer; of the next--poor delicate little
Arvie--struggling manfully to help, and wearing his young life out at
Grinder Bros when he should be at school; of the five helpless younger
children asleep in the next room: of her hard life--scrubbing floors
from half-past five till eight, and then starting her day's work--
washing!--of having to rear her children in the atmosphere of the
slums, because she could not afford to move and pay a higher rent;
and of the rent.

Arvie commenced to mutter in his sleep.

"Can't you get to sleep, Arvie?" she asked.  "Is your throat sore?
Can I get anything for you?"

"I'd like to sleep," he muttered, dreamily, "but it won't seem
more'n a moment before--before--"

"Before what, Arvie?" she asked, quickly, fearing that he was
becoming delirious.

"Before the alarm goes off!"

 He was talking in his sleep.

She rose gently and put the alarm on two hours.  "He can rest now,"
she whispered to herself.

Presently Arvie sat bolt upright, and said quickly, "Mother! I
thought the alarm went off!"  Then, without waiting for an answer, he
lay down as suddenly and slept.

The rain had cleared away, and a bright, starry dome was over sea and
city, over slum and villa alike; but little of it could be seen from
the hovel in Jones's Alley, save a glimpse of the Southern Cross and a
few stars round it.  It was what ladies call a "lovely night," as
seen from the house of Grinder--"Grinderville"--with its moonlit
terraces and gardens sloping gently to the water, and its windows lit
up for an Easter ball, and its reception-rooms thronged by its own
exclusive set, and one of its charming and accomplished daughters
melting a select party to tears by her pathetic recitation about a
little crossing sweeper.

There _was_ something wrong with the alarm-clock, or else Mrs
Aspinall had made a mistake, for the gong sounded startlingly in the
dead of night.  She woke with a painful start, and lay still,
expecting to hear Arvie get up; but he made no sign.  She turned a
white, frightened face towards the sofa where he lay--the light from
the alley's solitary lamp on the pavement above shone down through the
window, and she saw that he had not moved.

Why didn't the clock wake him?  He was such a light sleeper!
"Arvie!" she called; no answer.  "Arvie !" she called again, with
a strange ring of remonstrance mingling with the terror in her voice.
Arvie never answered.

"Oh! my God!" she moaned.

She rose and stood by the sofa.  Arvie lay on his back with his arms
folded--a favourite sleeping position of his; but his eyes were wide
open and staring upwards as though they would stare through ceiling
and roof to the place where God ought to be.



STRAGGLERS


An oblong hut, walled with blue-grey hardwood slabs, adzed at the ends
and set horizontally between the round sapling studs; high roof of the
eternal galvanized iron.  A big rubbish heap lies about a yard to the
right of the door, which opens from the middle of one of the side
walls; it might be the front or the back wall--there is nothing to fix
it.  Two rows of rough bunks run round three sides of the interior;
and a fire-place occupies one end--the kitchen end.  Sleeping, eating,
gambling and cooking accommodation for thirty men in about eighteen by
forty feet.

The rouseabouts and shearers use the hut in common during shearing.
Down the centre of the place runs a table made of stakes driven into
the ground, with cross-pieces supporting a top of half-round slabs set
with the flat sides up, and affording a few level places for
soup-plates; on each side are crooked, unbarked poles laid in short
forks, to serve as seats.  The poles are worn smoothest opposite the
level places on the table.  The floor is littered with rubbish--old
wool-bales, newspapers, boots, worn-out shearing pants, rough bedding,
etc., raked out of the bunks in impatient search for missing
articles--signs of a glad and eager departure with cheques when the
shed last cut out.

To the west is a dam, holding back a broad, shallow sheet of grey
water, with dead trees standing in it.

Further up along this water is a brush shearing-shed, a rough
framework of poles with a brush roof.  This kind of shed has the
advantage of being cooler than iron.  It is not rain-proof, but
shearers do not work in rainy weather; shearing even slightly damp
sheep is considered the surest and quickest way to get the worst kind
of rheumatism.  The floor is covered with rubbish from the roof, and
here and there lies a rusty pair of shears.  A couple of dry tar-pots
hang by nails in the posts.  The "board" is very uneven and must be
bad for sweeping.  The pens are formed by round, crooked stakes driven
into the ground in irregular lines, and the whole business reminds us
of the "cubby-house" style of architecture of our childhood.

Opposite stands the wool-shed, built entirely of galvanized iron; a
blinding object to start out of the scrub on a blazing, hot day.  God
forgive the man who invented galvanized iron, and the greed which
introduced it into Australia: you could not get worse roofing material
for a hot country.

The wool-washing, soap-boiling, and wool-pressing arrangements are
further up the dam.  "Government House" is a mile away, and is
nothing better than a bush hut; this station belongs to a company.
And the company belongs to a bank.  And the banks belong to England,
mostly.

Mulga scrub all round, and, in between, patches of reddish sand where
the grass ought to be.

It is New Year's Eve.  Half a dozen travellers are camping in the hut,
having a spell.  They need it, for there are twenty miles of dry
lignum plain between here and the government bore to the east; and
about eighteen miles of heavy, sandy, cleared road north-west to the
next water in that direction.  With one exception, the men do not seem
hard up; at least, not as that condition is understood by the swagmen
of these times.  The least lucky one of the lot had three weeks' work
in a shed last season, and there might probably be five pounds amongst
the whole crowd.  They are all shearers, or at least they say they
are.  Some might be only "rousers."

These men have a kind of stock hope of getting a few stragglers to
shear somewhere; but their main object is to live till next shearing.
In order to do this they must tramp for tucker, and trust to the
regulation--and partly mythical--pint of flour, and bit of meat, or
tea and sugar, and to the goodness of cooks and storekeepers and
boundary-riders.  You can only depend on getting tucker _once_ at
one place; then you must tramp on to the next.  If you cannot get it
once you must go short; but there is a lot of energy in an empty
stomach.  If you get an extra supply you may camp for a day and have a
spell.  To live you must walk.  To cease walking is to die.

The Exception is an outcast amongst bush outcasts, and looks better
fitted for Sydney Domain.  He lies on the bottom of a galvanized-iron
case, with a piece of blue blanket for a pillow.  He is dressed in a
blue cotton jumper, a pair of very old and ragged tweed trousers, and
one boot and one slipper.  He found the slipper in the last shed,
and the boot in the rubbish-heap here.  When his own boots gave out he
walked a hundred and fifty miles with his feet roughly sewn up in
pieces of sacking from an old wool-bale.  No sign of a patch, or an
attempt at mending anywhere about his clothes, and that is a bad sign;
when a swagman leaves off mending or patching his garments, his case
is about hopeless.  The Exception's swag consists of the aforesaid bit
of blanket rolled up and tied with pieces of rag.  He has no water-
bag; carries his water in a billy; and how he manages without a bag is
known only to himself.  He has read every scrap of print within reach,
and now lies on his side, with his face to the wall and one arm thrown
up over his head; the jumper is twisted back, and leaves his skin bare
from hip to arm-pit.  His lower face is brutal, his eyes small and
shifty, and ugly straight lines run across his low forehead.  He says
very little, but scowls most of the time--poor devil.  He might be, or
at least _seem_, a totally different man under more favourable
conditions.  He is probably a free labourer.

A very sick jackaroo lies in one of the bunks.  A sandy,
sawney-looking Bourke native takes great interest in this wreck;
watches his every movement as though he never saw a sick man before.
The men lie about in the bunks, or the shade of the hut, and rest, and
read all the soiled and mutilated scraps of literature they can rake
out of the rubbish, and sleep, and wake up swimming in perspiration,
and growl about the heat.

It _is_ hot, and two shearers' cats--a black and a white one--sit
in one of the upper bunks with their little red tongues out, panting
like dogs.  These cats live well during shearing, and take their
chances the rest of the year--just as shed rouseabouts have to do.
They seem glad to see the traveller come; he makes things more
homelike.  They curl and sidle affectionately round the table-legs,
and the legs of the men,_ and purr, and carry their masts up, and
regard the cooking with feline interest and approval, and look as
cheerful as cats can--and as contented.  God knows how many tired,
dusty, and sockless ankles they rub against in their time.

Now and then a man takes his tucker-bags and goes down to the station
for a bit of flour, or meat, or tea, or sugar, choosing the time when
the manager is likely to be out on the run.  The cook here is a "good
cook," from a traveller's point of view; too good to keep his place
long.

Occasionally someone gets some water in an old kerosene-tin and washes
a shirt or pair of trousers, and a pair or two of socks--or
foot-rags--(Prince Alfreds they call them).  That is, he soaks some of
the stiffness out of these articles.

Three times a day the black billies and cloudy nose-bags are placed on
the table.  The men eat in a casual kind of way, as though it were
only a custom of theirs, a matter of form--a habit which could be left
off if it were worth while.

The Exception is heard to remark to no one in particular that he'll
give all he has for a square meal.

"An' ye'd get it cheap, begod!" says a big Irish shearer.  "Come
and have dinner with us; there's plenty there."

But the Exception only eats a few mouthfuls, and his appetite is gone;
his stomach has become contracted, perhaps.

The Wreck cannot eat at all, and seems internally disturbed by the
sight of others eating.

One of the men is a cook, and this morning he volunteered
good-naturedly to bake bread for the rest.  His mates amuse themselves
by chyacking him.

"I've heard he's a dirty and slow cook," says one, addressing
Eternity.

"Ah!" says the cook, "you'll be glad to come to me for a pint of
flour when I'm cooking and you're on the track, some day.

Sunset.  Some of the men sit at the end of the hut to get the full
benefit of a breeze which comes from the west.  A great bank of
rain-clouds is rising in that direction, but no one says he thinks it
will rain; neither does anybody think we're going to have some rain.
None but the greenest jackaroo would venture that risky and foolish
observation.  Out here, it can look more like rain without raining,
and continue to do so for a longer time, than in most other places.

The Wreck went down to the station this afternoon to get some medicine
and bush medical advice.  The Bourke sawney helped him to do up his
swag; he did it with an awed look and manner, as though he thought it
a great distinction to be allowed to touch the belongings of such a
curiosity.  It was afterwards generally agreed that it was a good idea
for the Wreck to go to the station; he would get some physic and, a
bit of tucker to take him on.  "For they'll give tucker to a sick man
sooner than to a chap what's all right."

The Exception is rooting about in the rubbish for the other blucher
boot.

The men get a little more sociable, and "feel" each other to find
out who's "Union," and talk about water, and exchange hints as to
good tucker-tracks, and discuss the strike, and curse the squatter
(which is all they have got to curse), and growl about Union leaders,
and tell lies against each other sociably.  There are tally lies; and
lies about getting tucker by trickery; and long-tramp-with-heavy-swag-
and-no-water lies; and lies about getting the best of squatters and
bosses-over-the-board; and droving, fighting, racing, gambling and
drinking lies.  Lies _ad libitum_; and every true Australian
bushman must try his best to tell a bigger out-back lie than the last
bush-liar.

Pat is not quite easy in his mind.  He found an old pair of pants in
the scrub this morning, and cannot decide whether they are better than
his own, or, rather, whether his own are worse--if that's possible.
He does not want to increase the weight of his swag unnecessarily by
taking both pairs.  He reckons that the pants were thrown away when
the shed cut out last, but then they might have been lying out exposed
to the weather for a longer period.  It is rather an important
question, for it is very annoying, after you've mended and patched an
old pair of pants, to find, when a day or two further on the track,
that they are more rotten than the pair you left behind.

There is some growling about the water here, and one of the men makes
a billy of tea.  The water is better cooked.  Pint-pots and sugar-bags
are groped out and brought to the kitchen hut, and each man fills his
pannikin; the Irishman keeps a thumb on the edge of his, so as to know
when the pot is full, for it is very dark, and there is no more
firewood.  You soon know this way, especially if you are in the habit
of pressing lighted tobacco down into your pipe with the top of your
thumb.  The old slush-lamps are all burnt out.

Each man feels for the mouth of his
sugar-bag with one hand while he keeps the bearings of his pot with
the other.

The Irishman has lost his match-box, and feels for it all over the
table without success.  He stoops down with his hands on his knees,
gets the table-top on a level with the flicker of firelight, and
"moons" the object, as it were.

Time to turn in.  It is very dark inside and bright moonlight without;
every crack seems like a ghost peering in.  Some of the men will roll
up their swags on the morrow and depart; some will take another day's
spell.  It is all according to the tucker.




THE UNION BURIES ITS DEAD


While out boating one Sunday afternoon on a billabong across the
river, we saw a young man on horseback driving some horses along the
bank.  He said it was a fine day, and asked if the Water was deep
there.  The joker of our party said it was deep enough to drown him,
and he laughed and rode farther up. We didn't take-much notice of him.

Next day a funeral gathered at a corner pub and asked each other in to
have a drink while waiting for the hearse.  They passed away some of
the time dancing jigs to a piano in the bar parlour.  They passed away
the rest of the time skylarking and fighting.

The defunct was a young Union labourer, about twenty-five, who had
been drowned the previous day wh