The Australian Journal Story Book
by R. G. Campbell
Note on the texts
This edition of The Australian Journal Story Book is offered as a companion to a separate study of the magazine editor and writer, R. G. Campbell (1896-1970). Campbell compiled this collection of stories in 1954 to represent some of the best work published in the pages of the popular magazine he had edited since 1926. His anthology includes some of the most prolific freelance story writers of the period and so exists as an interpretative threshold to the practices of writing and reading in the middle decades of twentieth century Australia. Despite being one of the most prominent publishers of Australian short stories in the twentieth century, the Australian Journal has escaped detailed description, probably because of its reputation as a disposable popular magazine. In his foreword to the planned anthology Campbell acknowledges that these stories were “written for the entertainment of magazine readers”, but he points out that the stories he selected are less conventional than most. They were selected “because they deserve a better fate than burial in the dusty files of a monthly periodical”. This edition provides the evidence of Campbell’s selection, an extension of a man whose life deserves more attention.
The texts included in this edition of The Australian Journal Story Book were digitised from the typescript held at the Fryer Library. They have been checked in the process of digitisation and lightly edited for inclusion in this edition. Nevertheless, until otherwise stated in this introduction, this edition remains a work-in-progress, and will undergo constant checking and correction when time permits, or when errors are advised by readers.
Texts will be published here as they become available. A textual note will act as a placeholder until a work is published. Where possible, permission to publish copyrighted work has been requested and granted by literary executors. These are listed in the Acknowledgements. For works not listed here, all reasonable attempts have been made to obtain permission.
FOREWORD by R. G. Campbell (1954)
The ninety volumes of the Australian Journal make an impressive exhibit, their quarter of a million pages representing – or so it would seem an inexhaustible mine for the patient anthologist.
Unfortunately, this is not quite the case. The files of the first decade undoubtedly contain a great deal of original Australian material, valuable to the historical novelist in search of color and atmosphere, but of little interest to the modern reader.
The tales which apparently fascinated the simple-hearted colonists of those days are written in a style insufferably tedious to present-day taste. They are, in the main, imitations of the romantic English stories of the time, transported to Adam Lindsay Gordon’s Australia of sere woodlands and sad wildernesses, with locally manufactured Gothic additions, in which ruined homesteads serve in place of mouldering castles.
The second period, from 1875 to the First World War, is equally unrewarding, so that, except for two items, the volumes of the last thirty years provide the contents of this book.
The Australian Journal was born in Melbourne in September, 1865. The publishers were Clarson, Massina & Co, who, six years before, had established the printing office still carried on under the style of A. H. Massina & Co., Pty. Ltd. The first editor was George A. Walstab, an ex-police trooper and cavalryman turned journalist. He remained in the chair for about four years, when he was succeeded by Marcus Clarke.
The magazine began life as a 16-page weekly, sold at threepence, but high postage rates and distribution difficulties soon compelled monthly publication. The contents consisted of fiction, together with articles of a vaguely topical nature, brief descriptive sketches, and an extraordinary amount of the doggerel ballad verse of the lachrymose type so popular among amateur elocutionists of the period.
The policy, as set out in the first issue, was the encouragement of Australian writers, and for a time this was carried out, though not, it is to be feared, to the extent of offering any substantial rewards to local contributors. Only regular contributors seem to have been paid at all, the remainder having to content themselves with the honor of seeing their efforts in print. Vacant space was readily filled, after the easy-going fashion of the day, by clipping stories, articles and indeed entire serials, from overseas “exchanges”. Yet there is no doubt that the magazine helped many a needy writer over a bad patch, even if it did not achieve its ostensible aim of developing a group of Australian authors capable of challenging Dickens and Wilkie Collins.
We owe, however, one important work to the encouragement offered by the Australian Journal of the 1860’s. Few Australian novels have achieved wider acclaim than His Natural Life, to give Marcus Clarke’s masterpiece the title under which the original serial version was presented. Later, the story was condensed and recast for book publication, and the title changed to For the Term of his Natural Life. Then recently included in the Penguin series, it was once more re-named, and became “Men in Chains.”
As it ran from March 1870 to June 1872, His Natural Life must have been one of the longest serials on record. How much Clarke was paid for it cannot be ascertained, but it seems clear that he received about £100 towards the expenses of a trip to Tasmania to gather material, and that the balance was paid from month to month as each instalment was completed. This might well account for the inordinate length of the story. Whatever the total was, the Australian Journal certainly received good value, for His Natural Life was serialised no fewer than four times – in 1870, 1881, 1866 and again in 1914 – another record unlikely to be disturbed.
According to legend, Clarke’s habits were so bibulous that, on occasion, he had to be locked in a room and supplied with writing and drinking materials so that he might complete the current instalment. Nothing is less likely. As time went on, no doubt he found meeting the monthly deadline an almost intolerable burden, but he finished the story before he was twenty five, and packed so much work into the brief nine years of life still left to him that it is highly improbable that he was practically a dipsomaniac in early youth.
Clarke’s editorial successor was the versatile Robert P. Whitworth, who entered journalism via the horse-breaker’s yard, the auctioneer’s rostrum and the stage. Whitworth wrote a great deal for the theatre and was responsible for many of the pantomimes and burlesques which entertained audiences of the 1870s and 1880s. Unfortunately, like his two brilliant predecessors, he was unable to make the magazine pay, a miracle that was performed by the more pedestrian efforts of one William Mitchell, who for about thirty years combined the functions of printing overseer and editor. Mitchell seems to have relied almost entirely on scissors and paste, so that during his long regime the Australian Journal all but abandoned its policy of encouraging Australian authors.
Not until 1905 were “writings of an Australian character” again called for, and even then it was with the cautious proviso that contributors must state the remuneration they expected. This forced the hard-up freelance to strike a nice compromise between what he thought a story was worth and what he feared he might get for it. Even so, the names of a few writers who later achieved success glimmer through the pre-1914 dullness, although it was not until the 1920s that a sustained effort was made to encourage established authors and develop new talent.
It was during the depression years that the Australian Journal performed its most notable service to Australian writing. At a time when many other publications died, and others either reduced their rates of payment or closed their columns to the freelance, the Journal maintained its circulation and offered a more hospitable and more lucrative market than ever before.
A glance through the files shows that very many of Australia’s best-known writers have been valued contributors during the last three decades. Some wrote one or two stories and went their way to wider fields; others remained with the magazine for years. Most of them are represented in this book.
As they were written for the entertainment of magazine readers, these stories have invariably a beginning, a middle and an end, though not necessarily the conventional “happy” end. In fact, few of them are conventional stories at all, from the standpoint of the ordinary “popular” magazine. But they are all good yarns, selected because they deserve a better fate than burial in the dusty files of a monthly periodical, and they all pleased a great many readers when they were first published. It is hoped that, in this new setting, they will please a new audience.
R.G.C.
VAN DIEMANS LAND, 1830 by Marcus Clarke (1870)
The south-east coast of Van Diemen’s Land, from the solitary Mewstone to the basaltic cliffs of Tasman’s Head, from Tasman’s Head to Cape Pillar, and from Cape Pillar to the rugged grandeur of Pirates’ Bay, resembles a biscuit at which rats have been nibbling. Eaten away by the continual action of that ocean which, pouring round by east and west, has divided the peninsula from the mainland, and done for Van Diemen’s Land what it has done for the Isle of Wight, the shore line is broken and ragged.
Viewed upon the map, the fantastic fragments of island and promontory which lie scattered between the South-West Cape and the greater Swan Port, are like the curious forms assumed by melted lead spilt into water. If the supposition was not too extravagant, one might imagine that when the Australian continent was fused, a careless giant upset the crucible, and spilt Van Diemen’s Land in the ocean.
The coast navigation is as dangerous as that of the Mediterranean. Passing from Cape Bougainville to the east of Maria Island, and between the numerous rocks and shoals that lie beneath the triple height of the Three Thumbs, the mariner is suddenly checked by Tasman’s Peninsula, hanging, like a huge double dropped earring, from the mainland. Getting round under the Pillar rock, through Storm Bay to Storing Island, we sight the Italy of this miniature Adriatic. Between Hobart Town and Sorrell, Pittwater and the Derwent, a strangely-shaped point of land – the Italian boot with its toe bent upwards – projects into the bay, and, separated from this projection by a narrow channel, dotted with rocks, the long length of Bruny Island makes, between its western side and the cliffs of Mount Royal, the dangerous passage known as D’Entrecasteaux Channel.
At the southern entrance D’Entrecasteaux Channel, a line of sunken rocks, known by the generic name of the Actaeon reef, attests that Bruny Head was once joined with the shores of Recherche Bay while, from the South Cape to the jaws of Macquarie Harbour, the white water caused by sunken reefs, or the jagged peaks of single rocks abruptly rising in the midst of the sea, warns the mariner off shore.
It would seem as though Nature, jealous of the beauties of her silver Derwent, had made the approach to it as dangerous as possible; but once through the archipelago of D’Entrecasteaux Channel, or the less dangerous eastern passage of Storm Bay, the voyage up the river is delightful. From the sentinel solitude of the Iron Pot to the smiling banks, of New Norfolk, the river winds in a succession of reaches, narrowing to a deep channel cleft between rugged and towering cliffs.
A line drawn due north from the source of the Derwent would strike another river winding out from the northern part of the island, as the Derwent winds out from the south. The force of the waves, expended, perhaps, in undermining the isthmus which, two thousand years ago, probably connected Van Diemen’s Land with the continent, has been here less violent. The rounding currents of the Southern Ocean, meeting at the mouth of the Tamar, have rushed upwards over the isthmus they have devoured, and pouring against the south coast of Victoria, have excavated there that inland sea called Hobson’s Bay. If the waves have gnawed the south coast of Van Diemen’s Land, they have bitten a mouthful out of the south coast of Victoria. Hobson’s Bay is like a millpool, having an area of 900 square miles, with a race between the Heads two miles across.
About a hundred and seventy miles to the south of the Heads lies Van Diemen’s Land, fertile, fair, and rich, rained upon by the genial showers from the clouds which, attracted by the Frenchman’s Cap, Wyld’s Crag, or the lofty peaks of, the Wellington and Dromedary range, pour down upon the sheltered valleys their fertilising streams. No parching hot wind – the scavenger. if the torment of the continent – blows upon her crops corn. The cool south breeze ripples gently the blue waters of the Derwent, and fans the curtains of the open windows of the city which nestles in the broad shadow of Mount Wellington. The hot wind, born amid the burning sand of the interior of the vast Australian continent, sweeps over the scorched and cracking plains, to lick up their streams and wither the herbage in its path, until it meet the waters of the great south bay; but in its passage across the straits it becomes reft of its fire, and sinks, exhausted with its journey, at the feet of the terraced slopes of Launceston.
The climate of Van Diemen’s Land is one of the loveliest in the world. Launceston is warm, sheltered, and moist; and Hobart Town, protected by Bruny Island and its archipelago of D’Entrecasteaux Channel and Storm Bay from the violence of the southern breakers, preserves the mean temperature of Lisbon; while the district between these two towns spreads in a succession of beautiful valleys, through which glide clear and sparkling streams.
But on the western coast, from the steeple-rocks of Gape Grim to the scrub-encircled barrenness of Sandy Cape and the frowning entrance to Macquarie Harbour, the nature of the country entirely changes. Along that iron-bound shore, from Pyramid Island and the forest backed solitude of Rocky Point, to the great Ram Head and the straggling harbour of Port Davey, all is bleak and cheerless. Upon that dreary beach the rollers of the southern sea complete their circle of the globe, and the storm that has devastated the Cape, and united in easterncourse with the icy blasts that sweep northward from the unknown terrors of the southern pole, crashes unchecked upon the Huon pine forests, and lashes with rain the grim front of Mount Direction.
Furious gales and sudden tempests affright the natives of the coast. Navigation is dangerous, and the entrance to the “Hell’s Gates” of Macquarie Harbour - at the time of wich we are writing (1830), in the height of its ill-fame as a convict settlement – only to be attempted in calm weather. The sea-line is marked with wrecks. The sunken rocks are dismally named after the vessels they have destroyed. The air is chill and moist, the soil prolific but in prickly undergrowth and noxious weeds, while the fetid exhalations from swamp and fen cling close to the humid, spongy ground.
All around breathes desolation; and on the face of nature is stamped a perpetual frown. The shipwrecked sailor, crawling painfully to the summit of the basalt cliffs, or the ironed convict, dragging his tree-trunk to the edge of some beetling plateau, looks down upon a sea of fog, through which rise mountain tops like islands; or sees through the biting sleet but a desert of scrub and crag rolling to the feet of Heemskirk and Zeehan – couched like two sentinel lions keeping watch over the seaboard.
Entering, then, by the D’Entrecasteaux Channel, forty miles long, from one to three in breadth, the vessel bound for Hobart Town in 1830 leaves the fifty miles length of Bruny Island on the right, and passing Birch Bay – the station of the Government sawpits – runs in under Mulgrave Battery, and casts anchor inSullivan’s Cove. Bordering oil the water is the cottage of the chaplain, and overlooking it, in protecting juxtaposition, are the Military Barracks. Four miles behind the little town, Mount Wellington rears its 4000 feet of purple grandeur; and in front of it the broad bright river sweeps majestically to the sea. A stream, taking its rise at the foot of the mountain, runs through the centre of the town. The ground around the city is hilly, and the houses, placed at that time for the most part on small allotments of land, allow glimpses of the prospect to appear between them; while in front of the harbour lies Government House, with its gardens sloping to the water’s edge.
Landing in Hobart Town in 1830, at a jetty, on what was once Hunter’s Island, but which was then connected by a long stone causeway with the mainland, we should find opposite to us, on the right hand, a range of seven houses, belonging to the Leith-Australian Company. Before us, would be the Town rivulet, and behind it, on a promontory called Macquarie Point, we could discern the lumber-yard where the Government employed its convict labour. On this Point the troops were reviewed on field-days, and the town boys played cricket on the summer evenings.
Let us imagine ourselves forty years younger, and walk through the town.
Turning to our right, we find ourselves in Macquarie-street, with St. David’s Church rising against a background of blue hills. This church has been built about ten years, and has just been “completely repaired” with stucco, and the ungainly interior remodelled into private pews. A good organ has been erected since 1832. Service is performed in this building four times on Sundays, the morning service, at nine, being for the benefit of those prisoners who are in private service with families in the town, or who hold the indulgence of a ticket-of-leave.
Walking up the street, the first building on our left is the Commissariat offices and Treasury, where two sentries keep guard. Two doors from this building is Government House, the residence of Lieutenant-Governor Arthur, the offices of the private secretary, and the offices of the Town Adjutant and Barrack Master – all under one roof, surrounded by gardens, and guarded by a sentry at each wing. Next comes the Supreme Court House, then the Female House of Correction, and then, at the corner of Murray-street, the Gaol. Three sentries are on guard here, and, rising above the wall, grimly significant, are the black painted beams of the scaffold. Turning past the Court-House, towards the lately-built wharf, we enter Davey-street, in which is the entrance to the Military Barracks, and which is given over, as it were, to the military interest – six houses in succession being occupied by officers. Passing through the market-place into Campbell-street, we observe two more sentries over the prisoners’ barracks there, and turning down Brisbane-street, we get into Elizabeth-street, and so back to the jetty again.
The street nomenclature, though it carries now but little significance, was in those days suggestive enough. Macquarie-street was named after Governor Macquarie, and Elizabeth and Campbell-streets after the maiden names of his wife; Murray-street was named in honour of Colonel Murray of the 73rd, Molle-street after Colonel Molle, and Antill-street after Major Antill of the 48th, while Collins-street, the first street built in the settlement, was so called by Colonl Collins himself.
Let us take a glance at the social condition of the city at this period of its history.
Six years before, Colonel Arthur, late Governor of Honduras, had arrived at a most critical moment. The previous Governor, Colonel Sorrell, was a man of genial temperament, but little strength of character. He was, moreover, profligate in his private life, and, encouraged by his example, his officers openly violated all rules of social decency. It was common for an officer to keep a female convict as his mistress. Not only would compliance purchase comforts, but strange stories were afloat concerning the persecution of such women who dared to choose their own lovers.
To put down this profligacy was the first care of Arthur, and in enforcing a severe attention to etiquette and outward respectability, he perhaps erred on the side of virtue. Honest, brave, and high-minded, he was also penurious and cold, and the ostentatious good humour of the colonists dashed itself in vain against his polite indifference. This lack of sympathy between governor and governed, added to a certain intolerance of a system of petty pilfering that was carried on in certain branches of the public service, induced a feeling of dislike to Arthur, which ultimately culminated in bitter and violent party abuse, and a petition for his removal from his office.
In this contest the press was variously engaged, and the governor went the length of forcibly shutting the mouth of one editor who bayed too loudly. The Government journal was taken from Mr. Melville and given to Dr. Ross – a man of talent and acquirements – who not unnaturally devoted his best energies to praising his patron.
Arthur was, however, by position, no less than by sympathy, at the head of a powerful body of adherents. The military force in the island was large. In 1830, there were ten captains, eighteen subalterns, one hundred and seven non-commissioned officers, and nearly eight hundred rank and file. At the head of the two first-named classes the governor would naturally place himself, and official society held its own against all attacks. In opposition to this official society was that of the free settlers and the ticket-of-leave men. These last were more numerous than one would be apt to think. On the 2nd of November, 1829, thirty-eight free pardons and fifty-six conditional pardons appeared on the books, and the number of persons holding tickets of leave, on the 26th September of the same year, was seven hundred and forty-five.
The system of convict treatment prevailing at that time was as follows: – Any colonist requiring a servant could apply for a convict, and upon complying with certain formalities, the convict, unless there was something “against” him, was “assigned” to service. The master was compelled to clothe his man in a complete suit of slop clothing, price twenty-one shillings, issued from the ordnance store, and to furnish him, in addition, with three pair stock-keeper’s boots, four shirts, and one cap or hat a year. He was also to give him the use of a bed, two blankets and a rug. Female convicts were allowed one cotton gown, two bedgowns, three shifts, two flannel petticoats, two stuffed petticoats, three pairs of shoes, three calico caps, three pairs of stockings, two neckerchiefs, three check aprons, and a bonnet, the whole of a value “not to exceed £7;” and no female convict was allowed to be out after dusk unless accompanied by her master or mistress. An assigned servant was allowed also a weekly ration of 10½ lbs. of meat, 10½ lbs. of flour, 7 oz, of sugar, 3½ oz. of soap, and 2 oz. of salt.
The convicts were divided into seven classes, according to their conduct; the seventh consisting of men sentenced to Macquarie Harbour – the Ultima thule of penal settlement. A convict could get a memorial written for him at the Colonial Secretary’s office, at a payment of 14d. per page, but he was not allowed to “write articles in the newspapers” under pain of being sent to a penal settlement. He was not permitted to own stock, or to be paid in liquor, and was to keep his servitude steadily in view. A Government order, dated January 11, 1826, says: “Convicts attempting to pass as free men are banished to Macquarie Harbour.” A standing reward of £2 per head was paid for all escaped convicts of ordinary character. Notorious villains were valued at £50 and £100 a-piece.
On the 31st of October, 1832, the total number of convicts in the island amounted to 11,042 – 182 being at Macquarie Harbour, 240 at the new settlement of Port Arthur, 40 in gaol, and 543 working in chain-gangs; making a total of 921 undergoing the additional punishment assigned by law those prisoners who had committed offences in the colony. The balance of this terrible sum made up of such items as these: 6396 “assigned” to settlers, 1160 tickets-of-leave, 155 acting as constables, 60 missing, 12 executed, 204 absconded and at large. The ticket-of-leave, system established in 1823 had been considerably modified. Tickets were first cancelled in 1827, and in 1829 were granted only on condition of good conduct. By a ticket-of-leave, a prisoner was exempt from compulsory labour; and an “emancipist” was permitted to live at large within the colony. A man who was transported for seven years must have resided four in the colony before he could obtain a ticket-of-leave; for fourteen, six; for life, eight. Emancipations were usually granted to fourteen years’ men at the end of two-thirds of their sentence, to “lifers” at the end of twelve years; but one act of insubordination or violence forfeited all chance of such indulgence.
All property of which a convict might be possessed at the time of his arrival in the colony was taken from him and deposited in a savings bank, and he was permitted to add to it any money he might earn by his own exertions. When a man was re-convicted of an offence which placed him in the seventh class, or the “irreclaimables,” he was socially dead, and his property passed to the Government. These seven classes were established in 1826, when the new prisoners’ barracks at Hobart Town were finished. The first class were allowed to sleep out of barracks, and work for themselves on Saturday; the second had only the last-named indulgence; the third were only allowed Saturday afternoon; the fourth were “refractory and disorderly characters – to work in irons;” the fifth were “men of the most degraded and incorrigible character – to be worked in irons, and kept entirely separate from the other prisoners;” while the sixth were the refuse of this refuse – the murderers, bandits, and villains, whom neither chain nor lash could tame – and were shipped to Port Arthur, ”Hell’s Gates,” or Maria Island. In 1830, Port Arthur was only in process of formation, and Macquarie Harbour held 400 prisoners.
As may be guessed – save where some exceptional case had stamped the offender as dangerous, or some private hatred had operated unfavourably towards him – the sixth-class prisoner was generally an old offender, who, not content with breaking the law in England, must break it again in the Antipodes. The punishment for a transported felon was re-transportation – that is to say, a man sentenced to seven years for theft in London would repeat the offence in Hobart Town, and be sentenced to seven more.
Thus ludicrous complications arose. Men have been under three “life sentences.” As an instance of a convict career which terminated at Hell’s Gates, we may take that of James Williams, whose history is given in an almanack published at Hobart Town in 1833. This fellow was transported, at the age of nineteen, for pocket-picking, and sentenced, in the year 1822, to seven years’ transportation. He arrived in Hobart Town in 1823, was assigned, and, in 1824, was sentenced to an additional seven years. Placed in a chain gang, he was “insolent,” and received twenty-five lashes. The week after his punishment he refused to work, and received twenty-five more. Before three months had elapsed, he suffered fifty lashes for “insubordination.” In two months time he effected his escape, was re-captured, sentenced to one hundred lashes, and loaded with the heaviest irons permitted by the convict regulations.
Being at work on the roads, he was detected plundering a fellow-convict, and received another one hundred lashes. He next stole half a fig of tobacco and received fifty more. In 1839 he was punished with increased hard labour and received twenty-five lashes and a third sentence of seven years (his former ones being unexpired). In 1831 he was capitally convicted for being illegally at large, and was sent to Macquarie Harbour for three years. At that dismal place he joined in a plot to seize a boat, was discovered, and saved his life by betraying his associates. They were hung, and he was condemned to “life in irons.” He remained at Macquarie Harbour until the settlement was transferred to Port Arthur, and died at that place, in 1849, at the age of forty-five, having passed twenty years in irons, and received during his life-time more than two thousand lashes.
The earlier portion of the reign of Arthur was disturbed by the exploits of desperate men, escaped from the penal stations. From Macquarie Harbour and Maria Island (founded in 1825) a number of ruffians, reckless of life and rejoicing in bloodshed, had succeeded in escaping, to lurk in the bush and forest of the ranges. It was not always necessary to commit crimes in order to be imprisoned at Hell’s Gates. The military officers and the Government had unlimited power, and sentences were often passed by partial or vindictive magistrates, which, recorded in the office of the superintendent, gave a false character of desperation to many poor fellows who were more stupid than vicious.
The discipline at the place was so severe, and the life so terrible, that prisoners would risk all to escape from it. In one year, of eighty-five deaths there only thirty were from natural causes; of the remainder, twenty-seven were drowned, eight killed accidentally, three shot by the soldiers, and twelve murdered by their comrades. In 1822, one hundred and sixty-nine men out of one hundred and eighty-two were punished to the extent of two thousand lashes. During the ten years of its existence, one hundred and twelve men escaped, out of whom sixty-two were found – dead. The prisoners killed themselves to avoid living any longer, and if so fortunate as to penetrate the desert of scrub, heath, and swamp which lay between their prison and the settled districts, preferred death to recapture.
A band of wretches of this description kept, in 1824, the whole island at bay. Hoaded by the notorious Brady, a gang of prisoners seized a boat, got out of the harbour, and landed, nine days afterwards, on the eastern coast of the Derwent. Seizing upon arms and horses, they successfully defied all attempts to capture them. They surrounded farm buildings, drove off cattle, and shot, burned, and robbed in all directions. Grown bold by success, and led by their savage and daring captain, they actually took possession of Sorell Gaol, at Pittwater, twenty-five miles from Hobart Town, and bound the gaolers. On April 14th, 1825, a reward of twenty-five guineas was offered for Brady, or M’Cabe, his lieutenant, with fifty acres of land to the chief constable of the district where they might be taken. In a few months the reward was doubled, and a pardon and free passage to England offered to any convict who should deliver up the gang.
At last M’Cabe was captured, but refused to betray his leader. All attempts to take Brady failed. “Sometimes,” says Mr. Bonwick, “as many as twenty-five horsemen were seen following his standard,” and more than a hundred armed criminals were at large in the country. Defeated in an attempt to seize “The Glory,” a vessel lying in the Tamar, in order to escape from the colony, they attacked the Launceston Gaol and the house of Mr. Dry, the father of the late Sir Richard Dry. Several persons were wounded and two killed in this daring assault, and the Governor determined to crush the bandits at all hazards.
A sort of campaign was commenced. His Excellency himself took the field, and bands of settlers and field police scoured the country in all directions. A reward of three hundred guineas, or three hundred acres of land, was set upon the heads of twelve of the most desperate of the bushrangers, and as many as thirty were hung in one morning. Wearied out and deserted by his confederates, Brady was taken, after two years freedom, and hung at Launceston, in 1826. With him died the terror that had so long hung over the settlers.
Arthur now established a new system. In 1827, he divided the whole country into districts, and placed each division under the care of a stipendiary magistrate. At that time Spanish dollars were more plentiful in the colony than English shillings, and the practice of having a rate of money different from the nominal value of the coin prevailed. Arthur, by a Government order made in 1826, directed that dollars should be taken and issued at 4s.4d., and Calcutta rupees at 2s.1d. At that time wheat was sold at 5s. a bushel, flour at 20s. a cwt., and fine bread at 4d. a loaf. Beef and mutton averaged a 5d. a lb., and rum was 12s. a gallon.
It was strictly forbidden to sell spirits to convicts, or even to give them intoxicating liquor, as payment for their labour. Any person retailing drink without a license was fined £50, and a fine of £25 was imposed upon any publican who was detected in supplying a prisoner with drink; but, as might be expected, punishment was easily and often evaded.
In 1829, the colony took a jump forward, and the seat of government having, two years before, been finally fixed at Hobart Town, public works of importance were undertaken. An aqueduct for supplying the town with pure water was undertaken, and the present bridge across the Derwent commenced. This bridge – now known as Bridgewater – was still in progress in 1830, and large numbers of prisoners were employed upon it. Only two years before, the great attack upon the blacks – known as the Black War – had taken place, but by 1830, the once dreaded natives, reduced to 600 souls, were objects of pity, rather than terror, and the expedition against them was remember almost as a matter of history, so rapidly had the colony progressed in civilisation and importance.
In 1830, Van Diemen’s Land boasted five newspapers – The Hobart Town Gazette, the Colonial Times, the Tasmanian Review, the Hobart Town Courier, and the Launceston Advertiser. The Bank of Van Diemen’s Land had been established seven years, the Derwent Bank three, the Cornwall Bank two, and Commercial Bank one. The Derwent Whaling Club Was offering a prize of eight dollars to the first person who should give information of a whale being in the river. The population of the island, including prisoners, was computed at 20,500 persons, of whom only 700 had been born during the past year. Out of 15,000,000 acres, only 30,000 were under cultivation, and the amount of coin in circulation amounted to £25,000 throughout the whole island.
There was no theatre, and the only thing approaching amusement that had as yet taken place was a lecture on Astronomy, at the new Mechanics’ Institute. Convict road-gangs were hard at work at what is now known as the Hobart Town Road. One party was employed in constructing a gaol – the ruins of which are yet standing – for the gang at work at the Derwent bridge. Another, consisting of seventy convicts, was cutting a line from New Norfolk to the Lower Clyde, at a place called “Deep Gully,” and was “guarded by an officer and a party of soldiers, night and day.” A third gang was at work at Oatlands, where a “barrack for thirty soldiers and an excellent stone inn” had just been built.
The “Dutch farm” of Colonel Arthur, at the Black Snake, had just been completed and the extent of fencing – almost 600 miles – throughout the country is characterised by Dr. Ross as “almost incredible.” Among, the notable buildings round the city were the residence of Mr. Murray and the saw-mill of Messrs. Macintosh and Degraves. Mr. Geo. M. Stephen was clerk of the Supreme Court, and lived in Macquarie-street; and the old “Guard House” was on the opposite side the way, at the corner of Elizabeth-street. The streets were not lighted at night until 1832. There were but 64 houses in Macquarie-street, 43 in Campbell-street, and 97 in Elizabeth-street; and the whole adult free population of the city numbered 1400 to 1900 male persons.
Of the social condition of the people at this time it is impossible to speak without astonishment. According to the recorded testimony of the minority of respectable persons – Government officials, military officers, and free settlers – it was but a few degrees better than that which had prevailed during Sorrell’s government. The profligacy of some of the richer settlers was notorious. Drunkenness was a prevailing vice. Even children were to be seen in the streets intoxicated. On Sundays, men and women might be observed standing round the public-house doors, waiting for the expiration of the hours of public worship, in order to “continue their carousing. “
Religious duties, as might be expected, were but little heeded. “The duty of a pastor in Hobart Town,” says Dr. Ross, writing in 1831, “is indeed most arduous. He is placed, as it were, in the very gorge of sin, in the midst of the general receptacle for the worst characters in the world, and by necessity compelled to take the ‘bull by the horns,’ to grapple at the very gates of hell, if he would rescue a soul from the headlong ruin to which he is hurrying…. Even the commonest holiday, the least cause for rejoicing that occurs throughout the year, is invariably attended with the most humiliating scenes of drunkenness.” As for the condition of the prisoner population, that, indeed, is indescribable. Backhouse, the Quaker missionary, who, four years later, travelled through the island, refers constantly to the scenes of drunkenness and riot which he witnessed among the assigned servants and road gangs. Notwithstanding the severe punishment which sly grog selling met with, it was carried on to a large extent. Men and women were intoxicated together, and a bottle of brandy was considered to be cheaply bought at the price of twenty lashes. In the Factory – a female prison – the vilest abuses were committed, while the infamies current, as matters of course, in chain gangs and penal settlements were of too horrible a nature to be more than hinted at here. All that the vilest and most bestial of human creatures could invent and practise was invented and practised there without restraint and without shame.
Seventeen years later even, under improved discipline and closer supervision, the condition of the prisoners was such as to draw from the Bishop of Tasmania a pamphlet, which terrified the Home Government. A chaplain, writing of the prisoners’ barracks in Hobart Town, says: – “Twelve hundred men are congregated there like beasts, and every kind of villany and wickedness that imagination can invent is planned and carried on.” The hours of labour were from six to nine, and ten to three in summer, and from eight to one without intermission in winter; and, says the chaplain –- “The hours from five till eight are generally occupied by the men in dancing, singing songs, etc., and a passer-by may frequently hear their loud and filthy talking.”
When we remember that this is written of the principal gaol in the capital of the island, where the worst criminals were not confined, we can arrive at some standard by which to measure the state of the penal settlements themselves, – the lowest depths in this dreadful deep of sin and misery.
Such a spectacle does the Hobart Town of 1830 present to the thinker, who – seeing, in 1870, its lovely gardens, its winding rivers, its richness of field and fallow, partaking, perhaps, of the hospitality of its educated and wealthy inhabitants, and sharing the comfort of domestic circles graced by beautiful and refined women – looks back to the “old days, “ before the curse of convictism was taken off the land.
THE DIGGINGS IN 1855 by Waif Wander (1882)
To me, standing in the Bourke-street of to-day, and recalling my arrival in the colony, and the different appearance of Melbourne in 1885, the past seems more like a bewildered dream than anything else; indeed, for my earlier impressions I might have been afraid to trust my memory in, detail had it not been for notes made at the time, which I have fortunately retained.
I was not old at that distant date, and I had engaged myself to supply some papers, anent the, then strange to England, Gold Land, for a London magazine called the Ladies’ Companion. The notes I allude to were made with a view of fulfilling that engagement, but I need hardly say it never was fulfilled. Who would write pages at fifteen shillings when one paid nine shillings per day for milk? And for a “woman’s” magazine, too! There was nothing of the namby-pamby elegance of ladies’ literature in our stirring, hardy, and eventful life on the early goldfields.
In 1855 I landed in Sandridge, and came up to Melbourne by train. I distinctly recollect how inferior and dirty the railway carriages and the wooden stations seemed to me, after coming from lands where art and science appeared to have perfected themselves in the production of such conveniences; and I more than distinctly remember – the almost impassable condition of Elizabeth-street, and the team of bullocks that hopelessly tried to drag a laden dray put of the clinging mud in the centre of the street (if street it could be called, when only scattered houses, and a here-and-there visible kerb-stone, outlined a mass glutinous clay). It was not at its best when I first saw it, as there had been a continuous downpour of rain on the previous night. I remember, too, the vacant allotments, half covered with empty bottles and valueless debris, where now palatial buildings valued at hundreds of pounds per foot; and I also remember my first view of the Bourke-Street of ’55.
Up the hill to the east and up the hill westward it was a vista of nondescript and many-sized tenements – shops of brick, shops of wood, and shops of iron, with nearly every one of the humbler sort shaded with awnings of calico or striped canvas, while flags of all colours floated from their poles or hung limply against them as the breeze served. The landlord of our hotel looked at me doubtfully, yet sympathizingly, as he told me he could put me “with the girls,” as it would hardly be safe for me to occupy a room alone, if I was the least nervous. I wondered much, but gratefully accepted the good man’s offer, and discovered before morning why it would not do to be nervous in the Albion Hotel at night in 1855.
It was yet early in the afternoon when I arrived, and it was “housekeeper” who took me upstairs to the sleeping apartment, which, it appeared, she shared with the barmaid, whose acquaintance I made later on. They were both Irish girls, and, in the case of the housekeeper, I may add that she was a decidedly superior and lady-like girl of twenty-three or four , with a most attractive face and figure, and kindly manners, that so won upon the heart of my nervous little son, that he permitted “Mis Mac” to carry him downstairs to the bar, from whence he returned in good time, laden with lollies and tarts and “tips,” of various value, from, no doubt, admirers-4-of kind and pretty Miss Mac. Meanwhile, as I enjoyed a cup of tea without the ship flavour, I took stock of the girls’ room, with a great wonder at the incongruity of its few articles of furnishing and attire.
To-day I should see nothing odd in the articles that then excited my astonishment, but, with my old-country ideas and prejudices I stared to see black satin and black velvet dresses hanging on rusty nails against rough, white-washed wall, and a handsome cheval glass nearly reaching the low roof, and standing on an uncovered, and not over-cleanly, deal floor. The bedstead was of ordinary iron, uncurtained or unvalanced; there was a common wash-stand, with common ware, and an old chest of drawers behind the door, and also behind the door a single stretcher, which, was to be mine during the, to me, unhappy night that was approaching.
On the top of the drawers lay a gentleman’s black hat of the genus – colonially yclept – bell-topper. There was nothing particular about the hat, save that it occupied a place in the girls’ room; but the fact of it’s being there urged me to the not unnatural conclusion that the said room must, during stress of business perhaps, have been occasionally vacated by the girls, especially as, during my arrangement of my intended couch, I discovered a common blue striped shirt folded under the pillow. Never connecting the wearer of the bell-topper with the owner of the striped shirt, I concluded that the former had been honoured with the occupancy of the double iron bedstead, while the latter had to content himself with my stretcher as a place of rest. It remained for later experience to convince me that it was quite possible for a Victorian gentleman to don a cotton shirt – ay, and to work in it, as heartily as a genuine son of toil.
I had finished my tea and arrangements when Miss Mac returned, carrying my jubilant heir and his spoil. She was laughing all over her handsome face, and spoke as pleasantly as if she had known me for years.
“Come on, Mrs. – , “ she said; “there is a sight for a new chum just in front of the door! Come on; you can see from the drawing-room, and there isn’t a soul to see you – hurry, or you’ll miss the fun!”
Of course I obeyed, being only too ready to see some of the Victorian fun, and soon found myself witnessing, from one of the front windows, a scene which was, although common enough at that and earlier days in Melbourne, almost disgustingly ludicrous to my unaccustomed eye.
In an open carriage bf gorgeous colours, and drawn by a pair of good carriage horses, were seated, or standing, four persons, two females and two men.
The women were both dressed in white of the richest material, and both had apparently vied with each other in donning the showiest and most expensive attire. One dress was of white satin, trimmed with blonde and clusters of flowers and ribbons; the other was of white watered silk. The coarse, red shoulders of one woman were partially shaded by a handsome lace shawl, which was fastened by a huge colonial gold brooch, and festooned with a ridiculously heavy gold chain; the other had draped around her an expensive China crepe scarf, that was embroidered showily in red and blue silk. The head-dresses of these gorgeous dames consisted of white bonnets wreathed with long white ostrich plumes, and each fat, rubicund face was surrounded with a small forest of orange blossoms.
In contrast with their partners, the men’s costumes were the essence of simplicity; white duck trousers, with a scarlet sash of silk at the waist, embroidered linen shirts and Panama hats with blue veils, composed the full suit. Certainly there were great rings on the gloveless hands, and heavy chains around the thick throats.
One of the men was standing up in the vehicle and trying to steady himself with one hand, while he waved a sheaf of notes toward the door of the Albion in the other. He was gesticulating violently, while the women were shrieking with laughter, and waving their laced handkerchiefs in a pretence to hide their scarlet faces.
“What is the matter with the man?” I asked of Miss Mac “and why are those ridiculous-looking women exposing themselves in public in that manner ?”
“What does he want?” the young lady repeated as well as she could for laughter at ray astonishment. “Why, that’s a wedding party, and those elegant ladies are brides who have just been married. The men are two lucky diggers, just down from Fiery Creek, who never saw the women until yesterday. See, there is what the man wants.”
As she spoke, a waiter hurried out with a tray which he most obsequiously held at the door of the carriage until the tipsy bridegroom had managed to dispense the glasses of liquor it contained among his companions; that in doing so he should spill a considerable portion over the white satins and silks was not to be wondered at, and indeed occasioned nothing but reiterated shrieks of merriment from the wearers. The liquor disposed of, the glasses were returned, with some breakages, to the waiter; a handful of notes was flung in his face by the “shouter” as he fell back to his seat beside his bride, and the carriage was driven off amid the cheers of the crowd.
Night came at last, and a wearisome night it was to me. The girls’ room was situated at the back, and, as I afterwards discovered, over the kitchen. It had only one window, and that faced an adjutting portion of the hotel, or rather addition to it, in which, as the night deepened, a blaring band began to play, and the tramp of dancers’ feet ushered in my first midnight in Melbourne. Tramp, tramp, tramp – thump, thump, thump – blare, blare, blare – laughter from various parts of the house, hoarse shoutings from goodness knows where. Talk of the wild, dark, treacherous seas overwhich we had so lately crossed! Better the noise of a hundred storms, than this of Bourke-street Melbourne.
To some such conclusion had I come when the hand ceased, and other noises, suggestive of a break-up. Came to my wearied ears. The doors were hanged, and there was a scuffling somewhere on the stairs approaching my refuge, while I could hear a woman’s laughter stifled, and a pleading voice, which I recognised as that of my friend. Miss Mac. Gradually those noises neared me until they were at the landing outside, and the bumps of struggling bodies were distinctly audible on the door itself.
When I discovered, from the incisive assertions of some male voice, that I, myself, was the object of all this, I was horrified, and felt so perfectly helpless that, had it not been for the rapid denouement, I believe I should have been new-chum enough to faint. As it was, I covered my head up, and drew myself up as well behind the chest of drawers as I could, and listened, shivering.
“Oh, it’s no use, Mary; I’m not to be put off, I’m determined on it, so you may as well give in. Let go, for see her I will!”
“Don’t I tell you the poor lady is asleep,” Miss Mac cried, “and the poor child, too. After such a long voyage, and their first night ashore, surely you would never be so cruel as to disturb them. Now, go to bed, Jack, like a good fellow!”
“Good fellow, be blowed!” was uttered in another voice. “See this new arrival I will. I want to see what a woman looks like that hasn’t been kiln-dried in this blessed climate. Stand out of the way, Jack!” and the door was dashed open with a burst. I could not, of course, see the crowd of faces that I knew were within a few feet of me, nor do I to this day know what occasioned the sudden lull and quiet departure of the boarders, unless it was the sight of my sleeping child’s face. All I knew was that footsteps receded higher up the stairs; that the door was locked, and that, when I ventured to uncover my head, I was alone with the two “girls.”
“Were you frightened?” asked the stranger, who was sitting on the edge of the double bed and dragging out many hairpins from an abundance of fiery red hair, that took the opportunity of tumbling down over her shoulders as she dragged. “Arrah, they’re quare devils; but there’s no harm in ‘em after all. Oh, lord, ain’t I tired, Mary! Sure, I lades the life of a horse; an’ if the master don’t stop more in the bar I’ll not stop in it neither.”
“Well, you’d better get to sleep now, at all events,” said Mary, “for it’s late, and you know the time you’ll be routed out in the morning.
“Late is it, you say? Faith, it’s early, it is. I’ll go hail that it’s afther two. Divil sich a life any girl ever led before. Faith I’m too sleepy to say me prayers. Good-night, Mary!” and that was the last of the barmaid until the sun was brightening the clear sky of the following morning.
At last I and my belongings started for the diggings in a coach, with four horses, belonging to the world-known firm of Messrs. Cobb and Co. It was early in the morning of what proved a beautiful day, though our experience of travelling in ‘55 did not include any time to bestow on the beauties of Nature in any shape or form.
I think it must have been six o’clock, or thereabouts, when the plunging horses darted away from the Albion Hotel, and tore up the western hill as if they had no Jehu behind them, but they had, and as cool an American as ever fingered the ribbons and whip on a bush track. The broad-leaved, high-crowned hat, the olive-hued, clean-shaved cheeks, the pointed chin with its not too luxuriant goatee, and the slim muscular figure, were sufficient to denote the nationality of the man, even without his keen eye and reticent manner, or the significant drawl of the short replies he condescended to anxious or curious travelers.
Inside the coach we were four – five, indeed, with my youngster. It took us all day to get over the 70 or 80 miles between Melbourne and Castlemaine, and the memory of that terrible journey is as the memory of a nightmare to me. The crashing of the breaking branches under our wheels, as our cool Jehu drove his four-in-hand through the tangled mazes of the Black Forest, and the dangerous vicinity of the white gum trees, from whose tall trunks hung long strips of dead bark they were shedding as the snake sheds his skin. Great stretches of level country, without a growing stem, save those of the yet green grass blades, and without a dividing line or boundary save the running creek or the rifted gully.
Flocks of sheep there were, with strangely dirty and dingy fleeces, and ranges of blue hazy hills in the distance, and, as for the rest, it is to me a blank, save one scene of plunging horses and broken traces on a bush track, where our driver seemed to thread the mazes of dead and living trees like a phantom driver with a team of phantom horses under his spirit power. One other memory I have of that journey to the diggings, and it is the memory of a pretty scene, though I had nearly forgotten it. Along the edge of a wooded slope, and among the beautiful green undergrowth, where one of the many tracks ran, we saw a conveyance, of strange and strong build, being driven with a velocity that seemed dangerous to us new chums, and behind and before it rode a mounted escort of redcoated soldiers. The rattle of its wheels as it passed us, the sharp crack of the driver’s whip, the cheery salute as the clatter of hoofs and the cloud of dust they raised overtook us and disappeared, was like a vision or a dream. We had met the famous gold escort from Castlemaine.
The Castlemaine of that day was not much of a place – a town of one street, with a few tolerable buildings, and a few odds and ends of various business places and private houses, but I saw little of it on that occasion. We stopped, when the sun was low, at a two-storied hotel, the very name of which I have forgotten, and I was taken upstairs to a large barnlike room, where were several other women and children who had arrived, or were about departing, by other conveyances or coaches.
They had mostly a bewildered, half-lost expression in their anxious faces, which, I daresay, I shared with them, for a woman , especially with little ones in charge, can scarcely be expected to feel safe or comfortable in a strange land, and among a class of people she has been told were as rough and knobby as the stones from among which they were rooting out their gold.
Long before we reached Kangaroo Flat, the noises of a prosperous “rush” came for the first time to my ears. German bands were crashing out familiar dance music, dogs were barking, men were shouting, and now and then a sonorous hell rang, while, in the interludes or temporary lulls, hundreds of firearms were being let off – crack, crack – in every direction. This was a nightly custom, I afterwards discovered, for every digger had his revolver and some of them two, and it was considered a double precaution to discharge them every evening, in order to ensure their being in working trim, as well as to let all whom it might concern know that the owner was in a position to defend the gold he had worked so hard to obtain,
All at once we turned the corner, and there burst upon my astonished gaze the “street” of an Australian goldfield. The best idea I can give of it is a rough and almost impassable road, outlined by huge lanterns of various sizes and forms. The places of business (and, indeed, all were places of business in one way or other) were entirely of calico, and mostly unlined, so that the lights inside shone through them brightly, and cast the moving shadows of dancers and drinkers and fighters on the canvas as on the sheet from a magic lantern.
The noise was wonderful. Every tent was open, with its crowd of men laughing drinking, or throwing dice. It was a terrible scene to me, and if I had any ideas of a Pandemonium, they must have been realised there. Suddenly there was a lull, a band ceased in the immediate neighbourhood of the spot we had reached, the men crowded to the openings of the tents, and a bell rang violently. As it ceased I heard a voice cry – and it was the voice of the bellman –
“Wanted, two young ladies to attend the finest ball ever held on the goldfields of Victoria!”
“’Grieve’s Store! Here you are, ma’am, and here is the old gentleman himself.” Yes, that was it, speechless with joy so was I to see the dear old face of the Uncle I had come thousands of miles to see. He lifted out my child and held him in his arms until I stood beside him, then he peered into my face to read the record of years. ”Thank God,” he murmured, as big drops rolled down his cheeks; and that was my welcome to the diggings.
To awaken with a bewildered feeling that you have changed places with some other identity must be a sensation akin to that I experienced when I opened my eyes the morning after my first sleep on the diggings. I had been too tired the night before to do more than thankfully follow my child to bed without finding enough energy to even wonder at my strange surroundings, and in the morning the extraordinary and unaccustomed objects that presented themselves to me suggested the dregs of a nightmare.
I was surrounded on all sides by a calico wall that rendered windows quite unnecessary. The bedstead was of millsawn quartering, with posts sunk into the ground and high enough to he nailed to the tie-beam that held together the wall plates of the tent. The table was a couple of boards nailed together, supported by brackets instead of pegs, and seats there were none save cases, which I may assure the reader were not empty. There was an enclosure called a chimney on one side of the apartment, and the said chimney was formed of bullock hide which had been green when first stretched on the frame to which it was nailed, but which, when I saw it, was as dry as parchment and as tightly strained as the sheepskin on a drum. Such, with the exception of the carpet, was my first home on the diggings.
The carpet deserves a new paragraph. When I first began to move about on or in it, I was exceedingly annoyed, for my boots were of white kid and did not take kindly to contact with twelve inches of “tailings”. Nor were the tailings those which later years have made us accustomed to as the sandy refuse of quartz crushings; they were tailings from the hoppers of cradles, and consisted of large and small water-worn pebbles that never set into a mass, and moved about unreliably with every pressure of the foot.
Nor shall I forget my first look at the diggings by daylight, or the first breakfast partaken of on them. It was from a hack entrance that I first saw the piles of uprooted soil, where the diggers were burrowing like moles, and heard the monotonous rock of a hundred cradles that went “swish-swish” down by the creek that wound through the flat. It was from there also that I saw the long double lines of business tents that formed the street, and the waving of gay flags of all nationalities from the rough flag-poles in front of store or restaurant, billiard room or what-not. It was from there, too, that I laughed at the extraordinary display of constructive and adaptive ability displayed in the making of the hundreds of odd chimneys within view.
Some were of broken-up wine and porter-cases, or shingles intermingled with bits of tin boxes, flattened out. Others were built of sods or rough stones piled carelessly together. Some had frames of wood, and were filled with “wattle-and-dab”, and some were made of two or three flour barrels piled one on another to form a flue. I saw one built firmly and scientifically of empty bottles.
But there was no fire burning in our bullock-hide chimney, for no cooking went on in our establishment. Breakfast was brought over from a restaurant on the other side of the “street”. The waiter was a seedy-looking individual in pants that had once been black, and a shirt that had once been white. The breakfast consisted of chops, burnt to cinders and swimming in fat, several thick slices of dirty-looking bread, and about a pound of awful butter wrapped up in a green paper that I afterwards discovered was part of an ancient playbill. Two enamelled dinner plates that had seen rough usage and fire, black-handled and stained knives and forks, two enamelled cups without saucers, and a billy full of tea, completed the breakfast.
When my son and I peeped outside, my first question was to ask if everyone was yet asleep, but my uncle laughed.
“Why, the population is all out of town just now, you see. Nothing is done in the way of business while the diggers are at work. They had all started off long before you awoke, and you will see them at sundown when they come back to their tents.”
“But the business people themselves – where are they?”
“The few who have wives or sisters with them are digging, too. Many of the shanties are shut. What is the use of keeping an open door when there is no one to enter it? Besides, it is a very hot day, and those who are willing to take their chance of business without rocking a cradle are lying down to recruit their energies for the hurry of the night. ”
Our first day on the diggings was an intensely hot one. As the sun dipped towards the west, great Cumuli gathered up, and white piles, whose shadows deepened as they grew and overcast the blazing sky refreshingly.
“We are in for a thunderstorm tonight,” the old man said,” If it comes down heavily, it will be a godsend to the diggers. Many of them have had to pile their stuff for want of water, as my books can testify.”
“Pile their stuff?” I repeated.
“Which means leave it in a heap with the gold in it, because they have no water to cradle it, and the result is that I and other business people have to give credit until the water is available.”
“And where do you get water?”
“In the creek, while the deep hole are full. Why, do you know what we are paying for water now? We have to cart it, or buy it at sixpence a bucket.”
“What a dreadful country!” I thought as I watched with an increasing interest the gathering clouds.
Ere the storm burst, the diggers began to pour back from their labours at tub or cradle or pick and shovel until the street was alive with movement and loud voices. Shanty and restaurant-keepers, store-owners and boardinghouse people, all buzzed out of their tents to hear the day’s luck. The dogs that were chained at nearly every tent barked a joyous welcome to their returning masters, who stopped in crowds opposite a “brewery” where was prepared and sold a strong beer, the only beer available on Kangaroo Flat in ‘55, except bottled and imported ale and porter.
Almost every man carried his tin billy, which served to hold or make his tea in, and bring home his gold if he had been lucky enough to get any. Nor was there any secrecy as to their success in those days. Nothing was more common than to see a man handing his billy round for examination, or two or three interested parties fingering his nuggets and hefting them eagerly, while the jubilant owner “shouted” for all hands. At one time the front of the brewery was a picture, as hundreds of men stood and waited impatiently for the grateful pint they so much appreciated after their day’s work in the sun, and it was with much merry joking and laughter that the full pints were passed through the crowd from hand to hand.
There came on a heavy storm before sunset, and a downpour of rain like an extended waterspout, a heavy continuous sheet that in a trice soaked the hundreds of men forced to encounter it. On the side of the street next the hitherto empty creek every tent and tenement was threatened with being swept bodily away by the great rushing streams of rainwater that gathered from the hillsides and dashed across the street to the lower levels. Picks and shovels were in anxious requisition, and men with old coats hags, sacks or blankets over their heads, were picking here and shovelling there, while knee-deep in water, trying to guide the torrents past their own tenements. Our carpet of tailings was a great advantage in the partial encroachment the water had made on us, but most of our trouble was from our bullock-hide chimney, which formed a regular funnel to pour volumes into my “room”.
But subside the water did, almost as quickly as it had appeared, and I was invited to see a sight that a new-chum must be afforded an opportunity of witnessing. The still flowing streams swept before them such multitudes of corks that the foam of their disturbed course seemed to be entirely formed of them. It was a strange sight indeed when the thousands of new and scarcely discoloured corks were swept into an embayed bend of the creek and collected in swirling groups until they finally amalgamated into one grand whole and the surface was completely covered.
And now came the hours of life and profit for the alert business folk of the diggings. With cleansed hands and faces, and stomachs fortified by a good supper of their own preparing, the diggers strolled from tent to tent and talked and smoked until the usual number of friends were enrolled to form a party to some favorite billiard-room or dancing saloon. As night crept over the sky one by one the tents were illuminated. Violins and flutinas and barrel-organs crashed out music of some kind or another, while shouts and roars of coarse laughter, or coarser anathema, were bandied in the bars. The effect of the dancing shadows on the unlined walls of the tents was ludicrous.
Toward the end of the year 1855, Kangaroo Flat as a goldfield and “rush” began to show signs of rapid decay, and many of the business people began to follow the example of the miners and look for fresh fields. About this time there was the choice of minor rushes at Taradale and its vicinity, to which much of the floating population drifted temporarily until the greater extent and promise of the White Hills district absorbed all interest. Grieves’ Store was among the first to strike tent poles and load up, and then began my first experience of travelling on the summit of a heavily loaded bullock dray.
Our eventful journey to the White Hills, Buninyong, was one to be remembered. We were many days in accomplishing it, in consequence of straying bullocks and bad roads, and the minor and manifold accidents concurrent on travelling in those days. On the journey we passed through Creswick and Ballarat, the former an almost deserted digging at that time, with only piles of mullock and tumble-down makeshift chimneys to remind us of the thousands who a short time previously had rushed to the alluvial diggings there. As for Ballarat, I have never forgotten the strange appearance it presented as, from our camp on the brow of a hill, we looked down upon it ere dusk had been swallowed up in perfect darkness. It appeared to occupy a great saucer-shaped valley and to be composed of thousands of canvas tents that crept in white shoals up every surrounding slope. One by one, score by score, and hundred by hundred, gleams and glimmers and floods of light burst from the illuminated canvas dwellings until the whole space was clustered with ghostly lanterns.
There was even then in Ballarat, however, a nucleus of brick business houses which are recalled to me by the fact that in one of them I purchased a brown silk umbrella. It is strange with what tenacity apparently trivial circumstances will cling to the memory, when much of far greater importance escapee us into oblivion. The very price of that umbrella remains impressed on me, and considering the high prices of the day and the heavy cartage that occasioned them, I do not see that, in the article of umbrellas, we have gained much of a reduction in twenty-six years, for the price of my brown silk umbrella was only one pound.
But let us get to the White Hills rush. Along the dreary dusty road and beneath the broiling sun, let us get among the disordered tents and crowded slopes, where the drays were camped and unloaded in a confusion and noise quite unimaginable to one who has not witnessed such a scene. Along the miles of heaped-up pipeclay from which the rush took its name, hundreds of gay flags drooped from their poles. There were thousands of windlasses and moving diggers, the strange hum of a busy multitude, and the astonished and bewildered faces of newcomers who had not hitherto seen a great rush. We encamped for the night among the very holes where minors were working, while already the men of our party were driving in posts and raising rafters for Grieve’s store.
There were some odd scenes exposed to the public in those days, and even refined women because accustomed to perform wholly domestic duties without even a screen between them and the moving, talking, laughing, eating or working population of the diggings. On the occasion of which I write, a young woman was bathing a baby in the midst of the tumult, near an American cooking stove set up on the unsheltered ground and on which several pots were bubbling and steamin.
The noise was shocking, and towards evening, deafening. Hammering, chopping, bellringing, bandplaying, shouting, laughing, fighting and singing were all represented in the babel of a new rush, and one heard and saw as in a dream in which the identity of the dreamer is lost. Every now and then a cheer would greet some friends who had unexpectedly met in this working hive of all nations, or the oaths and whipcracks of a bullock driver denoted the arrival of another team laden with stores and canvas. But until near sundown the creaking of windlasses and the swishing of cradles went on unbrokenly, until there was a lull while the hungry were fed and the weary refreshed, ready for the dancing saloon, the billiard table or the bar.
Our next move was to the new rush at Chinaman’s Flat, via Daisy Hill and Maryborough, and an unpleasant journey it proved. We passed on our way through several dead diggings. A A deserted claim is, to me, a more melancholy sight than a graveyard, for in the latter the suggestive mounds are symbols of a dreamless rest after the weariness of life is over, while in the deserted and grass-grown shafts, the broken and weather-stained windlass supports, the fallen chimneys and the blackened rags of calico fluttering from decaying rafter or wallplate, one reads only the record of disappointment and unrest.
ART AND ARTIFICE by J. P. McKinney (1930)
“I don’t suppose, now, “ said Noonan, “ yer happen to know anything about hart, Jim ?”
It not being clear which particular “hart” (or was it “heart”?) he referred to, I pleaded guilty to complete ignorance.
It’s a funny thing, when yer come to think of it, how it runs in some families, as yer might say, and then agen there’s others as don’t show no sign of it. Now you take our family. It’s a sort of natural inheresy with us. There was me Aunt Bridget that done a painting of a roast turkey and a plate of green peas for the show, and the bloke that done the judgin’ gave it the prize for still life – though how he made out there was still life in it when the damned thing was roasted I couldn’t make out. Still an’ all, it’ll go to show you.
An’ she went in for ‘igh hart, too. In fact, she died through fallin’ off the kitchen table, tryin’ to paint a picture of a frill-necked lizard on the ceilin’ to keep the flies away, her bein’ only fifty six, and her own father lived that long the paper reckoned when he died he should have been made a centurion. It’s a funny thing in our family, there’s some of us took after me aunt in the matter of hart, and there’s others never had no facualty for it. Mind you, I’ve always been artistical meself, but what with dairyin’ and that, and feeding the pigs and the like, I’ve never had time to give way to it.
“But it’s been in me just the same, end now yer can see it breakin’ out in young Emmelina. You stick one o’ them catalogues in front of her, with pictures of these here society pieces loungin’ about with all sorts of colored dresses on, and she’ll sit over it be the hour.
“It’s only the other day the missus was niggly-gougin’ about her sittin’ around all day gawkin’ at pictures and not gettin’ on with the housework, and I says ‘ You leave her be. It’s only one of the family predestinations comin’ out in her. There’s no knowin’ but what it might pay to get her learned. She might turn out to be the makins of a masterpiece! And then it was a funny thing, Jim, only yesterday when I was in at the pig sales I run into a bloke at the pub that they tell, me’s a regular dabster at it. He’s been paintin’ the bar celling the last fortnight, and I tell yer, Jim, as far as he’s gone with it, he’s makin’ a real artistical job of it, with daisies and forget-me-nots and things round the edges, real natural. Mind yer, he ain’t been quick over it, what with one and another comin’ in and shoutin’ for him an’ that. He’s a real good worker, but he only gets in a coupler hours a day when he’s steady enough to get on the ladder.
He’ s of French extinction, he told me – his name’ s de-Something-or-other – and you know yerself, Jim, all them foreigners are artistical. I got talkin’ with him about Emmelina, and he reckoned there’s no knowin’ but what she might turn out to be ingenious, and after we’d had a drink or two and got sort of friendly-like, he said he wouldnt mind comin’ out and givin’ her a lesson in hart for a quid. “That’s what it was made me wonder if you knew anything about it, Jim. Mind yer, I took to the idea straight away, but I thought I’d see if I could find out how prices run in that line. I don’t mind payin’ a fair thing, but you knew yerself, Jim, a man don’t like to find out afterwards he could have got the job done cheaper.”
Unfortunately I was unable to give him any idea of the ruling rates in the art line at the moment. However, after due investigation, Noonan decided that Mr de-Something-or-other’s charge was not exorbitant. A few days later I met the faithful Ford scrambling along the road amid a cloud of dust. Noonan was sitting in the peculiar upright position he has to assume on account of a broken seat-spring boring into his back. He seemed to have a bag of potatoes on the seat beside him, but this proved to be Mr de-Something-or-other in a recumbent attitude.
“He ain’t quite himself, Jim, “ confided Noonan in a stage whisper. ‘’ I tell yer, I had a regular time of it getting’ him away from the town. There was some of his wages he still had to cut out at the pub, and that took him a couple of hours steady drinkin’. And then when we got a couple of miles out we had to turn round and go back to get him a few bottles to go on with. I tell yer, Jim, it cost me a bob or two. But these here artistical blokes are all like that. Even if it does run me into more than I thought, it’s worth it for the sake of gettin’ Emmelina taught hart. It’ll pay me to hang on to him now I’ve got him. ”
A few days later I again met the Ford heading impetuously into the town.
I’m just goin’ in for a few more bottles,” said Noonan. “I can see I’ll never keep him , Jim, if I don’t keep the grog up to him.”
How is Emmelina getting on with her lessons ?” I asked,
“Well, to tell yer the truth, Jim, he ain’t really got started on her yet. The trouble is, when he’s full yer can’t get him to do anything, and when he’ s sober he’s too shaky. I can see I’ll have to give it to him in dribs and drabs and keep him just betwixt and between.”
I took the liberty of suggesting that the expense involved in maintaining that condition might be excessive.
“That’s so, “ agreed Noonan, “ but, still an’ all, Jim, when yer come to get mixed up in this artistical business you can’t go workin’ out the price the same as yer would a line of fence or a bit of grubbin’ or the like. Hart ain’t the same as hard work, Jim. You’ve got to look at it that way. And from what I can see of it, Jim, booze and hart seems to go together. He was tellin’ me his own father was hung in a saloon in Paris.”
It began to appear that Noonan’s original estimate of the cost of developing Emmelina’s latent talent was going to be subject to considerable revision. But when the Ford appeared on the road again next morning, even I began to admit that Mr de-Something-or-other must be a man of outstanding capacity – cubic, of not artistic.
“What, again? “ I said, in response to Noonan’s greeting.
He made no response for a moment, then : “What d’yer think, Jim? I’m goin’ to get meself’ painted. It come to me all of a sudden last night. He and this de-Something bloke was yarnin’ while the missus was washin’ up, and he was tellin’ me how Regan got his photo took by a bloke at the show and then got de-What-d’yer-call-im to color it up and that. Mind yer, Jim, that’s just like Regan , gettin’ himself took that way and then gettin’ it colored on the cheap to make it look like a real paintin’. IT’ll just show yer the miserable way some people go about things. And anyway what does a bloke like Regan want havin’ his picture painted ? Now, with me it’s different, bein’ on the Council and the School Committee and that, and bein’ a sort of public nonentity, as yer might say. And there’s talk of them makin’ me Chairman of the Council at the next election. There’s no knowin’ but they might want me picture to hang in the Council rooms for future posteriors to look at. “Anyway, I said nothing to de-Something, but I’ m just slipping over to Regan’s to see what sort of job he done, and get an idea of what he charged an’ that. And now I come to think of it, Jim, what about you hopping over with me ? You takin’ in the weekly papers regular and all , you ought to be a fair judge.”
Regan was sitting on the kitchen doorstep as we approached. By the time we clattered up to the house, however he had disappeared. Mrs Regan hastened to meet us, after some sotto voce expostulation with the children, who, I gathered, were not attired for public inspection.
“Don’t youse show yer noses, now, or I’ll lam the . . . Well, how, if it aint’t Mr Noonan himself! How if that ain’t a surprise! Won’t yers come in, though you mustn’t look at the house, with things all topsy-turvy what with Paddy that busy chippin’ burr out of the corn all the week and me doin’ most of the milkin’. And yer never brought Mrs Noonan with yer, and me not seen her for an age. ”
“Well, we only come over sort of unconventional like,” explained Noonan. “For that matter, it was only me wantin’ a few pigs, with the cows comin’ up in their milk since the rain, and hearin’ only yesterday that Paddy had a few stores to sell.”
During these friendly exchanges we were ushered into the kitchen, where Mrs Regan held us strategically for a few seconds with a computation on her fingers how many cows they were milking, while Regan slipped out of the front door.
“But here’s me keepin’ yers standin’ in the kitchen,” Mrs Regan rebuked herself, ” and it that hot with me bakin’ an’ that. Come in and sit down in the front room and I’ll see if I can find one o’ the kids to go for Paddy.”
“Don’t you bother now, “ expostulated Noonan,” I wouldn’t be takin’ him from his work for worlds. I can easy come another day when he’s not so busy, and it ain’t that urgent about the pigs.”
“Never you mind about that, “ said Mrs Regan, “Why, I’d never hear the end of it if I never let him know you was here. If I can find one o’ the kids, they’ ll have him up in no time.”
Apparently she had very little difficulty In finding one of the children. In fact, it surprised me that she had any trouble at all, as I could see at least two of them peering at us through a crack in the partition that separated the front bedroom from the sitting-room , and a few more seemed to be tittering on the front verandah. However , the tittering was not sufficiently loud to drown a whispered colloquy going on at the back door.
“It’s pigs he’s after, he says.”
“Pigs! He’s come to borrow something, that’s what it is.”
“Well. I’ll have to give them tea, I s’pose.”
“You shouldn’t have asked them in.”
“’Ow could I ‘elp askin’ them in ? You should have gone out and met them before they got to the ‘ouse.”
“Paddy won’t be no time,”Mrs Regan announced, returning, “I sent one of the kids off for ‘im. An’ now you must ‘ave a cupper tea after yer drive, an’ the weather that ‘ot.“
“Now don’t you go to any bother,” protested Noonan.
“It’s no bother at all, ‘Mrs Regan assured us. “I was just goin ‘ to make some to send down to Paddy, and it’s glad enough he’ll be to come up and take it sittin’ down: Now just yous make yerselves comfortable and I’ll ‘ave it ready by the time Paddy gets back.”
The arrival of Regan and the tea synchronised remarkably. He was both surprised and delighted to see us. Noonan was most apologetic for taking him away from his work, while Mrs Regan took a census of our various tastes with regard to milk and sugar and the strength of our tea. The question of store pigs was then broached.
“Well, now,” said Regan, “ I have got a few forward stores I could let yer have.”
“It wasn’t exactly forward stores I was wantin’,” said Noonan hastily.” For that matter, it was really a few weaners I was after.”
After we had skirted around the question of pigs for some time, and it had transpired that the class of pigs Regan had for sale was not exactly the class that Noonan wanted to buy, the conversation drifted into more general channels.
There’s no doubt you’ve got things fixed up real comfortable here,” said Noonan, taking s survey of the room. “And them pictures on the wall just sets things off artistic.”
The walls were certainly liberally decorated. In addition to a large-size representation of a cow looking with maternal solicitude at her calf ( I thought it was an antelope, but the artist had thoughtfully appended the inscription “Cow and calf” to set all doubt at rest) , there was a framed certificate establishing that Regan and Mrs Regan were man and wife, and several framed birth certificates as further corroboration if required. And standing out among these, dominating and dwarfing them, eclipsing and overshadowing them in wealth of color and proportion of frame, was the portrait of the head of the house himself, resplendent in a rich brown suit , a stiff white collar and a glittering tie-pin. The disguise was excellent, but, despite it, I could recognise Regan, though I had never seen him with a stiff collar on, suspected that he didn’t possess a tie-pin, and knew he hadn’t a brown suit.
“And what’s this ? “exclaimed Noonan , rising to give the picture closer inspection. “Well, now, if that ain’t something like!” (Something like Regan, I presumed he meant.) “An’ to think you’ve had yer picture done and me never heard about it! And tell me now, Paddy, if it’s a fair question, how much did it cost yer to get that done ?”
“Well, now, that’s hard to say, off-hand,” said Regan, evidently trying to decide whether to exalt the value of the picture by exaggerating the figure, or, by understating it, to exalt his business acumen. “Yer see, I got the photo took by a bloke at the Show. He done it cheap on account of business bein’ slack. Then I got hold of a bloke who was doin’ a bit in the artistical line, and he done the colorin’ an’ that.”
“And ain’t it wonderful the way he stuck the colors on,” put in Mrs Regan. “Paddy wanted a blue suit, but the bloke hadn’t no blue color, so we had to have it brown.”
“But I suppose he done it a bit cheaper on account of not havin’t the right coler,” suggested Noonan, steering back to the main point.
“Well, he did chop a bit on that, “ agreed Regan, “ but then agen there was a bit extra on account of paintin’ in the collar and tie.”
“Yer see,” explained Mrs Regan, “the way the photo come out, with Paddy havin’ no collar on, it didn’t look proper dressed-up , like…. And then the tie-pin, Paddy. There was extra for that.”
“No, there wasn’t,” said Regan. “It was ten bob extra for the collar and tie, and he threw the tie-pin in – and there’s no doubt he made a job of it. Yer wouldn’t get a real diamond to sparkle like that.”
“My word yer wouldn’t,” agreed Noonan. “It’s marvellous how he done it. And only ten bob for the collar and tie and tie-pin! That would make the whole Job run into say …”
He paused encouragingly, but apparently that was exactly what Regan was not prepared to admit it. And though Noonan came at it from various angles and by various devious ways, Regan remained tantalisingly vague.
Mrs Regan pressed us to have another cup of tea, and Regan made a tactical reference to the pigstyes, but the last cup of tea had been cold and we weren’t interested in pigs, so, with reiterated assurances of mutual esteem, we broke away.
“An’ don’t forget,” called Mrs Regan,” bring Mrs Noonan with yer next time. “
“And what about yerselves ? “ shouted Noonan above the roar of the Ford. “It’s time you gave us a call. Don’t be always chippin’ yer corn, Paddy. Yer want to give the missus An’ kids a bit of an outing sometimes … And if they don’t heat all for insinseriousness,” he added to me as we spun out on the road. “Him sittin’ on the doorstep loafin’ an’ makin’ out he was that busy! And then gettin’ his picture done like that, makin’ out what a swell he is, and between you and me, Jim, he ain’t got a decent suit of clothes to his name, And he wouldn’t know how to put on a collar and tie if you gave it to him. And the tie-pin and all! Just you fancy a bloke carryin’ deceivin’ to that extent!
“But he wouldn’t let on what the whole lay-out cost him, and I tell yer what it is, Jim, this de-What’s-his-name made him pay through the nose and he ain’t man enough to admit it. But I tell yer , Jim, de-What-d’yer-call-im ain’t goin’ to catch me. I’ll pay him a fair thing and not a penny more, and I’ll get a picture done that’ll make Regan want to throw theirs on the scrap heap.
“But that’s between you and me, Jim. Not a word about me getting’ meself painted. They’ll all see It soon enough, and I tell yer it’ll be something to look at. But I don’t want them to see it till it’s finished and de-What’s-his-name’s out of the way.”
When next I saw Noonan, the bargain had been struck, and arrangements were well afoot for the commencement of the work.
“I can tell yer, Jim, “ said Noonan,”I can see the way he took Regan in. I put it to him that night, and he said the job was worth a fiver, but I soon let him see he wasn’t dealin’ with Regan. The end of it was he come down to two quid and his booze. And if he thinks he’s goin’ to get any extras out of me he’s mistaken. I’m too shrewd for that, “The missus raked out a collar and tie I had when we was married, and then I got thinkin’ of that tie-pin of Regan’s. Mind yer, a man wants a bit of jewellery about him , but to get something painted in that you wasn’t wearin! Anyway, I slipped over to me brother Jerry and borrowed his gold watch and chain. I tell yer it looks good, and he can’t charge extra, with me wearin’ it. I’ll be holdin’ it in me hand, like as if I was in a hurry and just wanted to know the time. The watch don’t go, but still and all that won’t come out in the picture.”
The original scheme of having Emmelina’s slumbering talent developed seemed to have been overshadowed by this new development, and even this, It soon became apparent, was merely the nucleus of the Idea. The more Noonan pondered, the more it developed,
“Yer see, Jim, “ he explained, “it was really on account of Emmelina we got him out. But still and all, now I’ve got him on paintin’ me I don’t want him draggin’ it out too long. I tell yer, the way he laps up booze. I’ll have to get the job done quick to come out square. So I thought I’d get Emmelina painted alongside me, and she could pick up the knack of it fairly well that way.
“But I tell yer, Jim, when yer’ve got a houseful of kids yer’ve got to go careful. I fixed it up with de-What’s-his-name to put her in for a quid. and then young Septimus sets up a howl. Well, yer know yerself, Jim, what kids are. The finish of It was there was Angela and Rosina didn’t see why they should be left out, and then they all got at me. I had to get him to give me a price for the whole lot of us, the missus and all. He wanted a quid all round, but I beat him down to fifteen bob a head. And even then, Jim, it’s enough, the way he’s fixin’ it with the two youngsters squattin’ at me feet with their legs tacked under them, and only wantin’ paintin’ from the middle up, as yer might say.”
But Noonan was to discover that each new development brought its attendant difficulties. In addition to the problem of keeping Mr de-Something-or-other supplied with a sufficiency of drink to assuage the requrements of the artistic temperament, the question of canvas space now presented itself.
Noonan had stipulated for a life-size representation of himself, and had purchased a piece of canvas from the store for the purpose. It now transpired that to execute the entire family on the same canvas would require that Noonan, at least, be reduced to microscopic proportions. Noonan was for retaining the original plan for himself and fitting the others in the odd comers that remained unoccupied, but to this, on the grounds of pure art, Mr de-What’s-his-name objected, and in this stand the rest of the family, though not for the same high aesthetic grounds, unanimously supported him.
But Noonan had bought the only piece of canvas in the store. To send to the city for more, with the artist continuing to absorb his daily ration of drink, was out of the question. But difficulties always have a stimulating effect upon Noonan, and when I slipped over a few days later, I found the masterpiece already in progress.
The entire family was grouped on the verandah, all decked out in their best and sitting bolt upright in the attitude of pained expectancy that one adopts in the dentist’s chair while he is sorting out his forceps. Mr de-Something-or-other at the other end acknowledged my salutation by a noise that resolved itself into a gurgle when he dropped his brush and seized a bottle of bear.
“What do you think of it, Jim ? “ demanded Noonan. “If that picture don’t get Began flummixed I’ll eat my hat. I couldn’t rake up a piece of canvas big enough to do the job on, and then it came to me. There was me, thinkin’ I’d have to write away for canvas, and the verandah bl/nd big enough to paint us all twice over!”
Then the masterpiece burst on my vision. I can’t attempt to describe it. as I’m not up in’ the jargon of art, but I will say the picture was striking, though to my inexperienced eye there seemed to be flaws in it. Emmelina, for instance, appeared to be grinning with one half of her face amd on the verge of tears with the other. This, however, may have been no fault of the artist’s, but may have been solely due to the fact that a seam of the blind bisected her from head to foot, making her right half appeared independant of her left.
Mrs Noonan’s eyes’, too, didn’t appear to be in agreement as to the direction of their vision. But again Mr de-What-do-you cal-im could probably be acquitted of blame. Mrs Noonan always has a rather distracting habit of squinting sideways in the direction of the kitchen, where the fowls are continually making inroads on the domestic larder. I should imagine that to paint from a model like that would be like trying to strike a straight furrow with a grazing cow to sight by.
But Noonan! Noonan was magnificent. Admittedly it was more like Noonan than Noonan himself, so to speak. The moustache which ordinarily drooped downwards in a dejected manner now turned jauntily up at the tips. The Adam’s apple, which had a habit of popping in and out as Noonan talked, was gone, encased in the immaculate whiteness of an upstanding collar. The sparse grey hair, receding with the tide of years, was now a luxuriant brown growth, fit to deck a poet’s head.
It was Noonan, not as I knew him, engrossed in the problems of getting six pigs fat on a supply of milk sufficient only for three; of persuading a one-titted cow to rear two calves in a dry winter; of rearing his poddies on his neighbor’s lucerne without letting the neighbor know about it; of turning a gallon of cream into four gallons of petrol, four tyres, several bags of flour, a bag of potatoes and numerous sets of wearing apparel – but Noonan as he might have been had Fate decreed that he should be a financial magnate, holding the well-being of thousands in the palm of his hand.
What he actually was folding was his brother Jerry’s watch, attached to his anatomy by a chain which, by the alchemy of Mr de-Something-or-other’s brush, put common gold to shame.
“Now what about Regan’s picture, Jim ?”
He was standing beside me, as enraptured as I was, and I think we would have continued gazing had not the sight of Mr de-Something-or-other reaching for another bottle brought him back to the solid considerations of the moment.
“Here, you kids,“ he cried, “ Can’t yers sit up like yer was told ?”
“Well can’t Emmelina take her foot out of me back ?”
“I’ve got pins and needles in me foot, I want to get up.”
“Can’t I have a cushion to sit on ? I’m all numbed.”
“Now, none of that,” ordered Noonan,” Can’t you see that Mr de-What’s-his-name’s wantin’ to get on with the paintin’ ? You just sit there, Jim, and you’ll be surprised how he does it.”
The dexterity with which Mr de-What-do-you-call-im worked was certainly amazing. He seemd to possess the gifts of ambidexterity and prestidigitation combined with a dual mental equipment. For some time he kept me in suspense. I expected to see him applying the paint with the bottle and trying to drink from the brush, but I presently discovered that the drinking part of the performance was purely subconscious. He put the bottle to his lips quite involuntarily, just as an ordinary person blinks, and it seemed to have about as much effect on his thirst. In fact, it was really Noonan who showed the effect. Every time the bottle reached Mr de-Something-or-other’s lips, Noonan’s expression became a little more agonised , until he presently looked like a man who has come out of an anaesthetic in the middle of an operation.
Mrs Noonan, too, suffered periods of evident distress, but it was not until her eyes took on the north-east-by west look that I realised that there was a fowl in the kitchen. It was pecking at some tin receptacle, and at every peck Mrs Noonan’s left eye slid a degree further out of its normal focus, and I really think that it was only an unexpected distraction from another quarter that saved it from slipping right round in its socket.
“What’s that ?” suddenly demanded Emmelina.
“Sit down!” hissed Noonan.
“It’s the pigs in the dairy!”
For a moment I thought that even Noonan’s remarkable self-control would desert him, but Mr de-Something-or-other, reaching for the bottle again, saved the situation.
“Sit down, I tell yer. It’s only the skim-milk knocked over. The calves’ll have to go short.”
Emmelina relapsed into her seat, her lips twitching with suppressed mental anguish at each rattling of a bucket that came from the dairy. She evidently did not realise the force of Noonan’s reasoning – that skim-milk was cheaper than beer.
But, for all Noonan’s self-sacrifice and devotion to art, the afternoon’s sitting was doomed to interruption.
Suddenly the dogs barked. The effect was magical. On the instant everyone rose to their feet. There was a massed charge to the verandah rail, and then a tense silence. broken at length by Noonan.
“Thunder and lightnin’ ! It’s Regan!”
And sure enough, with two dogs escorting them up the hill, came Regan and Mrs Regan in their car.
For an instant, everyone stood transfixed – except de-What-d’yer-call-em, who was steadying his nerves with a copious draught.
“Quick!” snapped Noonan. “The picture!”
What a wonderful gift he has of rising to an emergency! Regan’s car was not a hundred yards from the house. Whatever was to be done must be done upon the instant.
“In yer go,“ he ordered, sweeping the children into the house. “And, mind, we never seen them comin’.”
Then he descended on Mr de-Something-or-other. It seemed undignified treatment for the son of a man who had been hung in a Paris saloon, but he grabbed the artist under one arm and gathered his paints and brushes and beer under the other, and shot him unceremoniously into the front room.
“Over to the barn, quick. “ he ordered, “I’ll send Septimus over with another bottle. Don’t show up till they’re gone.”
As he slammed the door on the flustered artist, Regan and Mrs Regan were at the foot of the steps.
“Well now, what d’yer think of that?“ Noonan exclaimed, stretching out one hand in welcome and with the other untying the cord of the verandah blind.” Why, Paddy, you oughter be ashamed of yerself, the time it’s taken to bring the missus over to see us, and you with a new car and all.“
As he welcomed his guests with a hearty handshake, he pulled down the blind cord, and the masterpiece disappeared from view while they were stepping on the verandah.
I have read that the arts of social intercourse are inclined to fall into decay in the hurried times in which we live, but after that afternoon’s experience I refuse to believe it.
“Well, of all the surprises!” exclaimed Mrs Noonan, issuing forth in response to her husband’s shout. “Why, we was beginnin’ to think yer’d forgotten where we live!”
“We’ve been tryin’ these months to get over, but one thing an’ another turnin’ up,” said Regan.
“Go on with your excuses,” retorted Mrs Noonan, “Come on now, Mrs Regan, yer must take off your hat and make a proper visit of it while yer here.”
“And it’s the devil’s own business to get these men to take yer out, “I could hear Mrs Regan confiding as they disappeared into the front bedroom.
“Well, “ said Regan, sliding into a chair, “We took yer at yer word at last and slipped over to give yers a look up.”
I don’t profess to any clairvoyant powers, but I am sure Noonan was thinking : “Yer heard about the picture and come over to poke yer nose in,” but I may have been mistaken, for what he actually said was : “And yer welcome, Paddy. The farm ain’t that important that there ain’t a bit o’ time for sociable intercoursin’ between neighbors.”
“That’s just what I say,” agreed Regan, “ but you know how it is with the wimmen. There’s a bit of sewin’ they want to get done, or they must make some jam before the frost gets the pie-melons and when you do get ‘ em up to the scratch it’s ‘But, Paddy, we didn’t oughter go over without givin’ em warnin’. An’ I says, ‘ You never mind about that. Noonan and his missus ain’t that particular , and us knowing them that well!”
“Quite right,” said Noonan, “We ain’t ones for this ceremonia. Take us as yer find us, that’s our motter, and yer always welcome.”
At this stage the ladies joined the circle and the conversation became general. For my part, I sat back in silent admiration of Noonan. He was a social Napoleon. And of all those present was perhaps the only one able to appreciate his wonderful gift, for had I not seen him, in response to a desperate appeal from Septimus, signalled in pantomime from the kitchen, give his consent to another bottle being despatched to the artist in the barn ? It wasn’t until the third bottle was applied for that I thought the strain was becoming too great.
“Well, I suppose yer’ll have to be goin’,” he said to Regan. “It’s getting’ on for cow-time,”
“Oh, there ain’t no hurry, “ Regan assured him. “The kids can get the cows in and get ‘em started. It ain’t that often we get over to see yer that we’re goin’ to clear out that unfriendly.”
From then on, every time that Septimus appeared in the kitchen Noonan seemed on the point of leaping out of his chair, and when at last Regan and his wife had been shepherded to their ear and shaken hands with and made to promise that they wouldn’t be so long about coming over again, Noonan completely collapsed.
“There y’are, Jim,” he said, “That’s what some people’ll do from straight-out inquisitivity. The whole afternoon wasted, and that bloke lapping into the booze in the barn and every minute makin’ the job dearer. And now it’s only half an hour to cow-time and no chance of gettin’ him started again. But, by thunder, I won’t be beat! We’ll have to milk late, that’s all. Septimus! Missus! Get them kids together. Quick, hop over and get de-What’s-his-name! Go on, Septimus! Ain’t I gone to enough expense already ? The end of it’ll be I’ll have to go to town for another load of beer. Go on, Septimus, rouse him out!”
Noonan dragged out the paints and brushes and started to lower the blind.
“I can’t get him,” reported Septimus, returning presently. “He’s asleep.”
But strangely enough, the announcement had no effect on Noonan. He stood as one in a dream, gazing at the masterpiece. Then he said in an awed voice:
“Jim, there’s half the-picture gone!”
We all crowded round. Sure enough, Noonan was right. All that could be seen of Mrs Noonan was her left cheek, part of one hand and two feet. Noonan had fared better, for only his stomach was missing, together with the gold watch and chain. The half of Emmelina’s face that had been smiling was absent, only the gloomy section remaining. The younger children were comparatively intact, being only short of such minor features as an eye or two and an odd nose or ear.
“Saints save us! ” cried Mrs Noonan, “Did Regan get to it ?”
“No fear he didn’t,” said Noonan, his tone still hushed. “It’s a mystery, that’s what it is.”
“That ain’t a mystery, “ broke in Septimus, “I seen it at once. The rest of the picture’s on the other side.”
“And how the hell did it get on the other side ? demanded Noonan, leaping down the steps to investigate. “Be thunder, so it is!”
Sudden enlightenment cut him short.
“Oh,” wailed Mrs Noonan,” yer never thought of that. It’s the wet parts as come off when yer rolled it up!”
It seemed to me that the moment was opportune for a mere outsider to slip discreetly away. As I rode off down the hill I could still hear a heated exchange of recriminations issuing from the house.
“It’ll only go to show yer, Jim,” said Noonan, when I saw him next.” the expense an interferin’ neighbor can run yer into. It cost me another three quid to get him to paint it all in agen, let alone four days’ booze. But I tell yer, Jim, the drunker he is the better he paints . The parts he done again are twice as good as the others. The way he painted in me brother Jerry’s watch was so natural , you’d swear it was goin’. I tell yer, Jim, that bloke’s a damned sight cleverer than we thought.”
And so it proved. Not only did the watch appear to be going – so realistically had the artist handled it that it actually was going, even while Noonan was talking to me. It went with Mr de-Something-or-other …
THE MAIN ROAD by Roy Bridges (1930)
At noon the storm showed signs of abatement. Rain had fallen continusuely through night and morning, but was succeeded by showers coming with swirling wind, swift blackening of the heavens, and driving of sleet. In fitful sunshine, whiteness of snow through broken masses of cloud piled on the range was visible from Halford’s farm; between blast and blast of wind the sullen roaring of the river was audible throughout the house.
Halford passed morning and afternoon with his men, moving the stock from threatened pastures along the brimming banks. Water lay over the flats in deepening pools; the stretch of main road, sweeping past the house, formed a lean metalled track between sheet and sheet of water, meeting at every hollow. Ere returning of the house towards evening, with the assurance of security for stock, sheltering in stables, cattle sheds and sandy, needle-carpeted sanctuaries among sheoaks, Halford yielded to curiosity – concern – for the safety of the stone bridge built by prison labor in his boyhood and scathless from any flood within his memory.
He had not known such flood as this, such persistence of the rains as this. Promise at noon of clearing storm was not fulfilled; the clouds blackening like night itself, wind increasing in violence and velocity. Riding the mile to the bridge, Halford was buffetted, blown about, compelled to ply whip and spur to force his horse to the road. He was as persistent in this fancy to inspect the bridge before dark as in any purpose. He rode on, black cape flapping about him; narrow-brimmed, low felt hat pressed down on his brows; sleet beating upon his cheeks; mire splashing upon top-boots and breeches. He rode apace down through a greyness of wind-tossed trees, and out upon the bridge.
In brief, greenish light of dropping sun, between-crag and crag of cloud, he made swift survey of clouded, cloud-black hill and hill, of meadows merging with muddied waters up the valleys where the floods were out over the lower lands. He assumed that the farmhouses on the skirts of the hills were above possible rise of waters, and the farms nearer the stream already abandoned.
His thought, concern, passed swiftly to the supreme interest of the bridge: estimate of its strength, its endurance of unprecedented forces. He imagined, fantastically, these forces directed vengefully against the bridge as raised from suffering servitude; and the hate, hostility, the brooding passions of the prison gangs against the System and its creatures as clouding like a curse over the bridge – this hate in supernatural league with natural forces.
In lull of the wind, fully he realised the menace to the bridge from the rolling of the floods against it. He thought of storm-flung breakers upon a ship, but of this oncoming without recession as irresistible and infinitely more dreadful. Ere the pallid sunlight died, he looked down on the waters levelled against the bridge and believed that they had reached the keystones of the arches; leaning from saddle, he discerned trapped logs and tree-trunks; chaotic drift and whirl of fencing, hurdles, branches, and of drowned beasts; and he heard through the roaring of the waters the crashing blows of logs like battering-rams against the stone piers of the bridge.
Always he was conscious of the shuddering, quaking of the bridge. The terror of his horse suggested to him that it, too, fully sensed the peril. With this continuance of the rains for a few hours the bridge would surely go down in the nighty.
He assumed that the mail coach would not undertake that night a stage beyond the inn, eight miles down the road. He imagined Oliver Renfell’s cursing if his wife and he came up that day by coach from Hobarton, and were compelled to pass the night in the scant comfort of a roadside inn.
The thought of Emilia, as Renfell’s wife, returning after all the years, was like a stab of pain to mind and heart. He strove to repel the inevitable and tormenting vision of her beauty. He was not schooled, inured, to loss of her, despite the years of deprivation.
Sight held by turmoil; hearing dulled by roar of flood, crashing, groaning, creaking of timbers against the piers; fantasy, intruding through the barrier of his will passed to definite foreboding of imminent and grievous peril. This foreboding withstood the effort of his will to exclude Emilia from his mind as from his heart. He cursed himself for a fool: he was not even definitely informed that Renfell and his wife, returning from their European tour and residence of years in England, were travelling by coach from Hobarton on such a day. Even so, the coach would not be driven on through dangerous, flooded country.
carriage, with lamps already lit against the merging dusk, was approaching from the Renfell house far on across the bridge. Ere Halford turned, he understood the terror and resistance of the horses – watching a sharp and sudden struggle of the driver with them, plunging, swerving from the bridge; whip rising, falling. Renfell’s coachman, great-coated, high-hatted even on this streaming evening, handled his horses cruelly, powerfully; they came on at a mad gallop across the bridge. Halford drew to the right as horses and carriage thundered past him amid a flurry of mire and a volley of oaths from their driver. Maintaining their speed up- the steep ascent, they swept out of sight in the greyness of dusk and the blackness of trees.
Halford conjectured that the Renfell housekeeper, anticipating, or in receipt of, the master’s wishes, had directed that the carriage meet the coach at the inn. The flooding of the main road beyond the Renfell house – as the rising waters between bridge and house –- meant that the coach would not be driven over the final stages that night. Reining in, Halford turned and looked back for a final view of the bridge; foreboding grew deeper, darker, even as the falling night.
Renfell! – Halford admitted to his mind the dark, luxurious thought of Renfell dead; and in his jealous hate of him forgot, ignored, for the time, the cruel hurt to Emilia –- sorrow as overwhelmming as her love for Renfell. Thought projected picture –- of tottering, reeling bridge, collapse of the stone barrier to the flood; the crossing carriage; Renfell merged in the ruin, in the triumph of the waters; the pallid, high-nosed, sheering face of Renfell startled to the terror and agony of realisation; the brief, blind struggle as trapped, drowning rat; quenching of the light of insolent blue eyes.
But prescience of Renfell’s death at the bridge could not have hung as heavily as this foreboding, clouding Halford’s mind – Emilia, driven with Renfell through this night to the doomed bridge! He had the instant thought to overtake the carriage and warn the coachman of the full extent of peril, peril increasing with the rising waters between the bridge and the security of the Renfell house. He spurred on, till, with recollection of the speed of Renfell’s horses, the swiftness of their startled flight ahead, measured against the pace of his own horse, jaded by the work of the day, he drew in, and thence rode slowly to his home.
He planned to send word and warning from the house to Renfell on his way from the inn, and to direct watch for the carriage lamps on the return, and interception of the travellers if his warning failed. He imagined Renfell’s sneer at word from him, but Emilia’s fluttering thanks. He told himself that he was a fool – his mind on the verge of madness through his obsession, melancholy from loss. During the years of Emilia’s absence from the Colony with Renfell he had compelled himself stoically to endure, believing that his bodily activities –- in saddle, at plough, in harvest-field, in clearing of the bush, draining of swamp – and that his books of an evening, his sister Elinor’s companionship, visits of friends, had palliated his hurt of mind and heart, appeased his longing, lessened his melancholy comparison of promised happiness with Emilia as his wife, with the desolation of his life from loss to Renfell of, his his betrothed.
He had found life endurable – was conscious of no slackening, but, rather, deepening, of his affection for his home and land. He had resisted earliest impulses of transfer to Port Phillip –- impulse even of the gold discoveries. But The smouldering fires of passion had burned up on the first mention of the return of Renfell and his wife.
He dismounted at the iron gates of his stone-walled garden; walked up the avenue between leafless, wind-blown trees, and about the house into the stable-yard. Warmth, savors, steam and light of kitchen, flowed out in welcome to him on entering the house. He passed into the hall; hung up dripping cape and sodden hat; pulled off soaking gloves and much-splashed riding boots, and hurried upstairs to his room.
His arrival had stirred his servants to activity. Tub, can, steamed before the fire, in his room; towels were warming; black clothes, white linen and cravat were laid in readiness upon his bed; candles burned on chimney shelf and before high, oval dressing-glass. His parents, as wealthy colonists in Van Diemen’s Land, had retained the customs and conventions of their life in England: Elinor and he had not thought fit to depart from habit. The bath, the change of dress from damp and muddied riding-rig refreshing his body, offered respite, time to re-establish control before meeting Elinor at dinner.
The dressing-glass reflected him presently – tall, lean, austere; the touch of grey in black, slightly curling hair; trim line of whisker emphasising hardness of jaw; firm set of mouth; his melancholy eyes beneath dark brows had in their sombre depths recurrent flickers of flame this night – in his persistent, eager thoughts of Emilia in contrast with this foreboding of peril to her at the bridge.
As he extinguished the candles, he realised the strength of sounding gale about the house, the sweep of rain and sleet against the windows; night of storm succeeding night of storm. Inevitably, he visualised the ever-rising river, the ever-growing forces of the flood, of logs battering the bridge.
He went down swiftly to the kitchen to direct that warning be sent to Renfell, and, in additional precaution, watch kept from the upper window for the shining of the lamps of the returning carriage.
Glow of the hearth and light of oil lamps hanging from the rafters were blurred with steam, and the air thick with odors from roast and bubbling pots. Clatter and chatter of cook and maid-servants ceased when his presence in the kitchen was realised. He gave his orders clearly. Immediately after dinner the stable-boy should saddle, ride for the inn, warn Mr. Renfell of the danger at the bridge and convey proffer of hospitality for the night. One of the maids should watch for the carriage lamps. Even with this drift of rain, the lamps should be visible so far along the road as to allow Halford himself to intercept the carriage in the event of the lad’s failing to dissuade Mr. Renfell from continuing on his way.
Halford was aware of the huddled figure in the chimney corner – tatterdemalion, unkempt; yet paid scant heed to him. Many such wayfarers were received in the kitchen by his instruction, fed, and allowed the shelter of the barn for a night. He noted suddenly the fellow’s intentness of look and his leaning towards him, as if to catch his words concerning Renfell. Halford approached the hearth; tatterdemalion rose, hand flying up in salute.
From action, as from furtive eyes, aspect servile, expressionless, yet indefinitely malignant, Halford easily detected the origin of the man. Of middle-age, powerful, stooping. His black hair short still as from prison-crop; chin bristling with beard; hands coarsened, calloused. Ragged, buttonless jacket sodden; corduroy trousers wearing through at the knees; red-spotted handkerchief knotted at throat; battered slouch hat on the floor beside him. Features brutalised, degraded; eyes flickering, evil. Ticket-of-leave man – newly released felon? Halford had no care or count for this; he would see to it that the fellow was given a full meal and treated humanely. He asked, “Where are you from?”
“Hobarton way, sir.”
“Why? Wanting work?”
“Not on the road – no! Not about here!” – with glint, of eyes, and twisted grin. “Not about here!”
“What do you mean?”
“Wanting to get across the Strait, The gold diggings. There’s many of us gone. That’s all I mean.”
“But you mean, too, you’ve worked about here before,” Halford said, “When?”
Tatterdemalion mumbled, “Years ago! – When I was a lad. And after. On the bridge you was talking of! – Saying it was like to go.”
“Oh! You and your mates wouldn’t have grieved over the prospect of that, I suppose ?”
“No. If curses had come to aught, it’d have gone years ago – and us with it, in our time!”
“But that’s all over for you now,” Halford said. “You’re free. You’ve a chance at last ahead of you.”
“What’s left to the likes of me!” he mumbled, scowling. “And if ever I goes across the Strait! – Renfell, master; you was talking about Renfell. That’s Oliver Renfell, is it? You was meaning him? – Asking your pardon!”
“Yes. Why?” – noting the flicker of the eyes, the snarling note in the harsh, subdued voice. “What’s Mr. Renfell to do with you?”
“Nothing to me, sir. Nothing, of course! – Not nowadays. I worked for him once. Assigned – just after I came out from the Old Country. “
Halford nodded, turned away, and in an undertone issued new instructions to the cook. Let the man be given a full meal; let him have shelter in the barn for the night; but let her see to it that the doors were bolted and barred, and the windows shuttered. Not a night for a dog to be turned out, but . . .
Admitting to himself sympathy even with so ill-looking a rogue – turning his mind to Renfell and his brutal treatment of his servants. This fellow was one of many who had found no chance of honest living, reform, at the Colonist’s hands. Rebelling, absconding; hounded from fields to Port Arthur, labor in quarries, on the roads, the bridge.
Through sheer indifference he had not asked the vagrant’s name; the fellow would have lied in answer. Clearly hating Renfell, as many another hated Renfell. Snarl in his utterance of the name. Crediting Renfell – and justly – with the measure of his sufferings, degradation. As a lad, he might have responded to justice, reasonable kindness, guidance. But assigned to Renfell, driven by taunt, oath, lash of the whip, kick, to the penitentiary, the chain-gang . . .
Halford formed natural comparison of the warmth and comfort of the room in which Elinor awaited him, with the misery of southerly gale, driven sleet, mire of the road. Deep walls, shuttered windows and heavy curtains dulled the roaring of the river, and yet its sounding persisted, even through the rumbling of the wind about the chimneys, the lamentable crying of the wind, the groaning of tormented boughs.
For the bitter cold of the night an oval table was drawn near to the open hearth of the dining-room, and set for two, with a whiteness of linen, glitter of glass, steel, silver; color of jonquils in a crystal vase, and lit high and graciously by waxen candles. Candles were placed on sideboard and on chimney shelf. The flicker of their flames, the wind-blown burning of the logs upon the ochred hearth, made interplay of lights and shadows through the spacious room – finding the polish of mahogany, the gold and the ruby of decanters, colors of painted gown, uniform, flesh tint, of family portraits.
Elinor stood before the hearth. She was tall as Halford, and of a like austere distinction; older than he, yet her hair raven black. The coral and gold drops of her ear-rings, the coral and gold brooch, formed sole relief of color in her adornment. Her dress was severe in blackness of silk, in restriction of crinoline, and of ruffling lace at her neck. She gave him swift, curt greeting; complained that he was very late, and rang sharply for, service of dinner.
Yet, this protest against departure from the routine recorded, she set herself to entertainment of him, talking gaily, finding and suggesting interests in the farm, his day’s work, the storm. He was aware of her purpose this night – as on any night – of diversion of his thoughts from melancholy, folly of repining; of palliating, if not curing, cruel hurt of years since; broken troth, loss of Emilia Fayne to Oliver Renfell. He attributed Elinor’s not marrying, refusal of this and that eligible suitor, to her devotion to himself. He observed that she was watching, studying, him; by the concern in her fine eyes she was distressed at his abstraction, gloom; realising his thoughts and the quickening of his pain of long ago.
He endeavored then to respond to her show of vivacity in speech and laughter. He told her of the peril to the bridge; the Renfell carriage driven down to meet the travellers’ returning; his apprehension for their safety, and his warning to be sent to Renfell. Drinking more wine than was his habit; endeavoring to win from glass after glass of port relief from mental torment, hopeless longing; courage and control to receive Renfell and Emilia, and welcome them as his guests that night. Offer of hospitality, he said, was inevitable on the interruption of their homeward journey.
Elinor conceded this without enthusiasm. She would have fires lit in the guest rooms and supper prepared. She added sharply and directly, “You’re sure you wish this, Will? Is there any real need to have the fellow and his wife under your roof?”
“What else?” he asked heavily. “Even if the bridge be safe to cross – and I do not think it – much of the road beyond will be under water with this rain continuing. In any case, Elinor, we’re bound to meet them sooner or later. Why not tonight?” –
“But are we bound to meet them?”
“Why, yes. Renfell and I must be thrown into association, little as I like the prospect. And you and his wife. I cherish no grudge against her, Elinor.”
She said disdainfully, “I don’t believe that, Will. Frankly! She was to marry you, and she threw you over – for Renfell! Of all men, Renfell! Why should you forgive her? Unless you’re infatuated with her still… There, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No. There was no need.”
“I’m sorry. You have forgiven her then, and Renfell! Well, I’ve forgiven neither. I loved Emilia, but I dislike Renfell’s wife. “
He said slowly and bitterly, “You’ll not show your dislike, I trust, if we’re compelled to receive them to-night,”
She answered, with indignant show of color. “It’s not my habit to insult guests, is it? Possibly, Will, I’m cleverer than you in hiding my sentiments. Oh, quite possibly!”
She rose from table, moved to the hearth, and took up her shawl from a chair. The gale was riotous about the house; the lash of hail on shutters was audible; hailstones fell hissing on the hearth. He aided her to drape her shawl about her shoulders.
“It’s no more to my liking than yours to have Renfell here, Elinor,” he muttered grimly. “But I’d not turn a dog out of doors to-night – Even Renfell!”
Halford, informed by the maid of the approach of the carriage, and hearing the roll of wheels up the drive itself, controlled emotion at the thought of meeting. He had scarcely expected Renfell to heed his warning, or to accept his proffered hospitality for the night. He hurried out into the lamp-lit hall; Elinor was coming downstairs from survey of the preparations for Renfell and his wife.
On opening the door, Halford encountered the fierce rush of wind and sleet. Emilia had already stepped down from the carriage drawn up by the steps; with a swift order to the coachman to close the carriage door, she came running lightly up to Halford. Meeting her in the porch, he realised agitation, distress in her.
“Will! – Thank you for your warning. Let me in, please! Don’t let’s stay here!” . . .
“But Renfell?”
She said, with swift, shrill laughter, “He’s asleep – asleep! Don’t rouse him – he’s in such a mood! Do let’s go in! – Elinor!”
She passed by him into the hall. He followed and closed the door, assuming Renfell to be lying drunk. Emilia, greeted with smile, kiss and indefinite expression of pleasure from Elinor, turned, offering her hand to him. He took heed of wanness in her beauty, dimming of blue eyes with tears, her rising blush of shame, emotion – as of her elegance of violet-ribboned bonnet, dark vel- vet mantle, and violet silken skirts billowing in the draught through the hall; the flash of jewels at her ears; and the flut- tering, trembling, of the little hand lying lightly in his.
“You were wise to take my warning, Mrs. Renfell,” he said stiffly. “The bridge has gone , or is likely to go at any moment, and the flats are under water by now. You’ll stay with us to-night, of course. I’ll go bring Renfell in.”
“Wait! – Listen, please – Oh, listen!” – as he turned to reopen the door.
Elinor intervening said gently, “My dear child, don’t let’s talk here. Pray, come to the fire!” – and led her at once from hall to dining-room.
Halford followed, realising terror in Emilia – from her agitation, her sharp cry to him to stay. He had believed joy, relief, in her excitement, swift, trembling words, at meeting him; pressure of the little fluttering hand in his strong hand. He remained silent, seeming impassive despite his pity for her and his raging resentment against the drunken Renfell. Holding his eager eyes averted from her he Pushed forward a chair for her before the blaze of hearth, and, Moving to the sideboard, poured a glass of wine.
“No wine, thank you, Will – Mr. Halford. Elinor, I couldn’t make him understand, I mean when the boy stopped the carriage. Are you sure, Will, that it’s not safe – we can’t go on – reach home?”
“What need?” Elinor asked. ”You and your husband are welcome here to-night. Everything is ready for you. Come! Let me loosen your bonnet-strings and cloak. Will, go to Mr. Renfell!”
Emilia cried out, with increasing agitation. “Oh, no, no, no! – Not yet! Don’t rouse him, please. You don’t understand.”
“I think we do,” Elinor said grimly. ”Dear Emilia, don’t distress yourself any further over a trifle. In the morning Mr. Renfell will be himself again.”
Halford was moving to the door; Emilia, starting up, white and trembling, whispered, ”Please, please don’t go! I can’t stay here to-night – thank you – thank you. I wouldn’t have come here – but I was so much afraid. Not the bridge – not even – but afraid – afraid!”
Halford said harshly, “You mean he’s in no fit state for you to travel with him. Drunk. Dangerous. I know of him in drink. I’m well able to handle him.”
She murmured, head drooping, “I mean that – yes.”
“Elinor, pray, take Mrs. Renfell to her room, I’ll go to Renfell.”
Emilia, with starting tears, cried, out, “But you don’t know how he hates you, Will. Sober, he hates you, and tonight – awake he’s mad! Taunting me. Threatening you. All his old hate for you rising up in him, as he draws nearer you and his home. Elinor, Will, I wouldn’t speak like this about him, only he’s not safe - for me. For you, Will! He has his pistols in the carriage by him. He’s been handling them – muttering to himself pointing. He’s asleep now. Don’t wake him!” But with sudden shriek, “He’s awakened! – Hear him!” – at shattering of glass as from carriage window; voices in altercation; Renfell’s shrill oath.
Trampling of horses; sudden roll of wheels . . .
Halford strode instantly to the house door, and opened it. Again it was driven wide to the wind. He saw through whirl of sleet the glimmer of the carriage lamps down the drive; he heard the crack of whip, arid Renfell’s voice cursing. Renfell’s coachman was staggering up the steps; Emilia, in terror, was at Halford’s back; Elinor endeavoring to draw her from the reach of wind and sleet.
“What’s happened, man?” Halford asked. “Why has Mr. Renfell driven off alone?”
He woke and wanted to know whose house this was, and where Mrs. Renfell was. Like a madman, he is! He told me to drive off at once. He wouldn’t stay – not he! I told him the bridge wasn’t safe, but he only cursed. He jumped out; smashing the glass; climbed up, and was off.”
“Run down to the gates!” Elinor called. ‘He’ll have to pull up there.”
“They’re open!” Halford muttered. “I ordered them to be propped hack for the carriage. Take Mrs. Renfell out of the cold.”
“One of your men’s gone after him,” the coachman said. “Running at full speed.”
“One of my men! Who? The boy?”
I can’t say, sir. He come round the house, just as master was driving off. He ran fast as a dawg after him.”
“Go through to the kitchen, man, out of this rain. Tell them to get you soup or coffee!”
Who could have raced after Renfell? Halford had the sudden thought – the vagrant – hate of Renfell – and tempted momentarily to let Renfell go his way toward the bridge and the flooded lands. Of what concern was the man to him? Renfell the drunkard, bully; Renfell and this wan, hysterical woman, his wife, who had been a lovely, laughing girl.
Halford cried out, “I’ll ride after him. I may stop him before he reaches the bridge. Emilia, don’t fear for him;” –
He sped about the house to the stable, rejoiced to find the lad with a lantern burning, his horse not yet unsaddled; he muttered to him savagely, “Renfell’s driven on. I must ride after the fool!” —- led out the horse and clattered out of the stable-yard.
Turning in the saddle, he saw against the lamplight Emilia and Elinor in the doorway; saw them wave to him, and heard their voices faintly. He sent his horse then apace down the avenue, through the gateway, and out into the road. Bare-headed, cloakless, without whip or spur, having no heed of buffeting winds or thinning shower, nothing except a bitter amusement at the speed at which he was borne down the road and the ironic realisation that he rode like a madman through the night to intervene between Renfell and his death.
Halford thought to pass the vagrant on the road, but, in fitful light of moon, glancing to right and left he did not see him. Now riding at a mad gallop – the flooded river sounding dreadfully to him, and yet more dreadfully as he drew nearer, nearer. Not till he topped the last rise, before the wooded depth toward the river shut the road from moonlight, did he see the carriage; and, galloping, had no wonder at its reeling, swaying progress – with Renfell’s drunken driving. Yet he wondered at a slackening of its speed, so that, galloping down, he drew nearer to it and must overtake it.
He saw the coach, the plunging horses clear to the moon. He heard nothing save the roaring of the river; he saw flash of flame from the coach; he believed that a figure fell into the road. Crying out, he rode madly, even as madly Renfell’s horses plunged forward; now loosened, he judged, from all control and bolting down toward the bridge. He reined in by the figure huddled in the road; he dismounted, stooped, and drew back the cloak muffled about the face.
Renfell! Linen at breast scorched – dabbling. Renfell motionless, lifeless; sneering lips darkly smeared; the moonlight playing white upon him. Rattle of wheels, clatter of hoofs upon the road, lost in the sounding of the wind, triumphant sounding of the flood, as though no obstacle now spanned the river bed, damned up the drift of forest and of farm.
Halford heard a cry shrilling through sounding winds and waters. Bolting horses, carriage, vagrant swept with them, should now have reached the bridge – the sundered ruin of the bridge!
THE EARLY VICTORIAN by J. H. M. Abbott (1931)
Coming soon.
MULLIGAN TAUBADA by Osmar E. White (1931)
Coming soon.
THE KING OF LUGGERTOWN by Vance Palmer (1933)
THEY were holding a dance at Albert’s house in Luggertown. It was not an ordinary dance, a mere gathering of luggerboys and coloured fishermen, such as might take place any Saturday night during the winter: it was quite a formal occasion. Albert had built a new boat, and was putting her on the water. She lay on the slips among the mangroves, a craft of strength and sailing-power for work among the reefs, with every piece of timber in her shell cut from the natural curve of long-seasoned wood, and none of it bent or strained in the making. Albert had called her the Marie, after Combo George’s daughter.
“Albert — he built her for you,” the other girls giggled, hovering round Marie.
She tossed her head, a look of passionate contempt in her dark eyes.
“Did he? Well, he can take her back and call her some other name. Me? I don’t want her or him. The old sea-hawk! Think everyone’s scared when he comes round, and ’s got to do everything he wants.”
But she spoke almost under her breath, for no one took Albert’s name lightly in Luggertown, and she had no less awe of him than the rest. Over that collection of shanties and tin huts that lined the banks of the mangrove inlets, a mile away from the port, he was the acknowledged king. He owned land and half a dozen fishing-boats; besides, he was a man of power. His house stood out above the others, as large and solidly built as any white man’s, and it was here they all gathered on festive occasions. Albert was hospitable by nature. He liked to feel he was king and could call them all together.
A big, low-browed Darnley Islander, bull-necked and hoarse-voiced, he was the most amiable man in the world till he was crossed. Then passion flowed through him in a surging torrent, his eyes became small and bloodshot like a charging boar’s, and he was liable to run amok. Once he had been a great source of trouble to the police in the port. There was the time he had done two years for brutally savaging a man who had caught him dynamiting fish; there were other unpleasant episodes in his past. But they were forgotten by the police now. Albert was useful to them in keeping order at Luggertown: it had become a different place since he had acquired property and been acknowledged king. He ruled with a rod of iron, and there were no wild, lawless jamborees when the luggers came in from along the reef.
“Albert’s as good as a branch-station and three men to us down there,” the sergeant said.
IT was a mixed but respectable crowd at his house now. There were luggerboys in clean Jackie Howes and drill trousers, native fishermen, a Malay storekeeper or two, women of all ages and colours. The young people danced with slow, shuffling steps to the music of an accordeon, played by a Torres Island boy; old people sat on the floor and looked on; a few of the men gambled in a room outside. In the intervals of the dances the luggerboys started up choruses they all knew, sitting round in a circle while one of them kept time with a couple of sticks on a kettledrum. Out over the mangroves of the inlet floated the strange songs of the reef and the Torres Islands, sea songs as beautiful as any that ever came from human throat:
Kalem kabilyeh-eh, Daido kabilyeh . . .
Their faces changed when they sang and became sober, passionately intent. They might have been pouring out hymns at some religious service.
But when they danced, the eyes of most of the boys were on Marie, Combo George’s daughter. She was slim, lithe, seductive, with an olive face and faintly pencilled eyebrows curved in a crescent. A fastidious, perverse girl, different from the others. She had been educated for two years in a convent, and had been filled with a restless dissatisfaction ever since she had come back to Luggertown. Combo George, her father, was a poor white, a dealer in fish, who lived in a tumbledown house with shed attachments near one of the little jetties in the mangroves.
Who would Marie marry? That was a question that troubled the heads of all the women in Luggertown. Weston, a white fisherman, had shown an interest in her, and sometimes on Saturday nights took her to the pictures in the port. Charlie, a quiet-eyed boy of twenty, was passionately in love with her. And now Albert, the king of Luggertown, had shown the way his thoughts were trending by calling his new boat after her. He had been a widower for three years, and it was time for him to marry again.
“She don’t want him,” said one of the women.
Another jeered.
“Talk! Young girl talk. You think she no like to live in this house – plenty money, plenty flash clothes? You see.”
“Albert – he always get what he want,” said a third.
Talk and laughter, and the swish of feet over the polished floor as the young girls danced with the lugger-boys. In a room at the back, Albert was playing a game like banker with some of the older men. A cigarette in a long holder was tilted upward from the comer of his mouth; his white teeth gleamed as he gathered in the money. He always had luck at gambling; that was what had given him his start in the first place. As he waited for them to put their money on the cards he bent his powerful, ape-like shoulders over the table, and let a stream of smoke issue from his nostrils.
“Come along,” he grinned. “ A chance for someone! Break me and take the bank.”
Combo George, a little, dried-up man with a skull like a polished nut, pushed back his chair and rose.
“ No good. You’ve cleaned me out, Albert. Last bob gone.”
Albert smiled. He knew Combo.
“ What about that load of fish you got from Charlie this afternoon?”
Combo wavered.
“Not paid for, worse luck. That belongs to him.”
“So? You got nothing, eh? … Well, what about Marie I pay fifty on her.”
The others looked at one another and grinned, not knowing whether it was a joke or not. They had wondered if there was anything in Albert’s mind when he had called his new boat the Marie. He had never hung around the girl, or shown any particular interest in her: it would be beneath him to make love like a boy. But Marie was different from the other girls: she had a will of her own, and would not come at the whistle of even a man like Albert. Besides, she was Combo’s daughter, and Combo, for all his shambling figure and secret hankering after opium, was a white man.
Albert tossed a counter towards him.
“ Come on! No use break the game up yet. Play on.”
Combo’s fingers hesitated, then closed on the counter. After some hesitation he placed it on a card which turned out to be the deuce of hearts. With airy confidence, Albert turned up a king. He grinned as he rose from his seat.
“You lose again, eh? Bad luck tonight, Combo. Come on; you take the bank, and might be your luck turn. I give you something to play with.”
With a lordly gesture he swept a heap of coins over to Combo, then stood back, taking a fresh cigarette from his case. There was no emphasis on the incident, but everyone in the room knew that a deal had been completed: soon everyone in the house knew. In the room where they were dancing, the whisper flew round the room like a wasp:
“ Albert – he played Combo for Marie, and Combo lost. Albert – he mean to marry her all right.”
All eyes were fixed on the king when, a little later, he strode into the room, the long cigarette-holder still in the corner of his mouth, his eyes flashing amiability and triumph. The accordeon struck up a dance-tune. With a flick of his fingers he tossed the freshly lit cigarette out of the window and walked straight up to Marie, who was standing with her back deliberately turned to him, “Come along!”
There was a command in the grunt. Almost against her will she turned and let him slip his dark, powerful arm around her waist. Anger, pride, fear, were all written in the face that was hidden in his shoulder. A whisper of what had happened in the other room had come to her: she was trembling with resentment and with a longing to let her pent-up passion go in a tirade against the man who held her. Yet she knew his strength and power. It sapped all the self-will out of her.
Almost as soon as he let her go she was running home across the muddy gullies to the shed by the river, her white scarf trailing behind her in the night.
“ I’m not going to marry him -— never,” she said in an hysterical voice to Charlie, who had followed her. “ I’d sooner chuck myself in the river. I will, too, if they make me marry him. Kill him first, before I do it.”
She caught the scarf that had been twined round her throat and passionately tore it into fragments. Charlie, a quiet, soft-eyed boy, who had been in love with her ever since they were youngsters, said gently:
“No use talking like that, Marie. If Albert want to marry you, you run off to your uncle on Heron Island. I take you in the boat.”
Her dark eyes flashed impatiently.
“ And what good would that do ? I couldn’t spend all my days there.”
All that Charlie had been striving for months to say came out with a rush of feeling:
“ I got a boat of my own, Marie. No need for me to stay in Luggertown. Anywhere along the coast I can fish and make good living. Arlington, Port Sayce, one of the islands. You marry me and we go away together. I make you happy, Marie.”
Her head was turned away, and her eyes fixed on the little lights winking like fireflies among the mangroves of the inlet. She hardly seemed to have heard him. All her life she had looked down on Charlie. He was slow: he had not the dash of the boys from the luggers. Besides, he was obviously coloured, and she was proud of the white strain in her blood.
“Albert—I’m not frightened of him,” he went on earnestly. “ In Luggertown he’s big man. But in Arlington, Port Sayce—he no more than any other man there. You marry me, Marie. I make you good home—by cripes, I will.” She burst out angrily.
“Go away. You know I don’t want you—or anyone else. Leave me alone.”
For a few moments she had toyed with the idea of running off to her uncle’s on Heron Island. He was her brother’s father, a white man, but a little mad. Living alone on the island, he caught turtles, cured beche-de-mer, and sometimes came across to the port in his cutter. But what would she do in a place like that, where no boat ever came except an occasional lugger from Thursday Island ? It would be a living death.
SHE was really thinking of Weston, the fisherman, who sometimes took her out on Saturday evenings, and had once given her a brooch set with catseyes. She had often dreamed that he would marry her, and that they would live in a little cottage among the white people at the port. Weston had blue eyes, an easy, happy-go-lucky manner, and plenty of money to spend -— at least, during the kingfish season. It would be a proud thing to be his wife.
But he had taken her out, at odd times, for over a year now, and had never hinted at marriage. Flatteries came easily to his lips, but she could not tell what was in his mind. Until now she had never wanted to hurry him, or make him come to the point. She was only eighteen, and there was plenty of time ahead.
“ He’ll be fair mad when he hears about Albert,” she told herself. “ He’ll want to shoot him right away. I know he will.”
All that week, while Weston’s boat was out trolling for kingfish along the reef, she dreamed of the day when he would return. It was taken for granted in Luggertown now that she was going to marry Albert, and very soon. Women looked at her and smiled over their paling fences as she went down the muddy lanes: young girls wanted to take her arm. She was envied by all of them.
But there was hotness in her heart. “ Albert had never spoken to her: he went his way as if it was all settled above her head. Her father was sunk in some sort of opium dream, and kept to himself in the shed by the jetty. She felt a web tightening round her, and all the afternoon she sat till sundown on the granite spit that ran far out into the inlet, waiting for Weston’s boat.
IT came at last, threading its way through the mangroves, its ice-boxes full of kingfish and its crew in great good humour about their haul. In all the port there was not a fisherman like Weston. He seemed to know by instinct the best reefs for red schnapper and coral cod, and when the kingfish came up from the south he never beat home without a full catch. Marie waited till he had made his bargain about prices with the dealers, and then stole down to where his boat was moored beside the jetty in the mangroves.
“Well, Marie?” he hailed her. “All free to night ? What about a meal in the port and moving-pictures afterwards? I pull out in the morning.”
In a passionate outburst she poured forth her story. Her eyes were dark with unshed tears, but it was resentment that put the tremolo in her voice; all the tragic passion of her thwarted life flooded through her at that moment. Weston stood against the rails watching her—the olive face with its small features, the smooth throat, the slim figure that seemed all a-quiver with feeling. Never before had he seen her so moved, and it disturbed him. He was a man who lived lightly himself: no feuds or enmities ever rankled in his mind, and the sunrise always brought a new day. Curly headed, sunbitten, smiling, he skimmed carelessly over the shallows of life and avoided the deep waters. It was not pleasant to see Marie so wrought-up and distracted when he was looking forward to a jolly evening.
“ I’ll drown myself,” she was saying. “ Yes, I mean it. If I have to marry him, I don’t care what happens to me.”
Weston, looking at her agitated face, tried to calm her as Charlie had done.
“ Now, Marie, it’s no use talking like that. You’re not the sort of girl to throw a fit over nothing. They can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. Have it out with your father. He’s a white man, after all, and he won’t let Albert hold to his bargain.”
She gave a gesture of contempt.
“ My father! I’ve got nothing to hope from him -— nothing, I tell you. Sell me for a tin of opium, he would. And he’s afraid of that old crocodile -— scared to death, like all the rest of them.”
Weston laughed.
“ Crocodile? You’ve got Albert in the gun all right, Marie. But he’s not such a bad sort. A holy terror if his temper’s roused, but easy to handle as a youngster if you take him the right way. Don’t cross him, and you can get what you like out of him. There’s worse men than the old king.”
Fear, anger, disillusion, seemed to penetrate her very heart as she listened to him. For awhile she was silent, watching him, and then she said, in a broken whisper:
“You want me to marry him?”
“ Oh, I’m not saying that,” said Weston evasively. “ You’re your own mistress, Marie, and no girl ought to be forced to marry a man she don’t want. But there’s not many around here would turn down Albert. He’s got plenty of money, and is making more. That boat he’s launching in a few days -— Lord, I wish I had her.”
It was his voice, rather than what he said, that broke down the last of her reserves. She saw in a terrible flash how futile her hopes of a little white cottage in the port had been: he had never intended to marry her. A torrent of anger gushed through her. She tore the cats-eye brooch from her neck and threw it at his feet.
“ Take it back!” she stormed. “ I hate you! Lies you tell me -— all lies. … I hate you. All that money you spent on me -— I’d throw it in your face if I had it now.”
And she vanished in a cloud of fury among the mangroves.
WESTON looked after her with a relieved but uneasy smile. Little spitfire! What did she expect of him? That he would go to the King of Luggertown and make a scene about her? He had no warrant for that, and, besides, he knew better than to quarrel with Albert or any of these coloured people at the inlet. Or perhaps she expected him to marry her and settle down to the life of a “ combo,” like her father. Not quite! She was pretty enough, and a lively companion for an evening at the port, but he knew where to draw the line.
“ Well, that’s that,” he said to himself, tugging his grip from under the bunk to get out his shore-going clothes. “ Cut the painter once and for all, and perhaps just in time. Better for a man to stick to his own people. He runs less risk of waking up with a knife in his ribs.”
It seemed as if all the doors of escape were closed to Marie. For all her spirit, she could not resist the silent pressure that was being put upon her. The King of Luggertown was getting everything ready for the wedding. It was to be a great affair, a celebration such as the settlement had never seen before, for Albert had the money to spend, and was determined to make an impression. Many boats were in port. The cyclone season had come, and it was dangerous to be out along the reef. They lay packed among the mangroves of the inlet -— fishing-boats, luggers, craft of every shape and kind -— waiting till the bad time had passed and it was safe to be out at work again.
One of the smallest was Charlie’s. Moody, dispirited, at odds with life, he sat all day on his still deck, and would not go up to the settlement, where the King was swaggering about, giving orders. He hated Albert, and yet was afraid of him. Ever since he was a boy, Albert had been the most powerful man in Luggertown, and men had been ready to jump when he gave an order. The thought of him marrying Marie made Charlie cold around the heart. Yet what could he do ? Albert had always got what he wanted. There was no use go- ing against him.
IT was a still, close night, with the monsoonal heat lying heavy on the mangroves of the inlet, and a feeling of oppression in the air, as of something about to break. Charlie was squatting on the hatch, watching the sinister summer lightning play round the horizon, when a white figure suddenly appeared on the bank five yards away.
“ Come on,” said a panting voice. “ You promised to take me over to my uncle’s at Heron Island. Well, I’m going. Now.”
It was Marie, breathless and worked-up, all her belongings in the battered grip she was carrying. Charlie was staggered.
“You want to go now? To-night?”
“ Now -— of course now,” she stormed impatiently. “ If he knows I’m running away he’ll kill me.”
Charlie shook his head ruefully.
“ Too late. The cyclone flag -— it’s up at the post-office. Big storm’s waiting out there.”
“ I don’t care,” she said hysterically. “ What does it matter, as long as I get away from here?”
Her childish egoism made Charlie’s heart gather up in a hard ball. She was always thinking of herself -— only herself. She wouldn’t marry him, but she was quite ready to take advantage of his help. And as long as she got away it didn’t matter what happened to him or his boat!
“ Nearly three weeks ago I want to take you away, Marie,” he told her. “ I ask you to come to Heron Island, but you turn away. Now it’s too late. Young Harry -— he won’t be back for two days or more. And even if the cyclone flag wasn’t flying … You think I could take this boat out alone?”
“ I’ll help you,” she said desperately. “ It’s not the first time I’ve handled a sail or taken the tiller. Aren’t I as good as young Harry on a boat?”
He shook his head.
“ No, Marie. You wait two, three days -— perhaps a week. Only mad people would go out to-night.”
Her eyes flashed in the dark. All her pent-up fear and exasperation flowed out in a rush of feeling.
“ Coward! You’ll never grow into a man—never! Now I know why I grow cold inside when you ask me to marry you. . . . Coward!”
The contempt in her tone stung Charlie like a lash. She was turning away impetuously, but he caught her wrist with one hand and the battered grip with the other. There was cold madness in his eyes.
“ Coward, am I?. All right, Marie: you see. . . . Come along now.”
A FEW minutes later, he had the engine started, and was moving out of the mangroves and down the dark inlet, a chaos of mixed emotions warring within him. He knew that as soon as the faint chugging sounded through the settlement half a hundred eyes would be staring through the dark to see whose boat was moving out. Marie’s escape would be discovered. There would be an alarm, a hubbub of voices, people rushing up to the big house to tell Albert. Before he reached the last beacon Albert would be after him in his new boat, the Marie.
But he was not greatly troubled about Albert. It was the contempt in the girl’s words that was rankling within him, forming a hard knot that would not dissolve. He did not know whether there was more love or hatred in the feeling he had for her. She despised him: she was using him for her own ends. And, though he had always been quiet and gentle with her, new harshness was rising in him now, making him want to show her he could not be trodden beneath her heel.
“ Going to hoist the sail ? ” she asked him, her hand on the tiller.
“ No. Can’t you see how it’s blowing? Well, it’s going to blow worse. Get down below.”
He took the tiller from her roughly and swung round the last beacon. It was there, passing the big headland, that the wind really struck them, heeling the boat over on its side and drenching them with spray from stern to bowsprit. A solid wall of wind was pouring from the south-east, humming through the bare stays, making the boat quiver in every plank as it responded to the engine’s drive. They had left the protection of the land and were out in deep water. The lights of the port were only a blur in the distance.
Wind that had no bite of cold in it, but that blinded the eyes like dry snow! A dark sky overhead that showed no star to steer by, and that seemed to come pressing down, lower and lower, dropping its weight on the boat! But what troubled Charlie most was the fact that it was not a true sea. Combers broke over the boat at one moment from starboard, at another from port. As a fisherman, he knew the meaning of that: it brought a mental picture of chaos. Something evil and terrible was lurking in the night, out there beyond the reef.
And it was fifty miles, east by north-east, to the home of Marie’s uncle on Heron Island. To make the passage one had to thread through a medley of reefs, some dry, some only exposed at low tide. It was now, when the little boat was being tossed like a cork on the tormented waves, that Charlie really saw what madness he had undertaken. He had allowed his usual caution to be swept away by a girl’s spiteful word:
“ Coward!”
It thrummed through his body now like the wind through the stays. It made him grit his teeth as he clung to the tiller, trying to pick up some landmark he knew in the night.
A rending sea that seemed to lift the boat up to the sky, then smash it down beneath a pitiless weight of water! Marie, who had been lying dazed and helpless in the little cockpit, appeared suddenly at Charlie’s side.
“Where are we, Charlie?”
The answer was almost blown out of his mouth.
“ Just abreast of Rennie Cay. … Get below again.”
She caught his arm, desperation in her eyes.
“Rennie Cay? Then why not go in there? . . . Oh, Charlie, I’m scared. It’s getting worse.”
“Yes, and it’s a long way to go yet. Hasn’t really begun.”
There was a kind of mad triumph in his voice. She felt it as she clutched at the stays, fear trembling through her.
“Then run into Rennie Cay. You know the channel, don’t you? Please, Charlie . . . I’ve never been out in a blow before. I didn’t know how bad it could be. We haven’t a hope of getting through those reefs between here and Heron Island.”
Charlie was silent a moment. He wanted to say, with savage resentment:
“No, we haven’t a hope. You’ve done both of us in—the boat as well.”
Instead, he swung round toward Rennie Cay, and said quietly, above the roaring wind:
“All right. You hang on to the tiller while I go for’rud and see if I can make the entrance.”
Lying down flat, with the water washing over him, he strained through the dark for a sight of the big niggerheads that marked the passage through the coral. They were hardly through before the storm broke in full fury. All that had gone before was merely the mutter and growl of an animal about to spring. The real leap came with a fierceness that stood the boat up on end and hurled them like small lumps of metal against the low rails at the stem. Then with a roar the heavens seemed to split asunder, and the elements -— air, earth and water -— to be mixed in a whirling chaos.
Blinded by the salty spume, deafened by the roar, Charlie drove the boat in towards the strip of beach. He was a different man when the call came for action. All the slowness and hesitancy fell from him, and he knew just what to do. If he could make the boat fast on the lee side of the cay he might save her.
But the water inside the reef was already advancing in, wall after wall; with the engine running full out he could only make a few yards a time, like an ant climbing a pole. He knew that at any time they might be blown out over the reef again, to destruction. When the keel finally grated on the coral sand, he caught the girl by the shoulder.
“Jump out, quick! Make for shelter -— some sand-ridge. Soon I’ll follow.”
She could not hear him fully, but she grasped his meaning. Power was flowing through him; in spite of their desperate plight, he felt strong and alive. And he knew now that he had mastery over Marie. She was ready to obey the thought in his mind before it was spoken.
Howling in the sky, as if insane, demons were fighting in the upper air! A roaring and rending on land as of trees being tom up by the roots! Quick as thought Charlie got the coral anchors out and made them fast astern, one to port and the other to starboard. Then he felt in the bows for the big cable he always carried since he had been caught in the gale two years before. It seemed the work of hours to secure one end to the nose of the bucking boat and carry the heavy coil up the beach. Twice Charlie stumbled in the sand and fell exhausted, his hands raw and his head spinning. At last he blundered into a cocoanut palm, bent nearly double, and twisted the cable round it, straining till he felt it tauten.
It was the most he could do. Dazed and battered, he dropped to the sand, worming a hole for his body and covering his head with his coat. The air was full of snapped branches, whirling leaves, flying debris, and at intervals a liquid light poured over the tiny cay, blinding the eyes. But it was that demonic shrieking in the upper air that was hardest to shut out from the senses. It seemed the voice of creatures from another world, awful creatures with bat wings that darkened the sky, and mocking eyes filled with a lust for destruction.
Towards midnight there was a lull. It came so suddenly that one could almost hear the silence flow back like a returning tide. Charlie half-raised himself from the sand as a figure groped towards him.
“ Charlie! That you, Charlie? . . . Oh, Charlie, I’m frightened.”
It was a child shattered by fear that was speaking. Charlie’s voice came out with a confidence that surprised him:
“No need for that. We’re all right. So’s the boat. . . . Lie down in this hole in the sand. Here, let me put the coat over you.”
She was cowed and shivering.
“Is it going to come back?”
“ Yes, it’ll come back all right. But no worse than before. We’ll see it through.”
She was talking, half to herself, in a quavery voice:
“ I heard a cry, out there on the reef. Someone shouting for help. I’m dead sure it was that. I was scared it was you, Charlie.”
He was conscious of something flowing toward him in the dark: her hand touched his bare arm, as if she wanted to make sure of his bodily presence. He laughed complacently.
“ No need to be scared about me. I’m all right. So are you, Marie, so long as you’re with me. Not the first cyclone I’ve battled through.”
With a roar the wind was on them again, pouring back from the opposite direction, scooping the sea up to fling it on the sand. But, huddled together, they had no fear of anything it could do to them. Deep down in the still centre of his mind, Charlie was thinking of what the girl had said about hearing the cry from the reef. Had it come from Albert? He was certain that Albert would follow them, no matter what storm warnings were flying. He knew Albert. Danger was nothing to him when he saw red; he was like a maddened bull.
But Charlie was not afraid of him now. Some power had come upon him, turning him from a boy into a man.
Just before dawn he woke from a broken sleep to find a stillness in the air about him. The cyclone had blown itself out, though the sea was still booming on the reef. Quietly he rose, leaving Marie still curled up in sleep, and made his way down to the beach. In the dim light he could see the boat was safe, held taut between the coral-anchors and the palm. A pride in his own capacity filled him as he saw her lying there, not a stay snapped, or a timber broken, though the sea was full of weed and floating debris.
A LITTLE further along the beach he stood staring at some wreckage washed up on the sand -— a snapped mast, a few shattered planks, the top of a hatch. It was the new paint on them that first quickened his blood, and he stooped to examine them in the breaking dawn, his suspicion gradually growing to a certainty. Yes, it was the Marie, all right: he had watched her being built, and knew every copper nail in her hull. Marie had been right when she heard a voice crying out from the reef.
For awhile he stood there, hardly knowing what he felt, yet more conscious than ever of the power within him. When he went back, Marie was sitting up in the sand, her eyes still heavy with sleep and exhaustion.
“ It’s over,” she said.
“ Yes, it’s over, all right.”
“ And how soon will we be able to go on to Heron Island?”
“ We’re not going there,” he said definitely. “ You don’t want to go, Marie. Soon we go back to port -— to get married. No need to be afraid of the King of Luggertown now. I’m as much king there as anyone. Yes, that’s so, Marie. From now on you’re mine -— see? And I don’t give you up to anyone.”
She did not know about the wreckage on the beach, but she was thrilled by the new authority in his voice and his eyes. In her heart she had already made the surrender. For a long while she did not speak, and then she said quietly:
“ All right. . . . I’m cold and hungry, Charlie. You light a fire, and I’ll get bread and coffee from the boat.”
COLLECTING THE EVIDENCE by Gavin S. Casey (1934)
Coming soon.
REUNION by Margaret Fane and Hilary Lofting (1936)
Coming soon.
THE FIRST WHITE MAN by William Hatfield (1937)
All the fertile lands of the Koopa country belonged to the tribe of the Yantawonta, who had their main camp at Innamincka. From back up-river, where the waters tore through the gorge at Kulyamurra and swept out a waterhole six miles long in the valley between the rugged cliffs, down past where the river left the mountains below Innamincka and split in numerous channels to fill the great lake beds of Koongi; beyond there again where the channel became more defined and passed on south-westward, to fill Kooraminchinna, and farther on still the big waterhole of Kanowna, and on to Lake Apperdair - all that was Yantawonta country.
Below Apperdair the floods reached more seldom,, and the lakes turned salt, till down past Kopperamanna the river ended in a vast salt lake, whose shores were treacherous bog. That country belonged to the Dieri. North from Innamincka, where the range spread out and broke down into hard hills and stony plains in the Cordilla and Cadelga country, that was the land of the Yourowurrka folk. Westward of them the Wonkanguroo people had flooded flats along what are now known as the Diamantina and Georgina rivers, but their land was in nowise to be compared with that of the Yantawonta.
When the flood waters dried on the lake beds of Koongi, grass and herbage provided fodder for the kangaroos from off the stones to the north and the poorer plains southward, so that the Yantawonta people never knew a famine. Fish and every kind of water fowl abounded while the flood waters lasted. The women gathered the little seeds of the nardoo on the receding edge of the lakes, imperishable brown-shelled seeds that could be stored indefinitely and pounded on flat stones into rough flour for mix- ing in a paste and baking in the coals for coarse black bread.
The Yantawonta built the sturdiest and most permanent humpies in the land, fashioned of stout bent logs in ovalised domes big enough to stand upright inside, and plastered in the chinks with mud, surest sign of definite and determined occupation. And the holding of such country against the tribes from hungrier lands called for warriors of spirit and endurance. Hard indeed was the training of the young men before they qualified for initiation as hunters and warriors able to take their place in the battle-line around their hundreds of miles of frontier.
Young Kuddramitchi was such a young man, separated now for some time from the influence of the womenfold who spoilt their children more thoroughly than any mothers on earth, and from the foolish sports of childhood, to learn under the tutor- ship of a hard-bitten old warrior named Pedungra the use of weapons, the manly arts, and the sagas of the tribe.
Pedungra was proud of his young charge. No man took his own son for training for fear of continuing his mother’s indulgence. Life in the desert was hard, and only men inured to hardships and trained to an endurance almost superhuman had any place in the life of such a tribe. Yantawonta men had to feel in themselves a superiority to neighbouring tribesmen, and be ready to prove it if they wished to retain this favoured land.
Kuddramitchi journeyed far, with old Pedungra, making fearful stages between drinks, the old warrior deliberately skirting waters in an effort to wear the boy down, or at least get him to ask if they could not turn aside and get a drink. And through the months the old man’s admiration grew. Kuddramitchi it was who said that once, after two days out, when at last Pedungra could himself no longer go without a drink: “But, my new father, give me a real chance to show I am a young man. Just one more day let us stay out wide of the river.”
Whereupon Pedungra smiled. “We will go in,” he said. “And argue not with your elders. If you feel so hard and strong, fill then your mouth with sand and carry that into the water with me. That will serve both to keep your idle tongue still and give you the further day of drought you so desire.”
And Kuddramitchi could even do that, and then sit obediently by the water’s edge watching his elder drink and smack his lips, retaining in his mouth the sand till told he could drink. And when Pedungra struck him unawares across the mouth with a stick for no apparent reason, Kuddramitchi never so much as started in surprise, let alone winced with pain. He laughed through bleeding lips and asked for something that would leave a scar for him to show to the other novitiates, with whom he must not hold con- verse now till all were full-blown men. So Pedungra hit him with the sharp edge of a fighting boomerang, a veritable hardwood sword, inflicting a wound from ear to chin, and Kuddramitchi filled it with mud so that it healed in a wide scar any man would be proud to carry as souvenir of a bitterly fought campaign.
They had three-parts completed a round tour of the frontiers, Kuddramitchi being called upon to memorise every landmark so as to be able to draw it in the sand and give its name, to map its relation to other boundary marks and internal features of the land- scape. He was doing so remarkably well that Pedungra was never called upon to strike him across the mouth for uttering the name of a place in error, but the old warrior’s kindly interest in his protege extended to giving him a resounding clout at unexpected intervals just so that the boy should not grow up a namby-pamby through his brightness of intellect.
Thus the bond of friendship grew closer between them as they journeyed incessantly along the edge of the inhospitable country out from their domain. Pedungra hoped that by keeping a little across the boundary they might be involved in a clash with hunters of the Wonkanguroo or the Yourowurrka, when a boy from the other party might be matched against his budding champion to test his mettle.
But though, they skirted wide of the Koongi Lakes oh the return journey, trespassing far north into the Cadelga country, the people of the stones apparently sighted them afar and gave them a wide berth, having found that it was little use winning in a brush with a small party of Yanta- wont, only to bring a war party on the vengeance trail.
It was a day of heat, and the stones were burning underfoot as they trotted on. Normally, on such days, no hunter would have left the shade of a good tree by a waterhole, but Pedungra wanted to see just what the boy could do. He was truly a marvel, combining the dash of youth with the dogged endurance of hard maturity.
Pedungra would have been glad if the boy had slowed up and suggested a respite. But a new enthusiasm fired him with the coming in sight of the thin blue line of flat-topped hills of the Innamincka range. Old men in the camp at Innamincka would be cutting notches on sticks, telling off the number of days of their absence on the boundary reconnaissance, and if this pace were kept up it would certainly be a record. For though the Yantawonta mathematics were limited to two numbers, one and two - barcoola, witcha-walli, repeated on the fingers of the hand till the thumb was reached, when munda! - “hand” or “mob” was called - the system lent itself to unlimited mundas of munda, each tallied on a stick. It was difficult to convey by words anything more definite than a “mob of mobs,” but so long as the sticks were not lost the records could he interpreted.
His mind on these things and his eyes on the distant hills that stretched away southward to his home, Kuddramitchi all but missed the strange track on the ground. That, perhaps, would have been pardonable in any but an aspirant for initiation as a hunter and warrior, for the ordinary eye would have missed it even though diligently searching for such a thing on the bare stones polished by the windblown sand of ages. But Kuddramitchi, saving himself from the ignominy of having actually crossed a track on the ground without remarking it, stopped dead and stood pointing at the strange track with palsied finger, speechless in wide-eyed terror as he stared at Pedungra mutely asking for en- lightenment. Pedungra stopped with him but instead of speaking a word of reassurance his gnarled old hand gripped the boy’s arm as for support. The yellowy whites of his eyes rolled in their deep sockets under low protuding brows, and he gasped hoarsely:
“Come back!”
Kuddramitchi stepped slowly back with the old warrior, whose trembling fingers bit deep into the flesh of his arm. Without a word, they kept wide of the track as though it of itself could wreak harm, following it along to a scalded patch of earth, where the full outlines were marked plainly in the dust below the crumbled crust.
“What is it?” said Kuddramitchi at last, ”Is it an oruncha, such as you tell me walked the earth in the ages before man?”
It could well be, as you say, an evil spirit,” said the old man, ”but a spirit from long ago would leave no tracks upon the ground. This, making a track, is a thing assuredly alive, and it passed this day. Yet it is the track of no creature I have heard of even in the stories of long ago, and I have travelled far, as you know, and seen the tracks in the rocks of the ochre mines away down south at Parachilna. It is wrong that I, an elder, should know not the answer to the question of a boy, but this creature is from somewhere beyond the ken of mortal man, though I have heard strange tales of beasts and men afar - men with the power of the spirits to command the lightning and the thunder. This may be a visitation from that far land. If so, we are doomed. See, it makes by the shortest route towards Innamincka. We must turn aside from our path, follow this beast and see it, if possible, then travel hard around it to bring warning in time.”
Kuddramitchi’s black face, with its highlights of chocolate brown, turned grey at the thought of actually setting eyes on the monster. He was ready to meet in open fight any full- grown man who might come against him, but it was asking too much, to expect him to meet creatures from another world.
“But,” he faltered, “it is a thing of as many legs as a centipede, and feet beside which those of an old-man kangaroo seem those of a rat! It will turn and rend us.”
“Have courage, my son! See, I will let you carry a fighting spear. If this thing turn and attack us, stand firm beside me and die like a man!”
And with the man’s spear in his hand, Kuddramitchi felt his stature increase. If the beast came at him, he would not run, with a hardened warrior like Pedungra standing ground with him. He was glad then of the scar Pedungra had given him. The thing, whatever it was, would see it was facing no mere unmarked boy.
So with chin upraised and mouth shut tight, he tramped cautiously along beside the veteran. Once or twice his lip trembled a little as he thought of the little shy lubra, Mingurie, who was to be made young-woman next month, and who would be his to take away on the long honeymoon walkabout as soon as he was made young man, but he put such thoughts from him. Her face must not come up between him and his enemy.
In an hour of tracking they came to the edge of the sandhills, which had marched as a glaring red line on their right before they changed their course, and from afar on the plain they could see the gap torn by the beast in the smooth edge of the sandhill’s wind-piled crest. By devious ways, taking every bit of cover in the shape of spinifex tufts and clumps of needlebush on the slope, they came to the crest away out wide of the track and peered down into the valley between this sand ridge and the next. On the farther crest they saw again the great gap torn in the smooth drift by the beast, and sped swiftly down and across the valley to repeat their cautious approach for a view of the valley beyond. This they continued all afternoon, till the sun was slanting sharply to the west, scouting so carefully that none but a bird flying above their quarry could have seen their approach. Then, when it began to seem their guest would be fruitless that day, and they would have to camp dry on that trail going undeviatingly in long diagonals up and over the ridges and in purposeful slants across the flats; when the sun was so low that only the crests of the sandhills glared red and the valleys were brown, shaded pools dotted with shadowless green bush, they stopped with bellies flat on the sand and heads screened by spinifex tufts, and gazed in awe at the strange monster.
They had been deceived by the creatures’ habit of walking in a string, leaving a track like a many-footed beast.
But they were indeed fearsome monsters, even separately, standing as high as two men, and of grotesque shape. On each back was an ugly hump, and each snake-like neck was as thick as a man’s body. With their great mouths full of ragged teeth, the beasts ate boughs of trees, crunching stout twigs as a kangaroo mights chew up grass stalks.
But terrifying sight though that might be, what paralysed the watchers on the ridge was the unaccountable appearance down there, among the animals of men.
“They,” said Pedungra at length, “must of a truth he oruncha. Who but spirits could thus have travelled over the face of the ground without leaving a track?”
“They must have travelled in the bellies of the beasts, and crawled forth here when they desired to make camp. Truly, father, we should away. Mere men cannot fight and heat the creatures of the spirit world.”
“Wait,” said Pedungra. “They have not seen us. We can learn more to tell the people at home. These might he human men. They kindle fires for their cooking.”
A crow flew from over a sand ridge and perched on the dead limb of a tree some distance from the camp of the invaders. It turned its head this way and that, then uttered its melancholy croak.
“Ah!” said Pedungra. ”See, ray totem bird disdains them. If it suffer not harm we may take heart.”
The crow repeated his contemptuous croak. One of the men in the camp stood up and picked up a stick, pointed it at the crow, and loosed a spear-point of flame that stabbed luridly in the shadow-filled valley. Hard on it came a puff of cloud, and there smote the ears of the watchers an explosion as of a piece torn from a peal of thunder, which went reverberating round the narrow flat. And even as the sound reached their ears the crow was falling dead from out the tree. Pedungra’s features turned a dirty grey as he looked at the boy.
“Come!” he whispered harshly. “They are truly of the oruncha. We must run from this place and be far away before dark- ness falls, for such creatures wander far by night. Nowhere near will be safe. I bade you have courage and stand with me to meet the beasts, and, even now, I would fight each one as fast as they came at me while my spears lasted. I have courage, as you know, but what could we do against creatures who carry the storm-fury in a stick, to strike with a thunderbolt a creature afar?”
And Kuddramatchi needed no second bidding. With no more thanthe rustle of a passing snake, they slid together back down the sandhill. Daylight soon faded to dusk, and that to star-filled night, and the man and the boy ran on. Not for all the nardoo on the Koopa would either have suggested making camp that night. It was dangerous thus to be abroad in the darkness of night without a fire-stick for warding off evil spirits, but what was any fire-stick they might kindle compared with that possessed by the men with white arms and faces, those bodies were covered with close-fitting rugs of hair or fur?
Not in all the lore of the Yantawonta has there been recorded such a run. It was in the Telachi sandhills far to the westward of Patchewarra that they came upon the strange men with the beasts, and Patchewarra lies full forty miles to the north of Innamincka, yet Pedungra and his protege staggered breathless into the main camp as the sky was paling in the “V” cleft in the mountains upstream. The hard soles of their feet were torn from the savage pace they had maintained over the stones, and their legs and arms and faces were scratched and pin-pricked by the scrub through which they had charged.
They were given water with wild-bees’ honey in it, and cold, cooked fish to eat while hot food was prepared. Old lubras plastered them with soothing mud and softly massaged their aching limbs. Old men and young warriors, children and old toothless grannies crowded round to hear their tale.
So strange a tale did it seem that the old men of the council thought it an experience of the other world, when a man’s spirit leaves his sleeping form at night and wanders into that weird land of shadows to which all must pass. But the boy had seen the same things, and vividly though a man may see things when sleep releases him from his earthly body, seldom if ever did another accompany him on those Journeys. No! Strange and unheard-of as it was, it must be accepted.
So a scouting party was made up of picked young men, and after sleeping in the shade that day Pedungra demanded to be allowed to lead it. Kuddramitchi also begged to go. When the elders shook their heads and said, “You are but a boy,” Pedungra spoke up for him.
“That is no boy. He should he given his real name engraved on his sacred churinga, for he has travelled the boundary, and when danger threatened from an invader, I gave him a fighting spear to carry, Right well would he have used it, too, flinching not from danger. See the scar there on his cheek, truly a noble wound? - I put that on him with a lusty blow from my fighting boomerang - a blow that would have won me a fight with most men, and he laughed. Laughed! No, he comes, and comes as a man - a warrior of the Yantawonta!”
The scouting party kept north as far as Patchewarra, then bore in to strike the sinister track at the point Pedungra and Kuddramitchi had left it. Carefully the warriors examined all the tracks, which to them were the written pages of a book. Even now, two full days afterward, they could see the place where the white man had stood to loose the lightning at the crow. In its ant-picked carcass they could see the hole the thunderbolt had torn through. They saw the tracks where the beasts had knelt while the men got on or into them. None there disputed young Kuddramitchi’s right to be in a war party now - one who would follow the trail of such monsters after having seen them in the flesh. None pressed too hard upon his heels as he kept pride of place beside Pedungra in the lead.
In a day’s march they met some fugitives who had scattered at first sight of the apparitions. They had thought them a combination of man and beast, but when notes were compared it was decided that the beasts were the servants of the men, allies from the animal world, to give them the strength and speed of beasts with the cun- ning of men. The reinforced party followed the tracks to another camp towards Nappa-Koongi, and there they learnt that the men were mortal. What looked to be a grave turned out truly to be one when opened, and the warriors looked with reassurance into the dead staring eyes of one of the invaders.
Encouraged thus, they pressed closer on the trail, and at length espied the invaders far ahead, riding in a string across a plain well out from the sandhills, a blacksoil plain criss- crossed with flood channels lined with dense bush of lignum cane.
The men on the great tall beasts were visible from all over the plain, but Pedungra and his men vanished into the channels as completely as a brood of water-hen’s chicks.
This was wonderful ambush country. In an hour from sighting their quarry, the warriors of the Yantawonta were ranged on either side of them, ahead and behind, completely hidden in the overgrown channels, but seeing every move of the enemy. All the time they exchanged an intelligible conversation between groups, and the white men never showed the slightest sign of suspicion. Kuddramitchi’s spear-arm itched for the signal to hurl his spear and bury it in the body of the nearest white man. Why, they were utter fools!
The invaders were weak, gaunt and famished, their skin tight about their drawn faces, and their necks showing thin and stringy. Fancy anyone going short of food in such a land as this! They must be blind not to know that their pudgy-footed beasts trampled food into the earth at every stride, and that succulent meat wandered away before their approach. Weapons of fire they might possess, but what use were they if they could be ambushed with such ease?
Kuddramitchi laughed silently and nudged Pedungra with a familiarity he would not have attempted two or three days ago, as they watched the men make camp and post a sentry. A fine look-out he was! Kuddramitchi wormed his way so close that he could have poked the man’s eye out with the point of his spear, but he gave no sign of knowing anyone was near.
But the courage of the aboriginal party oozed with the freeing of the great beasts to eat the lignum bushes, even though their legs were tied so that they could only shuffle in short steps. The beasts were not such fools as the men, and had watched the warriors all day with malevolent sidelong glances from their droop-lidded eyes - eyes that showed no trace of fear, only a withering scorn. And the crunch of their enormous teeth was a sound to make brave men quail.
So Pedungra signalled for the party to withdraw and spread out, then meet again on a converging line in the direction of home. It was only an easy half-night’s walk, though that distance seemed to occupy all day for the sedate and leisurely beasts with the men wigwagging their bodies slowly back and forth on top. The young men chattered among themselves about this imitating and burlesquing that ridiculous motion. Some leapt on others’ backs, the better to clown the part, and those acting the beasts gave weird mimickings of their throaty hubble-gubble-gubble!
Pedungra was grimly silent. Only when he reached camp again and the elders asked him for his story, did he speak.
“It was the order of the old men of the council that the new-comers should not be harmed if they made no attack on us,” he said, “and I have carried out those orders – to see whether the men with the beasts were coming here, to number them, and learn how they might best be killed if need be. Give me, now, double the number of young men that I took, and I will go out and make sure that they and their animals go down without a kick, even as my totem bird fell from the tree without a flap of wing before their thunderbolt from the muckaddie, the fire-stick they pointed.”
“But we are men of peace at Innamincka,” the old men said, “till any stranger abuse our hospitality. These men travel in broad light of day, and trouble not to hide their tracks; therefore they mean no harm. And they are now but three, so, despite the fire- sticks, they cannot harm us. We outnumber them as the stars do the sun and moon, as the grains of sand outnumber the mountains. Only a miserable race like the Yourowurrka on the poor country of the stones would grudge food for three tired travellers. Go out not, with a war party, but with a party of peace, meeting them on the open plain in full daylight and holding up the hand of friend- ship, and bring them here to talk with the old men of the council.”
“Never!” shouted Pedungra. “Hold up the hand of peace to men who killed my totem bird when he merely sat on a tree and spoke to them?”
“What harm if one bird of your totem fall? Are there not un- told numbers cawing round over every waterhole in the land? You talk like lesser men who are easily aggrieved, not love? a seasoned veteran.”
“Hearken to me,” Pedungra went on. “You think it only the talk of a small man, but these are words of wisdom I give you before I shake the dust of Innamincka from my feet and go west into the desert to perish alone, or found a tribe of men who will fight for their country. I tell you that if you let these strangers come here unharmed, more will follow, with more of their accursed beasts, more to the number of the white ants swarming in every anthill, in the dead wood of every fallen tree - these men who are nothing better than white ants themselves - insects with no colour to their bodies, and blind - so blind that boys can steal close enough to spear their sentries in broad light of day. Purdy!” he spat in scorn.
“Purdy-putchoo-putchoo!”
And purdy-putchoo-putchoo, the blind insect - the miserable white ant, became the name by which men of the white race were known.
“They cannot even travel on their own two feeble legs!” Pedungra stormed on in his tirade. “They have to crawl on the backs of the big slow-walks, the yirrie-yirrie!”
Thus do names come about. From the first time they were sighted on the Koopa, the great beasts with the ungainly humped backs and long necks have been yirrie-yirrie.
Pedungra called to his lubra, Alberja, who stood behind him waiting to go with him, a water pitchi under her arm and a dilly-bag slung about her neck.
“You think me mad,” he said, after picking up his spears “railing because of my totem bird’s death alone. It is not only that. I have heard of these men, and I remember the things I have been told when travelling in the countries of far tribes. I have met men who have seen those who have actually seen white men, though then I thought they spoke of things long past and gone, and of no account in our time. Wherever the white man comes thus, at first in twos or threes, there come later many more of his tribe – munda! And his animals come with him - munda-munda-MUNDA! - spreading far and wide to the horizon, raising dust as in the summer gales and eating everything before them like the crawling wingless grasshopper, so that the game de- parts for lands afar. Then, when the tribesman spears those animals that eat bare his land, the white man descends upon him in swarms, on trampling beasts with feet of flint that can outrun the dingo and the kangaroo, blasting him from the earth with the stick of fire.”
In his eloquence he mimed the rushing trampling beasts with the wild-eyed white man atop scattering fire and death with the stick that loosed the thunderbolts.
“Mark my words,” Pedungra went on, his words pouring in a scathing torrent, “there are young men hearing me to-day who will never see grey in their beards, and those who do will lack authority as elders in the tribe. The white man will rule, and the words of the old men will be set as naught. They will be hunted and hounded from the waterholes. They will see the tribe broken and scattered, the women childless and the chattels of the white man. There will be no younger warriors to learn the corroborees of the intichiuma, so the grass will not grow again when the white man’s beasts have eaten it, so there will be no joeys in the pouches of the kangaroos. The yams and the and the yelkas and the nardoo will bear no fruit, for the beasts of the white man will eat them in green shoot. Do they not even eat the trees, as we have seen? - The bush will wither from the sandhills and the sand will blow and fill in the waterholes and channels. There will be no fish or frogs, no water-fowl, no emus, turkeys, brolgas, no kangaroos. “But I shall not stay to see it. No man of pallid skin shall take my lubra from my wurlie. I go afar across the desert where only a man of the Yantawonta or the Dieri could find a way, across by the north of the great salt lake and afar to the great hard mountains of granite in whose ravines one man may defy a horde and defend his home. There I shall found my tribe - a tribe whose men will he men! And when I shall have had my time on earth, my spirit shall fly back across these wastes in the body of my totem father, the crow, and I shall sit on a dead tree and cast my hard white eye adown in scorn on the desolation to which the land of ray fathers has come.
“Even as the crow was the first to perish at the hand of the white man with his stick of fire, so shall he be the last thing alive in this wide land when the white man has per- ished by the desolation he himself has wrought.
”Come, young Kuddramitchi, Follow me! As chief of my own tribe I make you young-man, and give you my daughter Tilpa for bride.”
But Kuddramitchi looked away from Tilpa
He was thinking of little Mingurie. Mingurie might not be as strong to carry a man’s belongings on trek while he went free and unencumbered as a man should with nought but weapons to carry, but she was swift of foot and keen of eye on the track of small ground game, deft of finger with yarn of spun fur in the making of bird and fish nets. And Mingurie’s wide eyes were soft and melting; the touch of her hand was like the brush of a passing bird’s wing.
“No” he said, “I stay at Innamincka.”
“Stay, then!” Pedungra spat. “You it is, then, who will live on longest of all the young men hearing me to-day, to see all the things that I have spoken of come to pass. You, too, are a Crow, like myself, and I thought I could find one man among the Yantawonta. You will live to see ray spirit come back and mock above the defiled graves and the deserted wurlies of the Yanta- wonta. I need you not. A daughter like mine will not go a-begging. For her I will find a man somewhere out in the desert - man to carry on my tribe - a man! Somewhere the world doth still breed them.”
So Pedungra went, and the white men reached their camp, bringing gifts of a weed that burnt with a fragrant smoke - smoke which one inhaled and caused within him a blissful satis- faction such as that from chewing leaf of the pitchuri, but deeper, sweeter still than that. And they had gifts also of a dry leaf, which dropped into water made cunningly hot on a fire till it leapt and laughed, made sweet caressings of the palate, better far than honey of the wild bees added to cold water. They brought also tomahawk heads of a substance harder than the hardest flint and carrying an edge that bit deep and easily into toughest wood, knives, too, of the same hard shining substance, beside which the best flint knife was a sad and blunt affair.
Not as enemies came they, their spokesman made it under- stood in gesture and odd words of distant dialects, which some of the old men who had travelled understood, but as friendly travellers merely passing through. Long had they been away from their homes, having passed from shore to shore of the great salt water that surrounds the world. Now they were on their way homeward, south.
The old men gave them guides to show them where the river branched below Innamincka and went south past Tinga- tinginna and Murty-murty, down and down, reaching in those days as far as the salt lake now called Frome. Kuddramitchi saw them come and saw them go, and went away with the other grown boys to Koorniackapicka Creek, out on the stones through the range past Nappamarri, which lies well east of Kullyamurra, glad that he would soon now be young—man, lawfully able to carry arms, and to take a bride, glad he had not rashly fol- lowed Pedungra into the wilds to westward. Out at Koorniackapicka (which, in the language of the Yantawonta, means young-men’s-initiation-ground) Kuddramitchi withstood the cruel tests, and was told in secret his own real spiritual name as a man, learning it as it was laboriously re- presented in carvings on his churinga, his personal charm ortalisman, which he must never allow a stranger to see. Nor must he breathe aloud his real name except to closest personal friends, lest evil wishers, learning it, work harm against him through alliance with evil spirits. So he was still known commonly as Kuddramitchi, the name of the waterhole down below Innamincka, where he was born.
From the lips of the old men he learnt secrets not to be imparted on pain of death to women, and learnt corroborees that women must not witness, taking part in these while the tribal marks across his chest were still open wounds. Out there at Koorniackpicka, indeed, he came somewhat to despise women as lesser beings, hearing so many things that they could never learn, and when he thought of Mingurie it was to wonder at himself for giving her so much importance in his scheme of things.
Yet all that went like storm clouds before the sun when he came back to Innamincka and caught her smile. Then, just as the heavens can frown again after a momentary burst of sunshine, a heaviness of doubt descended upon him when she looked swiftly away after that brief smile and did not stop to talk with him. He wondered if by any chance the markings left by other white men who had camped on Kullyamurra hole some way below the gorge had put a spell between them, and when he followed to her wurlie and saw her tending there the man named Kingi, who had come with those others named Burky and Willith on the yirrie-yirrie, he knew it. White men, as Pedungra had said, brought sadness and disruption into the life of the coloured native of the soil.
Buky and Willith were now dead, he found, and here she was, tending this pale-skinned man with the gaunt cheeks and sunken eyes She told him to go away, for Kingi was weak, and sick near unto death. The others, Burky and Willith, had died, because they were unable to sustain life on the native foods. They had been unable to find a way to their homes in the south by way of Tingatinginna Creek, which men later called the Strzlecki, and had come back to Innamincka, hoping there to meet men of their race. But these had waited the agreed time, then departed, leaving the strange hieroglyphics on the tree a queer carving of no meaning whatever to the Yantawonta, like: DIG
Kuddramitchi said it was a pity this other, Kingi, had not died with them, if it meant he had stolen his bride.
“Fool that you are!” said Mingurie, ”to think I would have love for a man of other race, a man, too, weak as a featherless bird in a nest, unable even to pick up food and put it in his mouth as you see. To me he is but a pet, like an emu chick with a broken leg that a woman anywhere might tend without her man be- coming jealous.”
“Well, then,” said Kuddramitchi, “leave him to some old grandmother to tend, and come away with me, for, remember, you were to take the long marriage walkabout with me as soon as I returned from Koorniackpicka, a man.”
“I remember, and I will yet walk with you,” she said, but I cannot leave him to the old grannies. They tried to nurse the others, Burky and Willith, and they died.
You will see, I can yet teach his stomach to accept the food I prepare for him, and he will get well and strong. Then will men from the south come here and take him to his home.”
“How do you know that?”
“He himself told me it will he so,” she said patiently, knowing well the obstinacy and stupidity of men, having been told of those things by the old women when she became young-woman. So Kuddramitchi watched and waited, hoping secretly each time he went near the wurlie to hear Mingurie cry- ing over Kingi’s dead body. He even went to old Wadungerabugga the medicine man for some death-adder venom to cast upon the refuse Mingurie carried away from the wurlie, that being a potent method of disposing of an enemy. But Wadungerabugga refused. It might not work, he said, in the case of a white man, and, in any event, Kingi could not live much longer. What Kuddramitchi had every right to do, he pointed out, would he to tap Mingurie on the forehead with a club and carry her away. Then, if Kingi should die through lack of attention, he would be in nowise to blame.
Kuddramitchi slunk away to his own lonely camp, the wurlie he had fashioned so neatly and stoutly for them both against the time they should return from the long walkabout. Sometimes he went out and picked a brawl with the heftiest young man in the camp, and always defeated him, though he could never bring himself to raise a hand against that frail young lubra with her soft wide eyed. Men twitted him about it, but he growled threats at them and stalked off alone, wandering far into the bush and killing only when hunger drove him to the limits. So he took his spears and boomerangs and wandered away down river to where the holes turned salt, determining to strike out into the unknown country and follow round the shores of the great lake, trying to find the mountains to which Pedungra said he had gone, hut each time he turned back, not because he feared to clash with the tribesmen along his path, but because he felt somehow Kingi might have died, and Mingurie would be waiting for him to return. Girls were like that, some old men told him, though none sympathised greatly with him. They simply needed knocking out when they looked first at a stranger, then all would be well.
The floods came down and dried again in the hot season, came yet again and filled the lakes of Koongi, and still Mingurie’s care for Kingi waned not. Men began to avoid Kuddramitchi, finding him a little strange, as men are wont to grow when living alone, either from choice or force. Kuddramitchi went up to the big tree by the banks of Kullyamurra, where the strange markings, ”DIG”, were beginning to weather, and built a fire at the butt beside the hole from which the white men had dug the food which had enabled them to live a little longer. This, surely, must be the white man’s churinga, and if it were destroyed he would be at Kuddramitchi’s mercy. But Wadungerabugga said it was no churinga, but a message stick.
“How?” said Kuddramitchi. “Engraved on a tree which cannot be moved.”
“The design can he copied by a clever man,” said the medicine man, “and carried to the land of the white man.”
Therefore Kuddramitchi put out the fire and fashioned a small flat slab of wood and copied the design as best he could, and then, winding about his forehead the chillora, the white band that denotes the bearer of messages and gives safe passage through strange territory, he set off eastward across the open country to the Bulloo River, through the dense mulga scrubs to the Paroo and on through the brigalow to the Warrego, telling his mission to those of strange tribes whom he met. And to those who doubted, he showed the message stick, whose strange markings, all agreed, were the talk writing of the white man, so he went through unharmed.
After many many moons of marching, he came upon a tribe who had seen the tracks of a white party pas- sing through.
Kuddramitchi went across to where the tracks had been seen and ran them along. Many days he followed the tracks, scarce stopping or turning aside to procure himself food on the way, for they travelled fast. At last he caught up with the party? camped on the Paroo. At first the white men treated with suspicion when he wanted them to turn west but when he made the tracks of the yirrie-yirrie in the dust by sitting down, then adding the marks of his two thumbs to the front of the track, the white men began to believe him, and nod to his signs of westward! – Westward! He showed them the message-stick proudly, but they looked puzzled and shook their heads as they passed it one to the other.
Kuddramitchi went to a tree and stripped off the bark and made with his stone axe the markings as at Kullyamurra, turn- ing then and pointing vigorously in the direction of his home. The white men had with them a black man for tracking, and to this one Kuddramitchi spoke in signs.
The black man talked earnestly with the white men in their queer language, and they agreed to follow Kuddramitchi, after much pointing at their muckaddies and making threatening gestures as a warning against treachery. To this he countered with a motion of spitting and running the back of his stone knife across his throat from ear to ear - a thing which evoked heary roars of laughter and smiling nods of heads. So the white men were not quite without brain,if they could understand one sign, he decided. They gave him of the leaf that burned with the fragrant smoke, and a hollowed stick in which to burn it, so that he lay back after a day’s hard march and was happy.
In many, many days they came at last to the Koopa, about Nockabarara, and Kuddramitchi led them unerringly across the maze of channels. Down at Nappamerrie he showed the white men a place where the other white party had built a roofless house of heavy logs, and further down, at Kullyamurra, the original marking on the tree with which his message-stick corresponded. Late that same day he stopped before the wurlie of Mingurie and pointed dramatically through the low doorway.
Kingi was not strong, but he staggered to his feet and came forth. All the white men of the party took his hand in turn and held it, then gave him water from a thing that seemed made of hard water itself, being of a substance you could see through to the honey-coloured water inside. Kingi drank that eagerly, shook his head and shoulders and said “Br-r-gh!” then smiled. Kuddramitchi smelt the coloured water and asked for some himself. After talking between themselves they gave him some.
Kuddramitchi knew then why Kingi said “Br-r-r-gh!” Scorpions bit his throat and tongue, and water started to his eyes. A fire burnt deep down in his stomach. The white men laughed, and Kuddramitchi wondered whether he had better strike them down for their unseemly mirth. But a new glow super- seded the acrid burning. He felt himself growing taller and stronger and becoming possessed of the power over fire such as the white men possessed. Was this, then, their secret?
In the speech of the Yantawonta, Kingi told Mingurie that these his friends had come to take him home with them.
But in the days that came, Kuddramitchi’s feeling of victory turned to one of sadness. For Mingurie, though bodily belonging now to him, thought always of that one Kingi who had gone away with his friends. Always she sat in a corner of the wurlie with her eyes upon the ground singing softly under her breath: ”O, my Kingi, taken away from me!” She lost her youthful roundness of form, and, not eating, shrank till she was a little wizened bundle of skin and bone. Then, some moons after Kingi had gone, she wakened not one morning when Kuddramitchi called her name. She was cold in his arms, and he went out and dug a hole back in the scrub, put her inside and covered the mound with heavy- logs, then put kopi in his hair and wandered off alone.
These things I heard while I sat outside old Kuddramitchi’s wurlie at Kullyamurra twenty years or more ago. He was white of hair, and had had several nabadja since, but none that he could love with that first fire that blazed for Mingurie. He it was who taught me the speech of the Yantawonta, so that I could really understand his tales, which do not go easily into the speech of the white man. I might have known him for years and never heard any of the tales, only that once when I took aim with a rifle at a crow I lowered my arm at his soft request: “Don’t shoot him that one, he Pedungra, uncle belonga me!”
“Me,” he said, when I put away the rifle, “me little-bit uncle belonga you, now. You kurrna-patchie!” Which, he said, was in Yantawonta, good man, so different from purdy-putchoo- putchoo, a crawling thing, and blind at that.
At that time Kullyamurra hole was low, and all along the bank lay rotting carcasses of cattle.
“You see,” said Kuddramitchi in his own tongue, ”Pedungra was right, and I was a young fool to stay, held by a woman’s soft smile. The white men came back even as he said, and their animals have eaten all the feed till they themselves die of hunger. I am old, and my tribe is only as one for ten in those other years I speak of. I shall not be the last, quite, for there are still a few women having babies. But you, you are young man, and strong, I make you a Crow, a nephew of mine. You, perhaps, will see Ped- ungra’s words come fully true - the waterholes filled in with sand, and no man living here at all, not even the white man, nor his beasts. If in those days you see an old black crow, that will be Pedungra, or me, perhaps. Don’t kill him, will you?”
Twenty years went by, and I stood on the banks of Kully- amurra once again. The river was in full flood, and the country all about was green with herbage dotted with coloured wild flowers. Cattle in their thousands could have eaten and drunk there that year on the Koopa, but it had not rained previously to this for five long years, and not a hoof remained alive. One or two white men hung on in that green desolation, waiting to buy more cattle to depasture there, and two or three families of Yanta- wonta folk lived at the cattle station of Innamincka, wearing white men’s clothes and eating white men’s food. But they were few - so pitifully few - compared with the tribes on every water- hole down the creek even twenty years before.
WELL ALL GO TO SEE THE SEA by Frances J. Moon (1940)
Coming soon.
SEVEN EMUS by Xavier Herbert (1942)
Seven Emus Station, in the wild, red sandstone country southward of the far north-western port of Dampier, derived its name from an ancient aboriginal legend. The legend told how, in the Dream Time - that age of wonders, before the incarnation of men, when the Totem Heroes roamed the earth - Wanjin the Dingo desired as his wives the seven Emu sisters. Greeting to his suit, which was in contravention of the marriage law, the sisters fled from him, and eluded him easily, because they, the first of all emus, could fly, whereas he was earth-bound, although very fleet of foot. The sisters came from far to westward to this spot, and hid in a cave high up in the gorge cut through the ranges there by the river that is now called the Leopold. And with them they brought the spirits of all the blackfellows who would be born into the Emu Totem, and also ochres for painting and flints for carving, with which they fashioned the striking symbol of the Totem that can be seen in the cave to this day.
At length Wanjin located them and built a great fire outside the cave, with double intent to force them out and to singe their wings so that they might not again elude him. And out through the fire they had to come; which is why all emus now have that charred appearance and those useless little wings. But the fire also made their legs grow long, so that they were able to run away.
With Wanjin in pursuit, they sped eastward to the end of the earth, and went on into the sky, where they can still be seen as the seven stars that white men call the Pleiades, pursued by the bright star Aldebaran. The cave became the centre of the cult of the Totem, and their paintings and carvings the property of their incarnated spirit children, the Emu People, who had been responsible for the treasures throughout the ages: How well the last of these Emu People carried out that duty constitutes the essence of this tale.
Seven Emus Station had been established about six years when the events to be recorded here took place. At that time any stranger coming upon the homestead would certainly have thought it the centre of a very comfortable property.
The biggest building of the group stood nearest the gate by which the road ran in from Dampier. as comfortable within as it looked from without. There was another dwelling, small by comparison, but equally well-built, a couple of hundred yards up the river towards the gorge. Between the two were the rest of the buildings- quarters for employees, stores, sheds, and a group of stables that would have graced the property of a well-established breeder of blood-stock. Behind were well-built stockyards. And away some distance on the plain was a white-railed race track. There was, in fact, no other station homestead in those parts so well appointed. Yet the cattle run, was one of the country’s poorest, and certainly there were no poorer graziers in the land than the odd pair who owned it, Messrs. Gaunt and Jones.
The station was founded by the Junior partner, Broncho Jones. It was not he, however, who was responsible for the pretentious homestead. That was the work of Appleby Gaunt, or the Baron, as most people called him.
Broncho Jones was a guarter-caste aboriginal. He had first become aware of his existence as an inmate of a Government institution for aboriginal waifs near the West-Coast town of Anchor Bay. At the age of fifteen or so, in accordance with the system of the Government institution, he was placed as a kind of apprentice on a cattle station in the Fitzroy District.
He worked on that station for ten years, beginning his service as a kitchen boy and concluding it as head stockman. Eventually he fell in with a drover named O’Hay, a queer and sickly fellow, re- nowned for his stinginess and for the fact that he had a half- caste daughter, Possum, whom he guarded from the wicked worldas though she were a princess. Many young men had been attracted before Broncho, white as well as brindle, for not only was Possum comely and well brought up, but heiress to a tidy sum of money. But O’Hay’s approval was hard to win. It took Broncho a year of sheer slavery to win it. Then he and Possum were married in Dampier. He was then about thirty. Possum only eighteen. During the six years that Broncho worked for Possum’s father Possum bore him as many children. Just after the sixth was born the old man died, and left the couple five thousand pounds. A few months later Broncho sold the droving plant, bought a second-hand truck, and took his family to Seven Emus.
It was with no elaborate plans that he settled down. The fact that he could establish a herd easily there was one of the two things that attracted him to the spot.
The other attraction was the cave, the story of which he was told by the aged survivors of the Emu People he found there. Like most cross-bred aborigines, he had been made to feel ashamed of his native blood. Still, deep down in him there had always been an intense secret interest in the ancient native ways. The legend of the Seven Emus delighted him deeply. He expressed his delict by naming the place as he did, and by constituting himself patron of the Totem and of those to whom it belonged. Evidence of the depth of his feeling in the matter was shown several times. The first was when Appleby Gaunt, who dominated him so easily in other matters, attempted to change the name of the station to Gaunt Downs. The next was when the Baron tried to take several of the treasures from the cave in order to make a present of them to a State Governor who was visiting the station. And there were other occasions. And every time Broncho, though ordinarily so docile, made a stand that was almost furious.
Although provided by the country with his stock and material for his homestead, there was much that Broncho had to buy, such as equipment for pumping water, and tanks, and trough- ing, and fencing. To buy these he went to Appleby Gaunt, who was then in business as a commission agent in Dampier. Gaunt was not called the Baron then. He did not get that nickname till he became Broncho’s partner and began to pose as a beef- baron. His pose when Broncho came in contact with him was that of live-wire salesman. His life had been one long series of poses, of which the chief victim had been himself.
Gaunt had come by steamer from Port Victoria, arriving just in time for the Kimberley Cup Races, the great annual festival of those parts. As was usual whenever he turned up in a fresh community, he arrived there in desperate straits, having been compelled to sneak out of Port Victoria, where he had been in business as what he termed a Realtor, to avoid the wrath of many creditors and cheated clients.
When he arrived in Dampier he possessed nothing but four pounds in cash, a couple of suitcases of good clothes, and that which might have been his fortune had he not been such a fool, his engaging manner. He had often sought fresh fields with even less, but this time he had felt desperate as never before in his sixty years, it was beginning to dawn on him that the dream in which he had lived throughout his life was nearly ended, the dream that he was destined to riches and a place among the mighty.
Despite the secret worry he brought with him to Dampier, he established himself there as easily as he had anywhere. He put up at the best hotel. Then he went to the races, and, no doubt assisted by the demon whose job it was to lead him from pitfall unto pitfall till at last he fell to utter destruction, he won handsomely.
Thus he was able to act the monied man with ease and easily secured the credit he required to start in business. He said that he had a good deal of money tied up in property in the Southern states. He had told that latter lie so often that he all but believed it.
Primarily Gaunt’s designs on Broncho did not go beyond inducing him to double his order and fleecing him on the price. Then he saw that there was still more to be got out of the simpleton, and paid a visit to Seven Emus to tell Broncho that there was going to be a boom in the meat market, and that any grazier with a well-equipped and well-stocked station was certain soon to make a fortune. Broncho swallowed that, too, and said that he would be pleased to run the place on a larger scale, but confessed that he had had so little experience in business that he was afraid to tackle the job. Gaunt then offered to act as his agent and adviser.
It was a short step from agent for Seven Emus to part-owner of it. Broncho, so long ignored andhumiliated by his father’s people readily agreed to the offer only to be delighted to be closely associated with one so great and grand. Of course, Gaunt had no money to contribute. Indeed, already he was in a muddle with the finances of his own business. But he did not need to have money in dealing with one so simple and ignorant as Broncho. He told Broncho about his Southern properties, and said he would have negotiations begun at once for the sale of five thousand pounds worth of them, so that they should be on equal terms. But, he said, these negotiations would take some time, if the property was to be disposed of to the best advantage, and it would be better for them to clinch the deal at once and get down to business.
Broncho, blinking with the effort to follow the Baron’s intricate methods of finance, was relieved when it was all over, and said it was fine, and signed whatever document he was given. Gaunt did all the explaining to the lawyer and the bank.
Thereupon Gaunt closed his agency, had himself tricked out in tussore silk and tan elastic sides and a squatter’s hat,and embarked upon the career of a beef-baron. He was convinced that the Great Success had come at last. He had always seen himself in his dreams of great prosperity as a racehorse owner. So he lost no time in becoming one in reality, and had a sprightly little filly named Arafura Queen shipped down from Port Victoria.
He and Broncho trained Arafura Queen for the next Kimberley Cup, and backed her heavily. She lost badly. Nor did she have much success in minor races she was run in at Dampier and Anchor Bay and Agate Bar. Next race- horse was Black Adolf, to purchase whom the Baron took an expensive trip to Perth.
Black Adolf may have been the Baron’s familiar demon, the way he behaved. For a year he was the champion of the North. He won every race he ran in, on all the courses be- tween Shark’s Bay and the Gulf of Carpentaria. Then, just when the Baron had got into the habit of backing him for a thousand pounds a time to win a couple of hundred, he began to lose. Finally, while racing for the Kimberley Cup again, and for a wager of three thousand, he fell down dead. The Baron had his heart put in a bottle, and placed it with his many trophies on the sideboard in the big dining room of his house at Seven Emus. Black Adolf also left behind a son,
born of Arafura Queen, on whose future the Baron for a while pinned great hopes. But Little Adolf turned out to be only a rather handsome stockhorse. The Baron was similarly dis- appointed by several other colts and fillies he dreamt of rearing to be wonder horses.
It was at the beginning of the third year of the Baron’s association with Seven Emus that the death of Black Adolf occurred. The station’s finances never recovered from the blow, even though there ensued a marked rise in the price of cattle that benefited most other stations handsomely. Still the Baron went on dreaming and spending. The parties he gave at the station, complete with private race meetings in which even emus and goats were run, were the joy of the party-goers of the land.
Broncho was dreaming and spending, too, even though he did work hard, with his half-caste overseers and his team of black stock-riders, to make the great herd thrive and breed more quickly on the vast stretch of poverty-stricken country that was now the run. He had a fine new car (though not nearly so fine as the two the Baron had), and he wore the best of ready-mades he could buy at Pak Pong’s store in Dampier, and ten-gallon hate and tan “elerstins” and silver swan-neck spurs. And he had his two eldest children at the convent. And Possum, quite the lady now, spent half of her time in Town.
Quickly the muddle increased. Soon the bank was asking rather curtly that steps be taken to reduce the overdraft. The Baron responded by selling off all the marketable stock at bargain prices.
Broncho knew nothing about the overdraft, nor did it dawn on him that there was any- thing wrong till the middle of the fourth year, when the Baron took his car to sell along with one of his own. The Baron’s explanation, which in the main was a dissertation on the pro- cesses of high finance, told him virtually nothing. Soon the Baron asked him to curtail his expenditure at Pak Pong’s and other stores. It was from Willie Pak Pong that Broncho got the first hint of the true state of affairs. Willie told him, in effect, that the Baron was a hopeless muddler, and that if things went on as they were going, the station was doomed to bankruptcy. Broncho took this information to his partner who treated him to another dissertation on high finance, and advised him to have nothing further to do with Pak Pong, who, he confided, was one of a gang of monied men in Dampier who were out to ruin them. Broncho learned more about the processes of high finance a little later, when, while on a visit to his children, he went to buy something at Ali Katouche’s store, and was refused, and was then tackled in the street by Willie Pak Pong, who said that if he wished to transfer his custom, he had better first pay up ”big money” he owed him. From then on Broncho began to suffer with headaches and insomnia.
Broncho’s faith in the Baron was not really shaken till the middle of the fifth year, when, soon after the Baron had told him that they had turned the corner, a droving plant arrived and lifted every worthwhile beast off the run. The Baron could not explain the episode away, because the drovers had told Broncho that they were working for the bank, and that, to all intents and purposes, he was, too. Broncho went to the bank. They would tell him nothing unless his partner was there to listen with him. He went to the lawyer, but got nothing out of him but a string of mumbo-jumbo concerning the law of partnership. When he asked the Baron to accompany him to these concerns in order that they might get at the truth of matters, the Baron stormed at him, called him a false friend and ingrate, and reminded him that he himself had put no lousy five thousand into the business, but thousands upon thousands, which was true enough, since his big wins on races had always been given tem- porary lodging in the joint account.
On the advice of gossips, Broncho went to another lawyer, who gave it as his opinion that the Baron had got his share in the station by false pretences, but that it would be impossible to prove that now in a court of law, though Broncho should be able to prove it for himself by asking if he might see the documents relating to the sale of the supposed Southern properties.
Broncho asked the Baron for the papers. The Baron said he had destroyed them. Broncho did not believe him, and tried to say so, but was easily out-argued. He went again to the lawyer, and pleaded with him to do something to save him and his family from being dispossessed of the only home they had ever known. He told the lawyer about the sweet hit of country round the homestead, about the cave and the legend and his responsibility to the Emu People, about the simple plans he had had for making the spot a refuge for his children in a world in which their like was not wanted. And he went on to say that he was a hard-working man and had a good name in the country and was sure, from what he had been told by the business people, that he would be given every chance to get on his feet again if only he could rid himself of the Baron. The lawyer said he was sorry, but could do nothing. Thereafter Broncho felt as though he were living in a bad dream.
Nor was the Baron any happier. At last the truth was forced upon him, the truth that he had failed again - yes, the truth that he had failed for good. When that happened he never left the station. Week in week out he stayed in his great house, his only company his house-keeper, fat black Nobblejin, and his radio. Rarely did he go near Broncho. And Broncho just as studiously avoided him. Gone for ever was the dream of riches and high place. What the Baron dreamt of now, as he sat, usually unshaven and half-clad, gazing out upon the wilderness with unseeing haggard eyes, was a spot far away where no one knew him and where he might spend his remaining days in peace.
He knew of such a spot on the southern coast of Queens- land, a tiny holiday resort at which he had once spent a couple of days. But he needed money to get there, and more money to establish himself. And now he could not lay hands on a shilling. A thousand times a day he groaned to think how he might so easily have realised this one sane dream of his life, if only he had cleared out with the last of the money.
Such, then, was the state of things at Seven Emus when Mr. Malcolm Goborrow, an anthropologist, came there to study the symbols of the Totem.
Mr. Goborrow came in a utility truck, an aged hired vehicle that had given him, a great deal of trouble throughout his journey.
Weary as he was, there descended upon him a gloomy feeling that most likely it would turn out that this wretched trip had been only waste of time and precious money. Several people had told him about the Emu Symbols, among them the Baron, who had invited him out to see them some months before.
Little Goborrow was anything but happy. He was beginning to think he was a failure. Actually his life had only just begun. He had only lately celebrated his twenty-seventh birthday. But he felt that he was ageing fast and that soon all hope of achieving the purpose of his life would be gone for ever. His purpose in life was to become important.
At the age of twenty-three he had left his university in a Southern State with the dual degrees of Arts and Economics, and had gone forth to take the world by storm. The world had been quite unruffled. What the masses wanted, he had found, was not men to teach them, but men who could make things for them or sell things to them or merely amuse them. He was not equipped to serve in any of those ways, nor inclined to do so. For a couple of years he had battled in the vulgar world, trying vainly to find a place of importance, and to make a living, too.
Then the great opportunity had seemed to come. The Government had granted subsidies to universities for the study of native races of the Australian Continent and the adjacent islands, the design being, ostensibly, to assist the authorities in welfare work. Lucky graduates who had studied anthropology, and who had nothing better to do, were at once sent out with sub- stantial allowances to make surveys. Ambitious ones came back not merely with the required information, but with interesting material for taking abroad and writing in theses for doctorates. There was a great welcome always awaiting these ambitious ones in universities abroad, especially in the U.S.A., where the study of Savage Peoples, in conjunction with sociology in general, was the vogue. Invariably they were given appointments at good salaries in these institutions as lecturers, and often secured professorships. They were especially welcome if they took along with them some unusual examples of the handicrafts of the peoples they had worked amongst, for presentation to the University museums.
This good fortune had befallen several young men of Goborrow’s acquaintance. As soon as he learnt of it he lost no time in raising a loan from a reluctant relative and en- rolling for the course for the Diploma of Anthropology at his Alma Mater. Nor was it for himself alone he took the step. There was a golden-haired young lady - his Golden Girl, he called her - to win whom he must do something spectacular. The interest in him of this Golden Girl, waning as it had been during his vulgar struggle, had waxed mightily at the prospect of a honeymoon voyage to America as the bride of one who was destined to the chair of a professor. Young Goborrow guessed, despite his sweetheart’s solemn avowals of love, that if he lost this happy prospect, he was likely to lose her, too. And he felt he could not live without her.
The course took him two years. He had hoped to be sent to some remote paradise in the Pacific, since in that case he might have been able to persuade his lady-love to marry him at once and go along with him. At the last moment, however, having no such influence with the university authorities as had those candidates who were sent to the pleasanter places, he was fobbed off with this survey of the miserable people of the wastes of the Great Pindan, two hundred miles away to the south-east of Dampier. There was not the slightest hope of inducing the Golden Girl to forsake her glittering haunts for such a sphere as that.
Disappointed as he was by being sent to this unromantic region, he came to it with every- expectation of being able to secure that special bit of information about some unknown aspect of human existence which would secure for him his decree of Doc- tor of Philosophy and his good job and his importance and his bride. However, of all the dull, uninteresting folk that ever lived, those skinny desert niggers of the Pindan were the worst; that is, of course, from the point of view of an ethnologist seeking something new. For six weary months Goborrow had lived amongst the various Pindan tribes, lived with them, lived like them, had gathered up every little of information he could glean from them. But scarcely was there one fact about them that he learnt which had not been learnt long ago from a score of other tribes and set down in a dozen text-books.
Gradually all hope of thesis and professorship and Golden Girl had faded in his heart. And more, his resources had dwindled sadly, too. When his survey was completed,only enough of the grant would be left to settle his debts and cover the cost of the journey back to his university.
There now remained the Emu Totem. Perhaps, after all, he might get something here for his thesis, even if he had to draw the long how somewhat in working it up. And if the symbols were truly as striking as they were said to be, and he were able to secure a few, even with a poor thesis he might be welcomed by some university in America; provided, of course, he could borrow the money to get there. When he had talked with the Baron about the symbols, months before, he had asked if there were any chance of securing some, and had been told that there was none, because the blacks held the things most sacred. But Goborrow had since learnt that the Baron was in desperate straits financially, and believed that a desperate man would hold nothing sacred but his own skin.
When he reached the homestead gate, the entire populace, including the horses and the dogs and the goats and the blacks in the camp across the river, were watching him. The blacks - the workers at their posts about the homestead, and the loafers in the camp - were watching warily, ready to decamp if whoever was coming should prove to be one of those two chief banes of their simple existence, a doctor or a policeman. And Broncho and the Baron were watching warily, too, though with no hope of easy escape should the visitor prove to be one they did not wish to face, such as the bailiff.
Broncho was in the harness shed with his two eldest sons, repairing saddles against the evil day when they would have to quit their home and return to droving. The Baron was on the north-side verandah of his house, peeping through the bougainvillea. He was dressed in khaki shirt and pants and slippers, having changed from pyjamas - his usual costume now for night and day - when first he heard the truck. But he had not shaved, although it was nearly a week since he had done so, because it seemed too much to shave to meet the bailiff. But, as the truck approached and he recognised Goborrow, all his old vanity surged up again, and he rushed inside to make himself a gentleman to meet a gentleman.
The Baron was tall, and big in all parts but the head, which was small and round, with a little hook nose and small pale blue, popping eyes. He was showing his sixty-five years that day. His eyes were bloodshot and watery and under-hung with hags of bluish flesh, his red face seamed and blotchy. After shaving he studied his face closely, then massaged it vigorously with bay rum. Then he oiled his thin, silvery hair and brushed it carefully over the bald patches, then trimmed up his little moustache and waxed it till it bristled fiercely. He was looking something like his old self when he went to meet his guest.
Broncho did not know Goborrow. From the state of the visitor’s truck he guessed that he could not be a particu- larly powerful creditor. Still, convinced he was, an enemy of some kind, he was deeply disturbed by his arrival.
Broncho was a short, stocky man, with a curly mop of greying hair, and a big, drooping, grey-streaked moustache. His complexion was not much darker than that of a suntanned white man, but the high cheekbones and flattish, fleshy nose and black eyes deeply set under heavy brows easily betrayed his aboriginal heritage.
He stood debating whether or not he should march in upon the Baron and demand to know what the visitor wanted and to make an impassioned plea for himself and his family if he learnt that the man was come to kick them out.
At last he decided to wait a while, and sent his sons to sneak and see what was going on in the big house. The boys returned to say that the Baron and his guest were sitting on the front verandah drinking whisky and laughing a great deal. Broncho was relieved. He knew the Baron had no grog. Therefore the visitor must have brought the whisky, which was not what one would expect a bailiff to do.
He found the Baron and Goborrow seated in cane chairs on the front verandah just above the steps.
“Ah!” cried the Baron. “Good night, Broncho! You’re just the man we want, - This’s Mr. Goborrow. He’s come see the Emu Dreaming - He turned to Goborrow and explained: “’Dreaming’ is what the natives call a totem.”
Yes, yes, I know,” said Goborrow, a trifle testily. “And very appropriate, too.” Then to Broncho he said heartily: “Good night, Mr. Jones. How d’ you do?”
His heartiness was genuine enough. Broncho’s arrival had relieved him of a seemingly endless monologue of the Baron’s about his obviously fictitious university days. Evidently his recent trials had robbed the Baron of much of his genius for lying. Tonight he was rather drunk and very excited and showing his true pathetic self only too clearly.
“I’ve been telling our guest - ah-hum!” quoth the Baron, “that my good friend Broncho understands the Emu Cult even better than the natives that follow it. For my part - ah-hum! - for my part, I know nothing about it. Civilised man is study enough for me. But my ol’ frien’ Broncho will give you all ‘formation you’re requiring’ He’s instructed many a dis - distinguished guest of mine. I’ve had Ministers of the Crown here, ‘spected those same treasures under the guidance of’ ol’ frien’ Broncho. Yes - Minister for Territories, Minister for ‘Terior, Minister for Agriculture. Yes - and a rep’sent’ive of Crown itself, in person of my dear frien’ Lord Clowsey, Governor. Ain’ that so. Broncho?”
Broncho nodded gravely.
Mr. Goborrow’s makin’ shurvey for his ‘varsity,” the Baron burbled on.“He wants to get away to-morrow, so he’ll want you to take him to the - to the cave first thing in the mornin’, so’s he can see ev’thing best ‘vantage when the sun’s shining in. As usual, I’ll leave all that part his ennertainmen’ to you.”
“Good-oh,” said Broncho. “I’ll be along at six. Best time to see cave now’s between seven and eight.”
He was always pleased to show the cave, because first sight of the treasures within in invariably evoked homage, of only momentarily, for the genius of those he called the Old People. He was moving to go when Goborrow rose hastily from his chair and said to him: “What about telling me something about the Dreaming now? May I come down to your place, Mr. Jones?”
It was chiefly to avoid further boredom that Go- borrow had made the suggestion. Broncho blinked. He was flattered. But he knew that the house was upside down, that Possum would be bathing the latest baby, and that Possum would like to be warned. For a moment he stood silent. Then he answered slowly: “Aw - yeah — but I’d like to tell the missus first.”
It was eleven o’clock when Goborrow left Broncho, and came back to the big house
He was also disappointed by Broncho’s flat refusal even to discuss the question of his getting hold of any of the symbols. And this, despite the fact that what he had learnt about the Emu Dreaming would make a first-class thesis. But Mr. Goborrow was not one to be thankful for small mercies. Weary as he was, he groaned when he saw the Baron still in his chair on the verandah. He sat Goborrow down and began to talk again. Goborrow humoured him, because he wished to raise the question of securing some of the symbols. It was mid- night before he got a chance. The Baron was interested the moment money was mentioned in the matter, but when he heard that ten pounds was the most Goborrow was pre- pared to pay, he scoffed and said he would not consider the matter under a hundred. Then he went on to talk of the fortunes he had won and lost. The visitor fell-asleep in his chair at one o’clock.
Goborrow was up and dressed when Broncho called soon after sunrise next morning. Waiting for them were two of the four old Emu People, Moonduk and Kungiung, both very old men. The other two, a man and a woman, were now too old to leave the camp. Native convention (which amounted to rigid law) forbade the intrusion of outsiders on a totem- site, unless accompanied by a member of the totem. Still, it was not necessary for Broncho to go to the Emu People every time he wished to visit the cave, because his sixth son, Kim- berley, was a member of the cult, having become one by reason of the simple fact that his father had dreamt of emus shortly before he was born. But Broncho never took visitors to the cave unless accompanied by one of the elders, and always saw to it that the old people were rewarded for coming.
The cave was in the western wall of the gorge, a couple of hundred yards up from the northern end. It abutted a broad ledge some forty sheer feet above the river-bed. It was not just a hole in the wall, but an arched undercut, some twenty feet in length, running longitudinally, and screened for the most part by remnants of massive slabs of brittle rock, the falling away of which had formed it. To reach it from below, it was necessary to go on for another fifty yards or so to where the face of the wall was broken by a number of small ledges, by means of which a zig-zag track ran up. Old Moonduk, who was the head-man of the Totem, led the way.
When the party reached the cave, the wall was ablaze with sunshine and colour. Goborrow, catching his first glimpse from the ledge outside, gasped at what he saw. One vast design filled the arch from top to bottom and from end to end. It depicted seven monster figures - emus with women’s breasts and hair, complete with back-bones and entrails - carved in the rock and painted black and white and red and yellow. And on the slabs lying along the base of the wall were numerous pieces of crude sculpture done in the same design and colouring, ranging in size and crudity from stones of only a hand’s length and breadth and scratched with a few poor lines, to a huge piece some four feet in length by a foot and a half in height and a foot in thickness at the base, and carved in relief with considerable skill. The colours were bright, because it was not long since the annual painting.
“God!” exclaimed Goborrow, craning over the slabs as he and Broncho passed up to the gap through which the blacks had entered the gallery. “God — what a show!”
Broncho looked back at him. Of all the visitors he had seen express surprise and delight at first sight of the place, none had been nearly so affected as little Goborrow, whose dark blue eyes were popping from his head.
They reached the gap and entered. Then Goborrow saw the big statuette. It stood on a massive decorated slab about four feet in height by ten in length, leaning against the wall near the further end. He fairly rushed at it. Broncho followed him and watched his eager examin- ation of the piece with pride. Minutes passed before Go- borrow turned. Then he said, in a voice intense with excitement: “Man, this is marvelous!”
Again he examined it keenly, running his fingers along its lines, knocking it with his knuckles, feeling behind it, lifting an end of it to try its weight. “Marvellous thing!” he breathed again and again. “And so old! Thousands of years old. One of the oldest pieces of art on earth. And so lovely – lovely! Lord - Lord - it’s priceless!” Then he looked swiftly at Broncho and almost gasped: “This thing’s worth a fortune, d’you know?”
Broncho blinked.
“It ought to be in a museum,” Goborrow went on. “It’s wasted here. Damnation, man, I must have it!”
Broncho glanced at the two old men, who were lounging near the entrance and watching them stonily.
Goborrow also looked at the blacks. Then he whispered: “We could pay them well. We could give them everything they wanted for the rest of their lives.”
Broncho pulled at his moustache and muttered: “They wouldn’t sell it, mister.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. It don’t belong to ’em. It belongs to the Dream Time. They only look after it for them – them” - he cast a reverent glance at the painted monsters on the wall before him - “them old ones what started it.”
“But -but surely there’s some way?” whispered Goborrow. “Suppose we could get these old people out of the road?”
Broncho turned away from him, spat on the sandy floor, and said: “Couldn’t do it. There ain’t no way, mister. Plenty people been after these things. Big people, too. There’d be murder if anyone tried to take ’em.” He looked back at Go- borrow, whose eyes were filled with dismay. He turned away again and continued: “There was a murder done down the Gas- coyne only a few years ago ’count the same thing. Some station blokes robbed a blackfeller’s storehouse. The blacks tracked ‘em down and murdered ’em.”
Goborrow cast a glance at the old men, then bent with a sigh and took up the haversack containing his sketch books and paints and camera. He used three spools of film in the photographing. Then, assisted by Broncho, he took careful measurements of the great picture, and of each of the pieces of sculpture, and estimated the weights of each of the latter as well.
Finally he set up his easel and, with Broncho and the blackfellows gaping behind him, did excellent water-colour sketches of everything. And while he worked he hinted again and again at how much he would like to have even the smallest of the sculptures and how handsomely he would pay, but without getting a word in answer. By the time he was done it was after ten, and the brilliance of the gallery was fading.
When Goborrow returned to the big house he found the Baron awaiting him on the front verandah and a table laid there for morning tea. Goborrow was bursting to talk about the cave. Nor did the Baron want to talk anything else when he heard Go- borrow say that the big statuette was exceedingly valuable. He got excited then, and said: “D’yo know, I’ve often thought that thing was worth money. What do you reckon it’s worth?”
“Depends on whom you sold it to.”
“Who’d buy it - Australian museums?”
“Yes, and agents who buy things like that to send overseas. You’d probably get a much higher price from an agent, because such things are much more highly valued over- seas. And that big piece - God, it’d be snapped up!”
The Baron’s eyes were bulging. “Have you ever sold anything like that before?” he asked breathlessly.
“No,” answered Goborrow. “But I’ve heard of several anthropologists who have. There was one man. Doctor Monser, sold a stone image of the Rainbow Snake he got from the Centre for over a thousand.”
“Ghost!” cried the Baron. “Who’d he sell it to?”
“An antique dealer in Sydney. There was a bit of a row about it. He said he bought it off the blacks. But actually he pinched it. The story is that he got the blacks roaring drunk on methylated spirit, and while they were enjoying themselves lifted the Snake and bolted with it in his car. It was a long time before the affair came to light. The blacks weren’t game to go to the police. It was some old combo prospector who found out about it and reported. By then Monser had sold it. Several Aborigines’ Welfare Societies took the matter up. But Monser was too well in for anything to happen to him. The Snake is in the Philadelphia Museum now. And I’ll bet you wouldn’t buy it for ten thousand. Overseas’ things like that are valued as highly as we value things out of the ruins of Babylon.”
“But - but this Emu Dreaming thing,” said the Baron. “Is it anything like as good as that Rainbow Snake?”
“I’d say it was better. I never saw the Snake Figure in reality. But I’ve seen pictures of it. There’s a good coloure plate of it in Buglemann’s latest book, The Psychology of Totemism Yes, I’d say the Emu Figure is about the finest example of Australian aboriginal art ever found.”
For a while they both sat silent, staring at the eastern ranges, each busy with his thoughts of what he wanted from the future.
It was the Baron who first spoke. “We’ll get that thing,” he murmured.
“How?” asked Goborrow, turning to him. “Jones says there isn’t a hope.”
“There must be some way. I’ll get Broncho up and talk it over with him. Things are – ah-hum!” He looked away. “Things aren’t so good with us just now. We’re - well, to be candid, we’re a bit short of money. Broncho knows that as well as I do. He’ll agree all right to help us find a way.” The Baron stopped, drummed on the arm of his chair for a moment, then turned back to Goborrow. “Well, now, if we can get the things, can you guarantee to sell them?”
“Definitely.”
“And what would you ask for doing so?”
Eyeing him closely, Goborrow said: “I’d want half what we got for it. And I’d want three or four of the little pieces as well. Not to sell. The big one’s the only one of much value. I’d like some of the other pieces to give to an ethnological museum as a gift.”
For a moment the Baron was silent, pre-occupied with a vision of settling himself down in that spot on the Queensland coast. At length be looked at Goborrow and said: “That suits me. Of course, you won’t mind if I come down South with you and see the deal through, eh?”
Broncho was in the horse-yard shoeing Little Adolf. He came at once. The Baron called him up to the verandah and bade him sit down. When he was settled, the Baron said to him: “Look, Broncho, there’s a way we can raise a decent bit of money. I want your help.”
It dawned on Broncho in a flash what the way was. Before the Baron could continue he asked grimly: “What, you talkin’ about Emu Dreamin’?”
His tone checked the Baron, who blinked for a moment, then said lamely: “Well, yes.” Then he cleared his throat, moved his chair slightly, and went on, in a confiding tone: “It’s that big stone figure we want. It’s very valuable. It shouldn’t be hard for you to get those old niggers to hand it over. We’ll pay them well.”
“Can’t do it,” said Broncho. “They won’t give it up for nothin’ in the world.”
“Well, then, we’ll have to find a means of making them.”
Broncho’s head came round with a jerk. “How you goin’ to do that?” he said sharply.
The Baron, purpling slightly, answered stiffly: “We can always hunt them off the station.”
Broncho gaped for a moment, then said thickly: “What about the other niggers?”
“Hunt the bally lot if necessary.”
Goborrow cut in. “But it’s nothing to do with the other niggers. The things belong solely to the Emu People.”
Broncho looked at him and said: “Some piccaninnies in the camp been born into the Dreamin’, too. Their father’s stick up for the old niggers.”
“And I said I’d hunt the whole damn camp if necessary,” cried the Baron angrily, “We’re not going to be stopped by a mob of niggers. We need money badly, Broncho. And you know it. And this is our heaven-sent chance to get out of our difficulties.”
Broncho was silent for a moment, staring at his fiddling Brown fingers. Then he said: “We been talk about this plenty times. It’s no good. You can’t take them things away from them poor old people. It’s all they got.” With that he rose and moved towards the steps.
The Baron leapt up, crying: “Now wait a minute, man. Listen to reason.” He laid a hand on Broncho’s arm. “Let’s talk the matter over.”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” muttered Broncho.
“But this is a chance of a lifetime, man. For godsake, don’t cruel it. If we don’t get money soon, we’ll lose everything. We’re in a hell of a mess…”
Broncho slipped from his grasp and cried:
“You put us in the flamin’ mess. Only you, I been workin’ me flamin’ guts out. And you been wastin’ money…”
“Now listen,” said the Baron, with difficulty. “Here’ a chance to get square again. This man says this statuette is worth a lot of money…”
“I don’t give a damn what it’s worth! You leave it alone. If you try takin’ it, I’ll side with the niggers.”
Goborrow leapt up and interposed:
“Steady, now! Steady, now, Mr. Jones! Let’s talk it over quietly. There must be some way….”
Broncho cut him short with a shout.
“There ain’t no way! I ain’t goin’ to let no one rob them poor niggers. This rotten old cow here robbed me, but…”
“Damn you!” shouted the Baron, now beside himself. “How dare you talk to me like that! I took you up and tried to make a white man of you, tried to give you something better than a blacks’ camp to live in…”
“You took me up to rob me, you dirty old rook. I wish I never seen you. I wish you go ’way and leave me alone. This my place. I made it for my family. I can work this place myself my own way, and make a livin’, ’cause people trust me. They don’t trust you, you dirty thievin’ cow. But I got to keep you’cause law say so. Don’t you give me no trouble, mister, or, by cripes, I’ll get rid you pretty quick and flaimin’ lively with a gun.”
For a half-hour or more the Baron and Goborrow sat on the front verandah, the Baron burbling about what he had done for Broncho - how he had stood by him and the station to the last, when he could have gone to that spot on the Queensland coast and settled down in comfort, and how niggers always let you down - and Goborrow silently cursing the pair of them. At last the Baron exhausted himself, and sat snorting and glaring at the view.
Some minutes of silence passed. Then Goborrow looked at the Baron quickly and said: ”Jones said something about wishing you’d go away and leave him to run the place his own way.”
The Baron heaved himself up in his chair.
“Run it like a blacks’ camp! You should’ve seen it before I came in with him!” And off he went again on what he had done for Broncho.
Goborrow waited till he paused for breath, then said: “He was telling me last night that business people in Dampier had assured him they’s stand by him if he were on his own. As a matter of fact, he more or less asked me for advice on how to get rid of you.”
“There’s been a conspiracy by the business people to ruin me,” cried the Baron. “And that fool nigger has allowed himself to he dragged into it against me.”
“I don’t doubt it,” said Goborrow soothingly. ”But please listen to what I have to say. He wants to get rid of you, rightly or wrongly believing that if he does, your credi- tors will allow him to stay on and get square. He told me last night he could help himself out with droving. But evidently what he wants, above all else, is to keep this place as a home for his family. Now, wait till I’m done. And from what you’ve told me, you yourself would be only too pleased to get out of the place, if you had the means to go where you want to. Isn’t that so?”
“It is. And I’m only sorry that I didn’t go long ago, instead of wasting my time and money trying to whitewash a blasted nigger.”
All right, then. You want to go. And Jones wants you to go. And my getting possession of the Emu Dreaming statuette is the means of your both getting your wishes.”
”But how are you going to get possession of the damned thing when that filthy nigger is as crazy about it as all the other filthy niggers? The main reason he wants to stay here is because of the cave. He’s made himself the patron of the Totem. One of his kids belongs to it. The fact that this’s the centre of the Totem is the chief reason the black dog settled here.”
“I know, I know. That’s just the point. If the creditors foreclose, patronage of the Totem will pass to whoever takes over the station. And you can bet your life that someone is going to get all that’s moveable in the cave some day. It’s such a safe bet that I’d wait till the new owner stepped in, if I could afford to. Now I take it that if we could get hold of the statuette, you’d be prepared to relinquish your share in the station?”
The Baron was listening intently now.
“Yes,” he replied at once.
“In that case, Jones’ darlings, the Emu People, would be the poorer by that one article, which is surely better than the complete dispossession that’s certain to take place some day if Jones’ patronage is lost.”
“Of course. That’s what I was going to put to the fool. If he’d agree to help us…”
“Wait,” said Goborrow. ”It’s not so simple. All along I couldn’t see how you were going to get the piece, even if Jones did agree to help. The matter doesn’t rest solely with him. His patronage is certainly very useful to the Emu People. And his co- operation would be essential to us. But he has no more authority over the blacks than we have, and could do no more than help us bewilder or bully them into giving us what we want, which he cert- ainly won’t do. And the reason he won’t is not that he really shares their superstition, but sympathises with it. I don’t know whether you’re aware of it, but the blacks believe that if a Totem Centre is desecrated, the creatures the Totem stands for and the people who belong to it will die out, because the Totem Centre is where the spirits of both go after death to await reincarnation; and the spirits will not go to a place that is desecrated, but will wander about lost for evermore.”
“Yes, I know the whole nonsensical rigmarole.”
“Well, Jones doesn’t really believe that. I asked him last night. He pretends to. But it’s only out of sympathy for the blacks. He loves them. I suppose it’s because he never got a chance to love white people.”
“You may be right. But I consider him just a ruddy nigger. And how does it help us if you are right? You said just now he’d do nothing to help us get that statuette.”
“Nothing that would hurt the blacks, nothing in the nature of a desecration. But I’ll bet he’d help like a shot if there was a way to do it without the blacks knowing anything about it.”
The Baron looked at him blankly. “But is there any way?”
“Only one. Make a replica of the piece we want, so as to replace it without their knowing.”
“Replica!” the Baron gasped. “But, man alive, how on earth can we make a replica of that?”
“Out of cement,” said Goborrow. ”I’m a bit of an artist, you know. Why, I once made a fish pond out of cement with frogs sitting round it, and I made such a good job of the frogs, shape and colour and all, that the kookaburras used to attack ’em.”
“My God!” breathed the Baron, gaping.
“I have the dimensions of that statuette,” Goborrow con- tinued, ”and the weight, and four paintings of it. As a matter of fact, while I was painting it the idea of a replica struck me for a moment. But it was only just now it dawned on me as a means of getting the thing.”
The Baron heaved up in his chair, ”Gosh, man, could you really do it?”
“I’m sure I could. With a couple of bags of cement and some filling, and wire-netting to build it on, and ochre and soot for paints. Oh, yes, I’m sure of it.”
“You’re a genius, man!” cried the Baron, leaping out of his chair. “A genius, a marvel!” And he rushed at Goborrow and grasped his hand and pounded his shoulder.
“Of course, it depends on whether Jones will agree to help,” said Goborrow. “I’d leave him out if I could. But I don’t see how we could manage without him. It’s a risky business putting it to him. But effecting the swap without him would he riskier. He can go to the cave at any time without attracting attention. The statuette’s a fair load. But he looks strong enough to manage it on his own. The blacks don’t go there once in a blue moon, he tells me. It’d he pretty hard for us to do it, and dangerous, too. And I’d like to get it done as soon as possible. I’ve booked my passage on the next steamer going South. She leaves next Tuesday, a week to-morrow. I’d like to catch her if I could. It means waiting another month if I don’t.”
Broncho drew back as the Baron tried to grasp his hand, and said: “I don’t want no hand-shaking after what you done. I only want you sign that paper and leave me ’lone.”
“Go on with you, man!” laughed the Baron. “You could’ve had it signed long ago and saved a damned lot of bother, if you’d listened to sense. How’d you get it?”
Briefly and brusquely Broncho explained.
“Debil-debils, eh?” cried the Baron. ”Can you beat that? Ha! Ha! Ha!”
It was about half-past two when Goborrow arrived at Broncho’s house.
“I just came down for another talk about the Dreaming,” he said,
“I can’t get away this afternoon, after all.”
Broncho cleared his throat. “I said all I want to say about it ’s mornin’, mister. No good askin’ me again.”
Goborrow put on his special smile, and took Broncho by the arm and said: “Oh, I just want you to tell me some more about it. I’ve finished off those sketches. I’ve brought them down for you to see. I thought perhaps you’d like one, too.”
Broncho softened. He had been greatly taken with the sketches, and had longed to ask Goborrow to do one for him, but had not dared. He suggested that they go in and have a cup of tea.
Goborrow, a great believer in the scientific method, had laid his plans with care and skill. Discussion of the peculiarities of aboriginal artists was part of it. From that he went on to the peculiarities of the aborigines in general, and then to those of the whole of mankind, from which, with simple examples, he showed that all races of men are truly brethren in the psychic yearnings that give rise to their superstitions. Broncho was enthralled. Then he returned to the Emu Totem, and took up his sketches again, and gradually came to the point at which he could say, without betraying himself, that he was thinking of making a replica of the big statuette and a couple of the little pieces for presentation to a museum, so that the thousands of people in the South who loved the blacks might have the joy of seeing such fine examples of their art.
Broncho was astounded to hear how easily the replicas could be made. Then Goborrow said that he would like some of the ochres he had seen lying in heaps in the cave, so as to have the exact colourings for his copies of the pieces, if he should decide to make them, and added that he would pay well for them, and produced a pound note. Broncho took the note, and said that he would ask one of the old Emu Men to get the ochre at once. Goborrow said that he would come back in the evening to collect the stuff, then made a slighting reference to the Baron as a host, and from that gradually worked up to a discussion of Broncho’s desperate position and the plight the Emu Totem would be in if nothing could be done to save him from dispossession. Broncho was close to tears when Goborrow decided that he had said enough for the time being and went off.
Goborrow came back at half-past seven. Broncho was waiting on the front verandah, with the ochres ready in neat packets, and with a scheme in mind for the salvation of the Emu Dreaming.
When he had seated his visitor on the front veran- dah he went inside to hang the lamp in the passage and to get the sketch Goborrow had given him. He had already framed it, having robbed a large photograph of Black Adolf for the purpose.
Possum came out while he was away. Goborrow rose and bowed to her as though she were a duchess, and saw her into a chair. She simpered as she sat down. And the chair groaned under her, because, although she was still her handsome self in face, she had long since ceased to be the lissom little lass her father had so fiercely guarded.
Goborrow was glad she was there. She would be easier to handle than Broncho, and would make a useful ally if her man put up a struggle, because it was obvious - as Goborrow had observed the night before - that Broncho loved her dearly and would be at pains to avoid causing her dis- tress. He began at once to tell her that he had taken up their case with the Baron, and had induced him to relinquish his share in the station and go away. Indeed, he went on to say, he had got the Baron to put his agreement to paper, and had the paper with him.
Broncho heard this while he was in the passage polishing the glass of the picture with his sleeve. He rushed out crying: “What you say - the old man goin’ to pull out?”
“Yes,” replied Goborrow, and took out the paper and handed it to him. “Of course, to make it legal you’d have to take it to a lawyer.”
Broncho’s black eyes were shining as he went on: “By golly, that’s fine! You proper good friend, Mr. Goborrow.”
Goborrow allowed time for the joy to sink into them, then turned and said, in a rather strained voice: ”I got him to sign it by telling him that I would make a copy of that big dreaming- stone to give you for the real one.”
He stopped and waited for that to sink in. Broncho was now gaping. Goborrow went on: ”It was the only thing to do. He couldn’t go away because he had no money and nowhere to go. He’s an old man, you know. He had to have money. And the only chance he had was to sell that stone. I can’t say what he’ll get for it. Perhaps not so much as I thought. And perhaps he’ll give you a share. For my part, I don’t want any- thing out of it. I’m only doing it to enable you to stay here and protect the Totem from vandals. Well, I’ll go away to Dampier to-morrow and make the copy. And I’ll be back in a few days with it. It’ll be a perfect copy. You won’t be able to tell the difference yourself. We’ll plant it somewhere. And when you’ve got the chance you’ll take it to the cave and swap if for the real one. The blacks will never know. And so the Totem will go on, with you, and your boys after you, to pro- tect it always.”
Fully a minute passed without a word. Bulla could he heard growling quietly. Then Goborrow flashed his smile and said: ”So you don’t have to go at all. I’m glad. I was terribly sorry for you, and for the blacks, too. I couldn’t go away without fixing it up for you. And now…” He swung round and eyed the packages of ochre. “And now all that remains to be done is make the copy and ring it in.”
For a while he eyed the packages in silence, but saw nothing, because his mind was on the distorted face of Broncho. Possum’s eyes were on Broncho’s face. Nor did she need the sight of him to tell her he was struggling, because his finger- nails were biting deep into her flesh.
Broncho swallowed. He licked his lips. At last he muttered: “I ain’t goin’ to do that, mister.”
Goborrow drooped in his chair. He had put so much effort into it, and had thought he had won. A sickly feeling came over him, and sweat burst from his brow. For seconds he sat breathing sharply and shallowly.
Then he straightened up with a jerk, and asked hoarsely; ”Then - then what the hell else can you do? I - I’ve tried to help you. If you’ve got any sense…” He stopped with a despairing wave of the hand.
After a moment Broncho said: ”I was goin’ to ask you, mister, if you could get Gov’ment to make a kind of reserve of this here place and let me stop here.” This was the scheme that he and Possum had evolved over their evening meal.
Goborrow blew it to pieces with a word. ”Bah!” he snapped. “The Government would pull down the whole cave and shift it to a museum if they knew its value.” Then he looked at Possum and went on: “You’re not going to let him be a fool and turn down the last chance of getting rid of the old man, are you, missus? You don’t want to he kicked out of your home, do you? I tell you the blacks would never know. If you like, I’ll make the thing first, and you can see it for yourself. Make him listen to sense.”
She blinked at him. She had heard all he had told Broncho about the making of replicas during the afternoon, and believed completely in his capacity to make a perfect imitation, because she had been almost as delighted with the coloured sketch as Broncho. She turned from Goborrow and whispered; “Why don’t you do like he say, Broncho, and get rid of old man quick?”
Broncho drew a deep breath and answered: “Suppose I do that, we get bad luck always.”
For a moment Goborrow gaped at him, then exploded: “What?”
“We get bad luck,” repeated Broncho mildly. “Anybody get bad luck for monkeyin’ about with Dreamin’ business.”
Again Goborrow felt sick.
He knew now that there was no hope of getting this nigger to agree. He heaved himself up from his chair and sneered: “And, of course, you’re having the very best of luck now, eh?”
Broncho swallowed, blinked, then said: ”Well, we ain’t dead yet. And somethin’ might turn up to let us stop here.”
“I wouldn’t bet on it if I was offered a thousand to one,” said Goborrow, moving to go. “From what I was told in town, you’ll be booted off the place before the year’s out. I’ll have that paper back. Well, don’t say I didn’t try to help. Good- bye!”
The Baron was in his bedroom packing Black Adolf’s heart and trophies in a trunk, when he heard Goborrow re- turn. He had asked Goborrow to take the hulk of his luggage in the utility and have it shipped under a false name to Port Victoria, whither they would travel overland in the Baron’s own car to catch the steamer to the Eastern States. He had suggested this procedure because he feared that action might be taken by his creditors to prevent him from leaving and because he was certain that, even if allowed to leave, he would be prevented from taking the car and the radio and several other expensive things he was loath to part with. Goborrow had readily agreed, because thus he would be able to dodge his own commitments, which it had become essen- tial for him to do now that he must pay the travelling expenses of both. It was the Baron’s intention to follow him to town next morning and to bring him back in his own car, with the materials for making the counterfeits, to a deserted homestead that lay off the road in the vicinity of Turkey Creek, twenty miles from Dampier, and when the faking was done, he would bring him back to the station for the swapping.
When he heard Goborrow in the hall he dropped his task and rushed to meet him, radiant. He knew what had happened the moment he saw the anthropologist’s grim face, but he asked: ”How did you get on?”
Speaking with savage emphasis, he related what had taken place. The Baron, haggard and old again, heard him out with out a word.
Minutes passed. Above them the lamp roared quietly. And from without came the faint sounds of corroboree in the camp and the crying of curlews down the river.
The Baron broke the silence by asking huskily; ”Can’t we do it ourselves?”
Goborrow did not answer at once. When he did he heaved himself up in his chair and said harshly: “Yes - we can, and we will! I’m not going to be beaten by any nigger.
Can you get to the cave over the top of the gorge?” “I suppose you could. But not with a heavy load.”
“Then how can you get to it otherwise without being seen?”
The Baron thought for a moment, then said, pointing to the southeast: ”There’s a gully cuts into the gorge about three hundred yards above the cave. Koojin Creek runs into the river there. Koojin Creek cuts right through from the Honeycomb Range, over there in the east. Just over the range, about a mile from the head of the creek, there’s a bore on a bit of a plain, Cockatoo Bore. The bore would be about three miles from here by way of the creek. That’s the way the musterers go to it. But there’s also a motor road to it, running at the back of Honeycomb Range from the main road. It leaves the main road near Dingo Crossing, about five miles up from here. There’s a finger-post pointing this way to prevent strangers from turning off there. Perhaps you noticed it?”
Goborrow nodded.
“Well, it’s a good road round to the bore. And there’d be no likelihood of being seen or heard going round there by car. Of course, we’d have to go by night, because there’s always the chance of blacks being about hunting in the day-time. The rest of the journey, over the range and down Koojin Creek, would have to be done on foot. It’d be pretty rough and hard-going, I’ve been along that way several times on horseback. Half the time you have to travel in the bed of the creek, dodging round huge rocks. Still, we could take our time. Of course, we’ll have to do it ourselves.”
“Yes. We can’t trust anybody else. It’d be a two- man job for us. We could sling the thing on a pole and carry it between us.”
They were silent for a while, thinking. Then the Baron said suddenly: “Did you get the ochre?”
Goborrow started. “No!” he admitted. “I clean forgot about it. But it’s all right. I’ll get it in the morning.
I think it’d be better if you don’t come with me to-morrow. It might make Jones suspicious.
I’d like to get the whole thing done as soon as possible. There’s nothing I hate like hanging about.”
“Me, too,” said the Baron.
“But you’ll have to wait a few days longer,”¾ Goborrow went on. “Otherwise he might take a jerry. I suggest you wait till Sunday. I’ll hire the utility again, seeing that I shan’t have to pay that cheat at the garage for it now.” He grinned. “I should have the job done by Sunday. Then we can come back in your car on Monday or Tuesday.”
It was nine o’clock before Goborrow got away, so reluctant was the utility to take the road again. Broncho, hearing the popping and spluttering in the garage, came up to lend a helping hand, but retired when he saw that the Baron was there, too. The others saw him creep away, and were glad, because they wished to load the Baron’s luggage without his seeing them.
Some little time passed while the truck was being loaded from the north-side verandah of the big house. Then it began to roar again, and soon emerged from the Baron’s garden, and headed for the gate, with the Baron riding on the running-board. At the gate, which had been opened by a blackboy, the truck pulled up and the Baron alighted. A little more delay for a last whisper and a hand-shake. Then Go- borrow was on his way.
Time hung heavy on the Baron’s hands thereafter. He sorely missed the radio, and could not bring himself to talk to Nobbeljin now that he was a gentleman again.
He longed to saddle Little Adolf and ride up Koojin Creek to the Cockatoo Bore, but dared not for fear of rousing Broncho’s suspicions.
And so the remainder of Tuesday passed, and all of Wednesday and Thursday and Friday. On Friday night the Baron was smitten with the horrible idea that Goborrow, left to his own devices, might have considered it would suit him better to wait to get what he wanted till he and Broncho were dispossessed. He did not sleep a wink that night. And as he watched the dawn of Saturday he decided that he would wait no longer.
While awaiting the arrival of Nobblejin from the camp to cook his breakfast he packed the rest of his belongings. She came, he told her he was going to Dampier for a few days. Immediately after breakfast he got his yellow car out of the garage and drove up to Broncho’s house and tooted on the horn. Broncho kept him waiting for several minutes, and came out with studied slowness and a hangdog look, and he spoke in indifferent monosyllables, although the Baron was affability itself. The Baron told him that he had been studying their books and had discovered that there was money owing to them by the Meat Works, and that he was going in to see if he could collect it. Broncho had heard several yarns like that since the Baron had come to feel it necessary to find excuses for trips to town. He showed just how much credence he gave to this one by turning away and spitting with great deliberation. Then the Baron started up the car again, revved the engine noisily, and wheeled about and raced back home. It took him only a few minutes to dismiss Nobblejin and lock up and load his luggage. Then he set out, tooting lustily for someone to come and open the big gate for him. The Baron roared good-bye as he shot through. And in a moment he was lost in a cloud of dust.
It was about noon when he left the main road for the track that led to the deserted homestead on Turkey Creek and found, to his great relief, the tracks of Goborrow’s truck.
And because Goborrow was not expecting the Baron, he, too, had some anxious moments while listening to the approaching car. Such was his relief when he saw who it was - relief not only from that momentary anxiety, but also from the strain of spending three days and three nights alone with a guilty secret in a ruined house - that he fairly rushed to meet the Baron, in spite of having regarded him hitherto as an intolerable bore.
Goborrow had completed the modelling of the big statuette and three little pieces. He produced his measurements and sketches to show how exact he had been. Then he took the Baron out into the sun and showed him some experimental models of the small pieces, which were already dry, and on which he had been trying his hand with the ochres. He explained that he had got the best effect by sizing the ochre with gum from the acacias that grew in profusion thereabout. And he added that he would be pleased if the Baron would gather him a large quantity of gum. They then went back to the house for dinner.
The Baron put in the afternoon gathering gum and making it into mucilage, while Goborrow made preparations for the painting. It was dark when they had supper. Weary as the Baron was from having had no sleep the night before, he was all for opening up the one remaining quart of whisky and making a party of it. Goborrow, however, insisted on keeping the bottle to fortify them during the last and hardest part of the job, the swapping. So they retired early. But both were too anxious to sleep soundly.
They were up with the dawn. Straight after breakfast they set to work, Goborrow painting, the Baron cutting and trimming a pole and fitting it with shoulder-pads, and making a stout rope sling. Out in the blazing sun, the paint dried almost as soon as applied. Before the morning was half-way through, Goborrow had the first painting done. The imitation was perfect. Then Goborrow gave the things a second painting, which was dry before dinner. And after dinner he gave them a third coat. At three o’clock they went back to the house, telling each other that there was nothing more to do, but knowing each in his secret heart that the task was only at its beginning.
Now, they had not expected to have the painting done till next day, and had planned the next stage of their venture accordingly. It was their plan to leave the place next after- noon at five o’clock, and to proceed quietly so as to reach the vicinity of Seven Emus after dark. They would reach the Cocka- too Bore, they reckoned,at about eight. At nine they would set out for the gorge, to cover the three rough miles to which they allowed themselves till midnight, by which time they would have the moon to light their difficult climb to the cave. By one o’clock they should he on their way hack with their precious burden, and by four at the bore again.
Suddenly Goborrow throttled all his fears, and said with a rush what he had been trying to say all afternoon: “Look, it’s no use hanging round here like this. Let’s get the job over to- night.”
The Baron had been waiting for that all afternoon,
“But - but is the paint dry enough?” he faltered.
“Dry as it ever will he,” returned Goborrow. “And I am, too. Come and we’ll open that bottle and have a drink. Then we’ll pack up.”
The journey to the bore passed without incident. They arrived there at nine o’clock. With nervous haste they ate another meal and made ready for the next stage of the journey. Into his haversack Goborrow put the three small pieces, and also the whisky bottle, which now contained but a third of its original contents, mixed with water from the bore. He shouldered the haversack himself. Besides his end of the pole, Baron had nothing to carry but a big electric torch. The statuette was ready in its sling, well wrapped in sacking to protect it against abrasion. All they had to do was to slip the pole through the sling. And at last, with almost a prayer on their lips, they, did so. Then up on to their shoulders they heaved the pole. A moment of staggering, then the Baron called the order to march, and led the way westward to the black bulk of Honeycomb Range.
While they were still on the plain, all went according to the scientific plan worked out by Goborrow. The pole had just the right spring and the load the right swing to their paces. That lasted for about half a mile, which they covered in no more than fifteen minutes. Then they began to climb the range. To cover the next half-mile took the best part of an hour. And it took them another twenty minutes and several long pulls at the bottle to regain the strength to go on, although, according to the plan, they were supposed to do one-hour stages, and to rest for only ten minutes and have one drink. While they were taking the first spell the moon came up. They told each other that the going would be easier now. But it was not. It got harder with every step. Their next stage lasted only twenty minutes.
It was the Baron who called the halt, not Goborrow, whose job it was, according to his plan, to keep the time by his wrist- watch. He had no chance to consult his watch before the Baron unburdened himself.
But when the Baron cut the next stage down to fifteen minutes, Goborrow reminded him of their plan rather sharply. Whereupon the Baron swung on him and hissed: “To hell with the blasted plan!”
That was the end of the scientific method of procedure and the beginning of what soon seemed to both of them a night- mare. The skin was worn from their shoulders. Sweat soaked their khaki clothes. They stubbed their toes and hacked their shins. They hissed with agony at every step. The last hideous mile they covered in frantic spurts of a mere dozen feet or so. Then just as each was screaming with his tortured soul that he could not go another step, they suddenly found themselves in the moonlit gorge. They sank down beside their hated burden, sobbing with relief. It was then nearly three o’clock, and the moon was so high that only a narrow strip of shadow cast by the eastern wall lay along the broad boulder-littered floor of the gorge.
At last Goborrow murmured that they had better go on,else daylight would he upon them. They hoisted their burden again, and made their painful way upto the track that led to the cave. They reached the track, and began to climb. Soon they found that they must dispense with the pole and carry the piece by hand. Often they had to drag it up steep pinches, and some- times to lift it shoulder-high from ledge to ledge. But there was no complaining now. Up and up they went, mingling their streaming sweat and blood from wounded hands, grateful for every covered yard. They were about half-way up, and were drag- ging the piece, when they dislodged a mass of loose stone, which went hurtling down with what to their tense ears sounded like the din of an avalanche. For minutes they stood numb with dread, certain that they had betrayed themselves. But nothing happened. So on they went again. They were a few yards from the broad ledge at the top when the Baron slipped and sent down another avalanche. Again they listened. And this time there was response.
At the homestead a dog began to bark. It was evident that he was coming up the gorge. which was soon clanging with the doubling echoes of his voice. Sick with dismay, they watched him, sure that they were lost. But the dog did not see them, indistinguishable as their clothing was against the rock. Nor did he go far enough up to find their tracks. He soon stopped barking except for an occasional outburst. But he hung about sniffing amongst the rocks for nearly half an hour. Then, apparently satisfied that he had been mistaken, he turned for home. He was gone some time before they dared move. Then, like shadows, they rose and continued on their way. At last they reached the cave.
To their moon-dazzled eyes the cave was at first pitch dark. They collided with the wall and blundered into rocks, but clung to their burden till they could see to deposit it before its precious counterpart. When at last they set it down, they flopped on the sand beside it, utterly exhausted.
Goborrow was the first to rise. Then he doffed his haversack and took the torch and flashed it on the object of their quest. For a while he examined it in silence, then he turned to the Baron and said: ”Let’s get it down.”
With an effort the Baron rose. Goborrow placed the torch on the slab to light them. Then they laid hold of the piece and carefully lowered it and placed it beside the other.
”Show me the light,” said Goborrow, and set about removing the sling and the sacking from the counterfeit. When he had done, he took the torch and stepped back so as to get both figures in the light.
At length he said: ”I think the colour of mine is a bit darker, though it’s hard to tell in this light.” He paused. ”You couldn’t call it a perfect imitation. There are lots of points where I have been a bit out. Look at this, and this….”
“But dammit, man. I’ll bet you couldn’t tell the dif- ference if they weren’t together,” interposed the Baron.
“No, I’m pretty sure you couldn’t,” said Goborrow. Then he looked at his watch. “It’s ten-past four. We’ll have to shake it up. Where’s that haversack? Hold the torch while I get the other pieces out. We’ll swap them over first.”
Within a few minutes the exchange of the little pieces was effected. Then they returned to the statuette.
“Right-oh,” said Goborrow. ”Let’s get it up. Put the torch on the ledge. Now you take that end, and let me turn. ”
They lifted the counterfeit and stepped up to the ledge with it.
“Right,” panted Goborrow. “One, two – eh! eh! Mind the torch!”
The Baron had struck the projecting torch with his shoulder. It rolled slantwise off the ledge towards Goborrow, who jerked up his end of the piece to break its fall. The movement dragged the Baron forward, causing him to push Go- borrow off his balance. Goborrow made a frantic sideways lunge to save himself, dragging and Baron with him. He tripped over the original piece and fell with the counterfeit on his chest. The Baron sprawled on top of the counterfeit. The torch, shot over Goborrow’s head and struck the outer wall with a resounding crash of metal and splintering glass.
Gasping painfully, Goborrow tried to rise. The Baron helped him up, asking if he were hurt.
“Only winded. Where’s the torch?” The Baron groped for it. “Broken.” “Oh, hell!” groaned Goborrow. “Glass all over the place, too, I suppose.” The Baron struck a match. Then Goborrow hissed: “Listen!” The dog was barking again. Soon the gorge was ringing with his clamour. He passed the cave, went roaring on. Then suddenly his uproar ceased. Minutes of silence. The pair in the cave craned over the outer wall, looking first towards the homestead to see if anyone was coming. The dog could not be seen.
Then his voice rose again, now in a different key, higher, more full-throated, more bay than bark.
“He’s found our track!” hissed Goborrow.
The Baron swore.
“Let’s get to the entrance,” said Goborrow quickly. “If he comes up here, we’ll brain him with a rock.”
They rushed to the entrance and peered out just in time to see the dog leap on to a boulder near the foot of the cave. Now he was barking normally again, but with all the strength within him. And he began to leap from side to side, as though he had bailed up an enemy.
“He knows we’re here,” the anthropologist muttered, “He won’t go away.”
“Oh, God, we’re trapped!” moaned the Baron. “It’ll be daylight soon. Look at the sky!”
“If only I were near enough to drop a rock on him,” Goborrow said, ”If only I could get along the ledge there without him seeing me!”
Just then the dog stopped barking as if struck. The sound that stopped him had been missed by the pair in the cave. They did not hear it till it rang out again in the silence. Three sharp whistle blasts blown on Broncho’s fingers. In answer to the second call the dog whimpered, as though in protest. Then he essayed another burst of barking. Again the call. Again a whimper. Then, with a yap, he leapt from the rock and went loping back towards the home- stead,
”Now,” said Goborrow, ”For God’s sake let’s get this thing up, and get out of this cursed hole while we’ve got the chance. Come on, quick!”
In a moment they had one statuette in its place, and the other wrapped and slung. They hoisted their precious bur- den between them and stole swiftly from the cave.
The descent was easy. They made it within fifteen minutes, and paused at the bottom for only so long as it took to ascertain that the coast was clear and to slip the pole back through the sling. Then they set out for Koojin Creek, keeping to the strip of shadow now cast by the western wall.
They were about half-way to their haven when they were forced out of the shadow by a heap of rocks.
Their emergence was greeted on the instant by a burst of barking. They looked, and saw the dog leap out of the shadow in the vicinity of the sheer wall below the cave, a hundred and fifty yards or so away.
“Oh, God!” groaned the Baron. “Look!”
For a moment the pair stood transfixed. Then the Baron gasped: “The blacks! They’ll kill us!” And with that he dropped the pole and fled.
Goborrow tore off his haversack. He was going to drop it, but thought better, and turned with it in his hand and raced after the Baron. And soon he put the haversack to the use for which he had kept it. When the dog came up roaring on his heels, he spun round and flung it. The dog caught it on the flank and went down. That was all Goborrow saw. He wheeled about and fled. And Bulla dashed, yelping, hack to his master.
Broncho and three young blackboys stopped when they reached the abandoned burden. Broncho tore away the sacking and exposed the statuette, and panted: “There! What’d I tell you?”
Broncho had first believed that the dog was barking at a dingo or a kangaroo, as he sometimes did at night, in spite of having had many a hiding for disturbing his master’s sleep. But when he did that, he never came back whimpering after having been whistled to, as he did this time, but rather saw to it that he kept well out of his reach. Thus had Broncho’s suspicions been aroused.
“The dirty, flamin’ thievin’ old rogue!” “Tellin’ me he was go in’ to town!”
“Boss been do it, eh?” murmured one of the boys incredu- lously.
“Yeah. And I ought’ve guessed he would, too.”
“Two-feller been run away,” said another boy.
“Yeah,” replied Broncho. ”He got somebody give him a hand. We’ll soon see who this other bloke is. We goin’ to run ’em up.” He signed to two of the boys and added: “You two come longa me. You, young Brumby, go back longa camp, tell him that lot Emu feller what been happen. Might be him growl s’pose we no’ tell him.”
Brumby went with alacrity, glad to be out of what he considered a highly dangerous undertaking, this chasing of a person so mighty as the boss. Nor were the others keen on the venture.
“Eh, look out’” protested one. ”Me—feller can’t run him up, boss.”
“Can’t we?” cried Broncho. “That flamin’ old cheat ain’t boss here any more. Not after this! Come on, hurry up! I want to catch him. And I want you two-feller for wit- ness. I got to prove it was him. Then I’m go in’ to make him come to my lawyer and sign that paper. If he don’t. I’ll go police.”
The simple Broncho was positive then that his long- dreamt dream of getting a case against the Baron had been realised at last.
“What you do s’pose you catch him?” the other boy asked. “Just talk to him,” said Broncho. “Now, there’s nothin’ to be afraid of. Come on!”
He dashed away, with the dog loping along just ahead of him, nose to the ground. He showed his master the haversack. Broncho stopped and examined the contents, then gave it to one of the boys to take back and place it with the statuette. Both boys went. And they would have stayed with the statuette had not Broncho bawled at them when he reached the mouth of Koojin Creek. He waited till they came up to him, afraid now of coming to grief if he went alone.
Thus the fugitives were given a good start. And with the fear of death to urge them, they made good use of it. They reached the car before their pursuers reached the top of the Honeycomb Range. A moment after the boys came up it disappeared.
“What’d I tell you?” panted Broncho again. “Dirty, rotten, robbin’ old dog! But no matter. I got him where I want him!”
They returned to the gorge, to find a crowd of blacks lounging near the stolen pieces, among them old Moonduk andand Kungiung, young Brumby, and four of Broncho’s children. As Broncho came up to the crowd he guessed, from set expres- sions on the black faces and the excitement in his children’s eyes, that there was something wrong. Before he could ask, Brumby said to him, in an awed voice:
“Nobody been steal him, Broncho. That one dreamin’ stone him there yet. Two-feller old man been go look him longa cave.”
With projected lips he indicated the Emu Men.
“Eh?” exlaimed Broncho, looking at Moonduk. ”Stone there yet?”
Moonduk’s seamed old face twitched violently. His answer came slowly: ”Yu-ai. Him there all right.”
He paused and glanced at the pieces before him, which were now completely uncovered, the small ones standing on the haversack. Then he added a few words in his own tongue, which Broncho knew to mean that he was at a loss to understand the situation.
Broncho turned and stared at the pieces for a moment. Then on the flap of the haversack he saw Goborrow’s name printed in large letters with indelible pencil. Slowly he spelt the name. And slowly the truth dawned on him. He swung round and cried: ”I savvy! That one man Goborrow been make ’nother lot stone. You savvy that man been come look him dreamin’ last week? That bloke what been paintin’ him longa paper?”
The faces of the blacks did not change. Nor did they change after he excitedly related what Goborrow had proposed to do. But then old Moonduk said calmly: ”Man no can make him dreamin’ stone.”
Broncho met his eyes, the eyes of the unteachable savage. ”But - but I tell you he did!” he said desperately. ”He made ’em out of concrete.”
Moonduk’s eyes did not change. Broncho looked round the crowd. All the great black eyes were the same.
“That man Goborrow been make him that lot longa cave,” said Broncho. “I show you that ‘nother one no good. Come on, we go carry him up.”
At that old Moonduk stiffened and cried sharply: ”No- more! You no can take him longa cave.
“Eh- why?” demanded Broncho.
“Him belonga debil-debil that lot,” answered Moonduk, jerking his lips to the pieces. “No good thing. S’pose you take him longa cave, dreamin’ him pukker-up finish.”
Broncho gaped at him, the savage in him awe-stricken for a moment. Then his practical side rebelled, and he asked: “You been look him track a longa cave?”
”Yu-ai,” assented Moonduk. ”Track there all right.”
At that Broncho leapt up and cried: ”Well, what’d I tell you? Come on up to cave. I’ll soon show you what flamin’ debil- debils done it!”
The whole crowd set out for the cave. Broncho quickly found traces of the marauders’ struggle up the track, and pointed to them as proof of his assertions, but without avail. Then in the cave he found more traces, including scratches on the painted slab on which stood the statuette and also on the statuette itself. Some of the younger blacks were inclined to believe him when he demonstrated how the scratches had been made. But Moonduk and Kungiung kept on declaring that they knew their treasures as well as they knew their own hands and that no mortal man could make copies of them. And at last they became angry and left the cave.
Broncho became angry, too. When they reached the river-bed he demanded of Moonduk and Kungiung: “Well, what the flamin’ hell you goin’ to do with them other flamin’ things?”
Moonduk answered promptly: ”Him no more belongs me- feller. You take him long way. Me-feller no-more want him here.”
“Oh, you’re mad!” shouted Broncho. “You mungus! S’pose I been savvy you so flamin’ mad, I been let that old man boss take him. He been want to pay me big money longa that stone. You’re ruddy well mad!”
Broncho flung away from him. For a moment Moonduk yelled at him in his own language, then turned and stalked away, mut- tering, towards the homestead, followed by Kungiung.
It then occurred to Broncho that he still might be able to do that deal with the Baron. He was thinking hard how he should go about it, when he heard one of the blacks suggest that they take the stones up the river and dump them in a certain big waterhole. That decided him. ”No, you don’t,” he said. “I’m goin’ to take ‘em longa my house. Come on, some of you, give me a hand carry ’em up.”
He had the things placed on the back verandah, then dismissed the blacks, and went into the kitchen to get break- fast. While he ate he told Possum what he intended to do.
“I’ll go after ’em in the old truck,” he said in con- clusion. “I can’t catch ’em, that’s a cert. But I’m sure to find ’em in town. When old bloke sign that there paper front of my own lawyer, all right, he can have the blasted dreamin’ stones, and good luck to him.”
“But what about bad luck for us?” murmured Possum, mindful of all he had said of late about the consequences of profaning a Totem site. She was every bit as superstitious as he.
Broncho gimaced, and replied: ”Aw, I dunno. Might be that only blackfeller talk.”
For a while he was silent, staring at the glowing fire in the stove. Then suddenly he leapt up, exclaiming: “God dammit! I’m sick of flamin’ niggers! Think I’m goin’ to let ‘em chuck away what’s goin’ to save us losin’ all we damn well got?”
He regarded her wildly for a moment, then said, with great deliberation: “Well, I ain’t! Now I’m going to get the truck. Make us up a bit of tucker for the road.”
“Ain’t you goin’ to take none the kids?”
“All right. Who didn’t go last trip?”
“Me!” yelled three sons and two daughters.
“Then get ready. I’m off right away.”
He brought the truck round to the back verandah. Possum helped him to load the statuette. He was about to place the haversack in the cab, when he thought better of it. He handed it back to Possum, saying: “That lot ain’t in contrac’. I’ll keep them things for meself. Stick ’em up on sideboard.” Then he kissed her, and cried to the children: ”Now get settled, you’s kids. You, Mandy and Alfie, get behind and take Bulla with you. Little ones in front. Shake it up!”
Up past the Baron’s house they sped, and through the big gate, and out along the scarlet road.
Somewhere about noon they reached the turning off to Turkey Creek, and saw that the Baron had left the road there and not come back. Broncho swung the truck round and went after him.
When Goborrow and the Baron heard the truck, they were sitting in the kitchen of the deserted house, over scraps of a meal they had finished an hour or more before. The shock of the early morning, and the despair that followed it, had not troubled them for long, so set had their hearts become on get- ting possession of that which seemed to them their sole means of securing happiness. Each of them, unknown to the other, had soon conceived the idea of waiting till Broncho was driven off the station and then getting the treasure for himself before the new owners realised its value. And each had made his secretplan, the first act of which was to get rid of the other. Their secrets were betrayed almost simultaneously. Goborrow, with a show of great concern for the Baron’s future, said he would pay the Baron’s fare to the South, and see to it that he got a job there, but would himself stay on in the North a little longer. The Baron replied that he was grateful, but guessed he could manage to hang on at the station after all. The battle stopped dead at the sound of the truck.
They leapt up. “Broncho!” cried the Baron.
They listened. But it was not Broncho that either saw in his fearful imagination, but a truck packed with blood- thirsty black savages.
“But where’s the little pieces?” asked Goborrrow.
They rushed out. Within a minute they were in the Baron’s car. Then the truck came out of the timber and revealed its crew. And so astonished was the Baron that he stalled his engine, and just sat and gaped while Broncho drew alongside.
”Good-day!” said Broncho grimly.
“You come a long way since I see you last. Clever coots, ain’t you?”He alighted, hitched up his trousers, spat, and asked: “Well, d’you still want that there thing?”
“Of course!” almost shouted the Baron. ”Of course!” and he flung open the door and leapt out. “Good old Broncho!”
“They ain’t in the contrac’,” grunted Broncho.
“But I want them,” said Goborrow sharply.
“Well, you can’t flamin’ well have ’em!” yelled Broncho. “And you don’t get this one, neither, till that paper’s sign’ front of my lawyer, see? So stand back, and leave that thing alone.” He moved menacingly. ”And I don’t want to talk to you, you dirty, stinkin’, ruddy, lyin’ dingo!”
In little more than an hour after leaving Turkey Creek, Broncho reached the outskirts of the little port of Dampier. The Baron and Goborrow kept him waiting for an hour and a half, having been delayed first by trouble with the utility and next by stopping at the turn-off to the main eastern highway - the road to Port Victoria - to plant their luggage in the bush.
The Baron was his grand and engaging old self again. Strive as he would to main- tain his grimness, Broncho was almost sheepish as he got in be- side him for the drive up town. The Baron told the lawyer that he was expecting money from his Southern properties and intended to retire and live in town. The lawyer did not believe him, but kept his opinion to himself. The preparation of the deed of dissolution and the signing of it took only a few minutes. The Baron paid two guineas for it.
After the transfer of the statuette the Baron gave each of the children a shilling and an alcoholic kiss, and all but kissed Broncho as he hugged him. Then the yellow car set off on its long, long journey towards the Baron’s final pitfall, and Goborrow’s doubtful bliss with his golden girl.
Broncho, who had a permit to drink, went to stay with a half-caste friend of his. His friend, who had no permit, took the opportunity to invite a crowd of similarly limited cronies round to have a spree for which Broncho supplied the grog. Broncho got as drunk as anyone. The revellers spent the rest of the night in the lock-up, Broncho for the first time in his life. Next morning he made his first appearance in a court of law, charged with having been drunk and disorderly and with having supplied liquor to aborigines. He was fined twelve pounds and divested of his permit. Willie Pak Pong gave him the money, but not before he had seen the deed and given him a severe lecture about his responsibilities.
Nor was that the end of his troubles for the day. He returned to his friend’s house to learn that his little daughter Mooney had been seized with some alarming illness and taken to hospital. He ‘knew then for certain what he had begun to believe as he stood drooping in the court that the bad luck had begun. He sat out the rest of that miserable day on the hospital verandah. It was past midnight when he learnt that she was out of immed- iate danger. But he also learnt that she would have to stay in hospital for at least a couple of months.
He got another shock next morning when he went to Pak Pong’s to get what he had promised to bring home for Christmas, and learnt that Willie was not prepared to give him any further credit till he was certain that the bank, which was acting for the station’s creditors now, was not going to foreclose.
Broncho rushed to the bank and begged the manager to give him a chance. The manager replied that all would depend on his inspector’s report on the earning capacity of the station under Broncho’s management, and, by his manner, plainly showed that he himself was expecting the report to be negative.
Broncho set out for home with the four children and Bulla early that afternoon. All went well till they reached Turkey Creek, when the storm that had been threatening for a week burst in a terrific downpour.
They sat the storm out huddled in the cab, over which Broncho had thrown a tarpaulin, the children whis- pering nonsense and giggling. Broncho with desperate thoughts. Their troubles began when they went on and the sodden, clayey track taxed the old engine to the limit of its sadly depleted power. Every three or four miles they had to stop to refill the bubbling radiator and to put more oil in the smoking crank- case. Broncho, who was no mechanic, said he reckoned it was the ignition. He was wrong. It was worn-out bearings, as was only too evident from the din. But what Broncho said he only half- believed. What he did not say was that the trouble was due to the demon of bad luck that now would dog him till he died. He believed in that theory with all his wretched heart. He was not a bit surprised, when, as they were nearing the Half-way Claypan, where they had intended to spend the night, young Mandy, standing at the back, was thrown off his balance by a sudden rough changing of the gears, and fell into the road and broke a leg. Broncho shed a few tears with the children, then bit his lip, turned the truck round, and headed back to Dampier. They reached there at eight next morning. Mandy was placed in hospital with Mooney.
The garage man in Dampier had no other advice to give concerning the truck than that Broncho should either throw it away or buy a drum of oil to keep it going till it fell to pieces. Very grudgingly he let Broncho have four gallons of oil on credit. Then another start was made. And another down- pour made the going worse than ever. The truck took them as far as Anvil Rock, then uttered a frightful death-rattle, and gave up the ghost. Broncho left the children and tramped the twenty muddy miles to the station to get the buckboard. A couple of days later the rains set in in earnest and closed the road till February. Thus ended Broncho’s hope of knowing what the bank would do before Christmas.
Possum was convinced they would lose the station. And she was all but convinced that she would never again see her sick children. Soon she herself was sick with worry. On Christmas Day, while preparing the poor dinner they were to have, she fainted in the kitchen. Broncho thought she was going to die, and rushed out shouting to the blacks for help. A wise old lubra revived her, and stayed to nurse her, and later told Broncho that in her opinion the cause of the trouble was the three small dreaming-stones on the sideboard.
Broncho believed her, and promptly took the pieces down and put them in a bag, intending to throw them away. Then it occurred to him that he would do better to put them back in the cave, and throw away the counterfeits. He left the pieces in the garage till late that night, when he sneaked out and made his way to the cave over the top of the gorge.
That was his first visit to the cave alone, and the first time he had ever seen it at night. By the light of his smoky hurricane lamp it looked very weird and awful. He lost no time in getting out of it. But he felt unaccountably relieved as he made his way back to the garage with the counterfeits. And his relief almost reached the point of joy when he got back home and found Possum sitting up waiting for him. But she depressed him again by telling him that she had been wakened out of her stupor by a dream in which she had seen him put back the big Emu Stone. If only, he thought miserably, he could do that in reality!
Still, he had nothing to complain of after that. A few days later a couple of blackboys he had sent to Dampier on horseback came home with a letter from the hospital to say that the children were well and happy. Possum ceased worrying at once, and was soon her healthy self again.
Then in the middle of January, when the wet monsoon was at its height and the sweet bit of country about the homestead at its best, the stock began to wander up from the swampy river-flats and in from their hiding places beyond the ranges, astonishing Broncho with their numbers. He and the blackboys had a lively time for a week or more, mustering and branding clean-skins. He saw to it that the beasts were kept at hand to facilitate the bank inspector’s survey. And he also saw to it that every horse, every building, every bit of plant, every strap, whip, and buckle in the place, was ready groomed, painted, oiled, and polished, to impress the man. Yet, with his sin against the Emu Totem on his soul, he never dared hope much for success.
The inspector arrived at noon on the twentieth of February, bringing with him the bank manager and Mandy and little Mooney. The officials began their inspection immediately, and had it more than half-done by dark. Next morning they rose before the dawn in order to pay a visit to the cave. Then they resumed work, and at noon told Broncho they were satisfied with what they had seen, and would help him to get on his feet again.
At two o’clock Broncho, beside himself with joy, took the men to the garage to see them into their car. Just as the manager was about to get in he noticed, peeping from a hole in the bag, which still lay in the corner where Broncho had dumped it, the bright colours of one of the counterfeit pieces. Moved by the interest in native art with which the visit to the cave had filled him, he went to the bag and opened it.
“Hello!” he exclaimed. ”What’s this?” He looked at Broncho. ”I thought you said the niggers guarded those things more than their lives? Look, Tom,” he added to the inspector. “just the same kind of thing we saw in the cave.”
Broncho blinked. He had forgotten about the counterfeits. He did not know what to say.
Then the inspector exclaimed: ”Eh, the paint’s peeling off this one – look!” He ran his hand over the one he held. Great flakes of paint fell off, revealing the grey cement be- neath. “Gosh!” he went on. “It’s concrete!”
Broncho swallowed, groped for an answer, and got it. “Aw!” he replied. ”Them things was what a bloke made what was stoppin’ here last year.”
”Ah!” commented the manager, setting his piece down and dusting his hands. ”He made a good job of the modelling, anyway. Well, we must be off. Good-bye, Jones - and good luck!”
In a moment they were on their way. From the doorway of the garage Broncho watched them, muttering to himself their parting words: “Good luck! Good luck!” And while he muttered he wondered why it was that the paint had peeled off the pieces in the garage, but not off the Seven Emus Stone in the cave, when both had been through the same steamy monsoon weather and the dry, windy spell that had followed.
He watched the visitor’s car out of sight, then returned to the counterfeits and examined them. The paint was very thin. Surely the big stone must be peeling, too. And if not, it must be soon. He began to feel afraid. What would the Emu People say when the concrete was exposed?
Although he pretended to be very gay, and said he was going to the cave only to get something he had left there in the morning, Possum knew that he was deeply worried. She said nothing, but sat and waited on the front verandah for his return, sending the children away in case he had something on his mind that he could not speak before them. She had not long to wait. Within half an hour he came galloping like a horse through the front gate, whooping for joy.
“What you think? Them two damn fools took the wrong dreamin’ stone!”
“W-what, the bank men?” she faltered.
“No!” he shouted. “Goborrow and old man Gaunt. They must’ve got ’em mixed up that night they came to change ’em. You know them little stones we had? Well, paint on ’em was so thin it peeled off. But paint on that big stone in cave’s that deep.” He snatched his clasp-knife from its pouch and showed her the small blade, the hilt of which was smudged with red ochre. “Or deeper,” he went on, now with a look of awe in his eyes. “Why, that thing was bein’ painted before this river was here!”
And now there was awe in her eyes, too. For seconds they stared at each other, remembering their ancient heritage. Then he squeezed her hand tight, and said, with a chuckle: “That’s why bad luck been finish that night I put them proper stones back!”
WHY DID THEY LOOK AT MR. SMITH? by J. B. Warren (1942)
Coming soon.
SAFE HORIZON by Jon Cleary (1943)
It wouldn’t “be long till night came. The air already was blue with the last light of day and there was a peace and quietness over the whole countryside like the hush in a church, and their truck was the only moving thing on the road. Yet three hours behind them lay men in blood pools in the fields, and there were planes In the sky spewing death, and peace was past or future- tense, something they had left behind, something they were fighting for.
McLaglen looked at his watch. He said: “We should be there in another couple of hours.” He had spoken without taking his pipe from his mouth and now he went back to smoking it, gazing straight ahead down the long white road.
Neither of the other two spoke, Sanders was driving and his whole attention was on that. He was wasting no time and his foot was hard down on the board. Between him and McLaglen sat Elizabeth Beal. Her grey nurse’s uniform was crumpled and stained and she held her hat on her lap with her long, slim, capable hands. Her head was held back and her eyes were closed, and you could see the long, graceful curve of her throat. Her hair was blonde and brushed back from her face, she had high cheekbones, a short, straight nose, a full, ripe mouth, there was a cleft in her deter- mined chin, and she was very lovely.
They were on their way back to the base hospital. They had been up at an advanced dressing station, the sergeant of the outfit, and Sanders, one of the drivers. Nurse Beal had been at an English hospital further up north, and in the flight southward had been separated from her unit and had stopped off at the dres- sing station to help the Medical Officer. He was kept busy, and though not liking the idea of her being so close to the fighting, had been glad of her help. Then the Germans had broken through again and they had packed up and quit.
Planes had attacked them, and the other three trucks of the outfit had finished up by the side of the road, blazing wrecks, their crews dead men. But Sanders had driven like a madman, the angels steering his wheel, and had gained the shelter of a wood that bordered the road. The Germans had strafed the wood for half an hour, then flown off, hut the truck had only been hit by stray bomb splinters, and when everything was clear they had gone on their way again. And now pretty soon they should he back at the base and would be able to bathe and catch up on the sleep they had had so little of in the last few days.
McLaglen sat up and peered ahead.
“There’s someone in the middle of the road, waving.”
“It’s a girl,” said Sanders. “What’ll I do? Go right through?”
McLaglen took his revolver out of the pouch on his hip.
“Pull up,” he said.
The truck slowed up to a halt. Sanders kept the motor idling. McLaglen stepped out on to the running-board, with his revolver in his hand. The girl came running down the road to him.
McLaglen said: “Yes? Do you speak English?”
She was dark and finely featured and her eyes were big and black like pools of night sky. Her figure was full and firm under her bright blue frock, and now her bosom was rising and falling from the exertion of her running.
She spoke quickly, low. “My mother was English.” McLaglen stepped down beside her. “You mustn’t go any further along the road. The Germans are about six or seven kilos down the road….”
McLaglen grabbed her am and the others sat forward in the seat. McLaglen asked, and his voice was pregnant with urgency: “What’s that you say? Where did they come from?”
“I don’t know. I heard some British soldiers say they had come round in a sweep from the west.” She clutched him by the shirt and there was fear in her voice. “Oh, but you must turn around! You must go some other way. You’ll never get through down there. You’ll drive right into them. Oh, please, please, hurry!”
McLaglen said: “Oh, hell.” He turned to Sanders and Nurse Beal. “I guess there’s nothing else for it. We’ll strike east and finish up on the coast and work our way down there.” He turned back to the girl. “We passed a road about half a mile back, running east; where does that lead to?”
“Down to the coast road; it’s not a very good road, though.”
McLaglen grinned wryly. “Lady, that will probably be the least of our discomforts.” He swung back into the truck, then he looked at her. What are you going to do?”
She was standing there, slim and lovely, in the fading light and her frock was wreathing round her in the slight breeze that had sprung up and her eyes were full of pleading, but she did not speak. He could see this girl with Germans around her, touching her, and he stepped down, picked her up as if she were a child, and swung her into the back of the truck. “I’ll ride in back with her. Get moving.”
Sanders swung the truck round; they went back down the road. They came to the side road; it was little more than a lane, and turned down it. The girl had been right when she said it wasn’t very good. Sanders had to slow down, and the truck was never on an even keel. As they bumped along, McLaglen asked the girl about herself. Her name was Helen Kostiakos. Her mother had been the English governess to a family in Athens and she herself was a teacher at one of the big schools in the capital. Since they had closed the schools when war broke out, she had been living at her home, which was further down the main road.
“I was on my own. Mother and father are down in Athens, and about half an hour ago a British tank came by, and the officer told me that the Germans would soon be along, and he said to just sit and wait, and when they came past, not to say anything and they wouldn’t touch me, because they would be in a hurry. But I couldn’t sit there and not do anything! So I came out of our house and up the road, hoping that I could find someone to warn them and then you came along. I do hope there aren’t any more following you who might run into the trap.”
“I don’t think so,” said McLaglen. “Most of our crowd are coming down further west. They have probably already been cut off by the sweep you spoke about.”
The sun had slid into to-morrow and already night was in the east sky. They had gone perhaps four or five miles down the road when there was the drone of planes above them, and down out of the twilight came three of them. The noise within the truck as it bumped along had shut off any sound from outside, and now they were on them without warning. The first plane dropped a bomb and it landed about thirty yards in front of the truck, and a fan-shaped blanket of powder and earth went up to obscure the road. Sanders slewed the truck to avoid the hole. The other two planes gunned the road, and a dotted line of death beat up the dirt alongside them. Slowing the truck had saved them, and now it was at a standstill, with one wheel in the ditch skirting the road. The planes had gone up into the sky, black shapes ag- ainst the dusk, and were banking to come down again.
McLaglen yelled: “Take what cover you can!”
He lifted the Greek girl down out of the truck and pushed her through the hedge. “Run for those rocks!” He turned and helped Nurse Beal across the ditch. “You do the same, sister. And for God’s sake keep low!”
Then he and Sanders darted across the field and flung themselves down among some rocks about fifty feet from the women. The rocks were an outcrop from a small hill over which the road ran, and they were the only protection to be had. They lay down amongst them and hugged the earth tightly. The planes came down again, and the world became sound, the double-beat of engines, and it seemed to press them down into the ground. The planes split up, and one went down over the road and let go a bomb, and the truck disintegrated in a cloud of smoke and flying steel. The other two, wing to wing, came down over the rocks and bullets made a singing trail across the outcrop. The planes carried no rear gunner, and as soon as they had passed over his head McLaglen called out: “Anybody hit?”
Nurse Beal’s voice came back, and it was remarkably cool: “No. He was close, but he’ll have to do better.”
McLaglen said to Sanders, who was lying between two rocks about ten feet away: “Some woman! Wonder how the Greek girl’s taking it?”
Sanders said: “Listen.”
They could hear her now. She was praying, sometimes in Greek, sometimes in English. “Oh, God! Send the darkness quickly! Oh, God! Send the night!”
The planes came down again, this time the three abreast, but now they were dim shapes in the fast-gathering gloom. Bullets chipped the rocks, and McLaglen felt one clip the heel of his boot and a numbness ran up his leg. He looked down, and the heel of his boot had been shot completely away. “Close,” he muttered to himself. When the planes came down for the fourth time, it was almost impossible to see them, and as soon as they had gone over, McLaglen leapt to his feet.
“Make for the ditch at the side of the road!”
The others stood up and ran and flung themselves down in the ditch. The planes came back, just sound in the blackness above them, and strafed the rocks again, then they heard them go up again into the blackness, and soon their engines died away and the night was sharp and still around them. McLaglen got to his feet. He walked along the road and helped Nurse Beal and the Greek girl out of the ditch. Then he went along to the wreck of the truck. It was just a twisted mass of debris, but he scouted around and found a torch. He put his hand over the face of it and flicked the switch. It worked. He walked back to the others.
“Are you women all right?” They both nodded. “We’ll follow the road for as far as it goes. We’ll keep walking as long as we can stand up. Lord knows how far we’ll have to go, and we’ll probably have to do all our travelling by night.”
They set off down the road, McLaglen walking with Nurse Beal and Sanders with the Greek girl. The stars came out and glittered white and bright, and occasionally they saw a red glow appear and disappear quickly, the rise of a hill sharply limned against it, and then would come the dull boom of the explosion. They rested for ten minutes every hour, and by the fifth hour the women were pretty exhausted.
McLaglen spoke to Nurse Beal. “How do you feel?”
“Just about done in. I’m forming beautiful blisters on my heel.”
She was sitting on the bank beside the road, and now she looked up at him and she felt a curious thrill run through her. She was looking at him really for the first time. He was a big man, but now standing above her, he looked huge. He had his hat off and he had a mane of thick black hair that tumbled down over one brow. The moonlight was on his face and she could see his brows were thick and arched above his eyes, which had a strange softness about them, compared to the lean hardness of the rest of his face. His nose was finely shaped, he had a big, wide mouth that showed white, even teeth as he smiled down at her, and his jaw was heavy and very blue. In a rugged way he was handsome, and looking at him now and remembering how cap- ably he had handled things up to now, she felt suddenly safe with him. She continued: “But we’ll keep going till I drop; then I’ll have all the daylight hours to catch up on my rest.”
She stood up, but as she moved forward she limped. Mc- Laglen put his arm round her waist, and she was very slim. He smiled down at her. “We’ll kid this is Lovers’ Lane. Lean on me.” He looked ahead to where Sanders and the Greek girl were. “You’d better give Helen a hand, Ken. She must be feeling it, too.
Sanders took the girl’s arm, and she didn’t seem to mind at all, and the four of them started off again. Nurse Beal was leaning heavily on McLaglen, and he knew they would have to stop soon. He was talking to her to keep her mind off her fatigue. Just idle stuff, about home and his mother and his sister, and things he used to do. She warmed to him and started to tell him about herself. They walked for another hour. He asked: ”How do you feel, Sister?”
“Finished,” she said, ”and call me Elizabeth.”
He grinned. “O.K., Elizabeth.” He picked her up in his arms, and he thought, she is soft like clouds. ”We’ll make for the woods up there on the hill, Ken.”
They turned from the road: the wood, an extensive one, stood on the breast of the hill, a dark mass, the taller trees standing out black and sharp against the light sky under the moon.
They moved about twenty yards from the outer edge when a voice snapped: “Halt! Who goes there?”
McLaglen answered: “Two men from the Field Ambulance, a nurse, and a Greek girl.”
“Put your hands up and come forward,” said the man who spoke.
McLaglen put Elizabeth to the ground, raised his hands, and went forward into the shadows of the trees. Two figures stepped out from some bushes, and one of them quickly flashed a torch over him, then snapped it out. Both of them had rifles at the alert.
“O.K. Tell the others to come on.”
The other three came up, and one of the guards led them deeper into the wood. He told them there were just on forty men camped here, remnant of a company that had been caught in the sur- prise attack. They had been here since midnight of the previous night. As they walked along now, they saw huddled shapes the bases of the trees, men asleep. The guard led them to a spot under a big tree. Several men were now sitting up to at them, but nobody spoke. The wind gently stirred tlie to the trees, and that was the only sound.
“You can bunk here,” said the guard. ”There’s no officer here, but I’ll tell the sergeant you’ve arrived. Good-night.”
He left them and went back the way they had come. He was only a boy, but he was very calm and matter-of-fact.
They did their best to smooth out the ground, then the women lay down.
“Good-night, Mac.” She lay looking at him; the moonlight came down through the leaves and her face was soft and beautiful in it, and he felt his heart turn over.
“Good-night, Elizabeth.”
McLaglen lay down beside Sanders and looked up at the branches stirring above him, and beyond them the sky and the stars. Eternal harmony, he thought.
Sanders spoke, his voice quiet. “These women are heroines; the sort you read about.” Sanders was only a youngster. He still had to see twenty-two, but he was capable and steady, and the war had given him an early maturity. He was fair and very tanned and, in a boyish way, very good-looking. He had high principles when he came away to war, and he still had them. “Nurse Beal and Helen. I like that girl a lot. I do hope we don’t have to leave her be- hind when we get out.”
“We won’t.” McLaglen rolled over. He thought of the Greek girl for a moment, and of Sanders’ liking of her in so short a time. Then he went to sleep, and Elizabeth walked in his sleep, and when he woke he was in love with her.
he next day was fine and the sky was a deep, warm blue, the clouds resting low on the horizon. In the wood nobody moved around; everyone sat under bushes or against trees and talked or slept. Every so often planes went by overhead, and they would casually look up at them through the branches.
McLaglen sat most of the day talking to Elizabeth. Some- times there would be a long silence, and he was content just being there beside her. He loved her, and he was sorry that this was the time and this the place. Sanders and Helen were sitting against the base of a tree and their voices were low, and once the girl laughed, musical like wind on a lake, and Sanders looked at her, and there was admiration in his eyes.
About four in the afternoon Elizabeth asked for a drink. McLaglen shook his water-bottle. “Empty.”
One of the men nearby said: “There’s a well by a farmhouse down at the bottom of the hill. If you go carefully, you can get down there without being noticed.”
“Thanks. I’ll be back in a moment, Elizabeth.”
He went out of the clearing through the trees. When he reached the end of the wood he took off his tin hat and laid it down under a bush. If he was seen at all, it would be less obvious that he was a soldier if he was bare-headed. Prom a distance his clothes would he nondescript and he might he dismissed as a peasant.
He was about fifty yards from the house when he heard the plane, low and coming quickly nearer. He fell and lay flat. He risked a glance upwards, and the plane had come down over the wood and was flying straight for him. He dug his fingers into the dirt and waited for the bullets to come chipping across the field un- til one, maybe, thudded into his flesh and bone and he would feel pain, sharp and numbing, and blood would run out of him and go brown in the dust, and then everything would go black. His mind was cascading: this is the end - I love you, Elizabeth - this is the end. He held his breath and his stomach was tight within him. He waited, and nothing happened. The plane kept right on over his head, and raising himself slightly, he saw it swoop down almost to roof-height above the farm and then continue on up in a steep climb.
He saw the door of the house open and a woman come out and look up at the plane, which was now a speck at the peak of its climb; then she walked to the well and pushed the long white pole round. She made no attempt to draw water, but looked up again at the plane, which was now banking, and went back inside and shut the door.
McLaglen wondered at this for a moment, and then it struck him with a suddenness that had him on his feet and racing full pace for the well. The pole was pointing straight for the wood! Though he had often seen the results, this was the first time he had seen the Fifth Column actually working.
He reached the well, grabbed the pole and swung it round till it pointed at a wide angle from the wood; then he crouched down in the dark shadows of the wall. He could hear the plane coming back now, loud and swooping low. A movement caught his eye and he swung round to look at a window that faced on to the yard. The woman had seen him. He saw her drop the curtain back, and he drew his revolver. He knew what she would do: she would come out through the door into the yard and wave wildly to show something was wrong, and the plane would circle around and then follow the arm she would point towards the wood and ignore the now misleading direction of the pole.
He hated killing a woman, but when she opened the door he shot her, and he saw a blue mark appear on her forehead and the pain and surprise glaze her eyes, then she fell back into the room and the door swung wide, and she was a huddled heap in the clean, neat room. The plane came down low, banked, and flew off in the direction the pole pointed.
He was on his feet, hurriedly filled his water-bottle, then he tore back up the hill, paying little attention to concealment. He grabbed his hat from under the bush where he had left it and continued on into the wood. He reached the others and strode ac- ross to the sergeant of the infantry company.
“We’d better get out of here on the run.” From the distance came the sound of two explosions. “Listen!” Another. “Get that? They were intended for us.” He hurriedly explained what had happened down at the farmhouse. “I’m taking my party out now, and I think it would be worth your while to split your gang up and send them on their way. If those people down there were Fifth Columnists, it’s reasonable to expect there might be others round here. So the quicker we move the better.”
“Maybe you’re right,” said the sergeant. “But there are too many of us to move in daylight. We’ll wait for darkness and trust that Jerry doesn’t come over in the meantime. You take the women out now, and good luck to you.” He put out his hand.
McLaglen took it. “Thanks, we’ll have a drink in Alex, maybe?”
“I hope.”
The others joined McLaglen, and with a word of farewell to the men they left. The men stood up and looked at Elizabeth and Helen, and each had the subconscious feeling of relief that his own women-folk were far from this.
They left the wood and continued down the hill till they picked up the road they had been following the previous night. They were making quick time and conversation was desultory. Mc- Laglen every so often glanced up at the sky. Their biggest worry would be planes. They would probably reach the coast without en- countering any troops at all.
The sun was about two hours from the horizon, and they had covered a good distance along the road; any minute now they were expecting to strike the coast road, when they heard, quite suddenly and close, a plane.
“Down!” yelled McLaglen.
They dropped flat where they walked; the nearest cover was a clump of trees about two hundred yards away, and it was impossible to reach them without being seen. The plane came over the shoulder of the hill that loomed steeply on their left, and they lay still and hoped that it would keep straight on. But they had forgotten the blue brightness of Helen’s frock. As soon as McLaglen saw the plane bank and come down the line of the road he knew what had given them away. The blue material stood out against the dirt like a target.
He shouted: “Hug dirt and pray! Pray hard!”
The plane came down in a beautiful curve, no hurry at all, and the sun-shot clouds in the fields of sky were a lovely background to it, and it was hard to believe that this was death coming at them, fast and sure. Lower and lower it came, and then McLaglen saw the earth puff up about a hundred feet ahead like rain dropping on dust, and just like that the dust was kicked up right in his face and he heard Sanders grunt behind him, and the plane was going up into the sky again. He looked up and saw it bank and continue on in its original direction. This had just been an interlude, something to…
“Ken! Ken!” It was Helen crying. “Oh! They’ve hit him! Ken!”
McLaglen knelt down beside her. She was holding Sanders’ head in her lap, and there was a great gaping hole in Sanders’ chest. The bullet had gone right through him from the back. Blood was trickling from his mouth and his eyes were screwed up with pain. Elizabeth knelt down and undid his shirt. She wet her handkercheif from McLaglen’s water-bottle and washed away the blood. The bul- let had spread as it came out, and the wound was large and jagged. Elizabeth looked at the two others and shook her head. McLaglen raised an eyebrow inquiringly.
Elizabeth said, and there was a full sadness in her voice: “Not a chance. He may live an hour, but no more.” She stood up and her mouth was very tight.
Helen bent her head, the black mass of her hair above San- ders’ blondness, and tears fell on his face. He opened his eyes and the knowledge that he was dying showed in them.
“Ken!” McLaglen was finding it hard to get the words. “I’m afraid you won’t be able to go any further. The bullet…” He stopped. His voice was dry in his throat. He pressed Sanders’ arm.
Sanders grinned, a pain-twisted effort. “A pity I bought a full ticket.” He looked up at Helen. “This is good-bye, I guess, Helen.”
She stroked his forehead. “No! I’ll stay here with you. Sergeant McLaglen and Sister Beal can send back help if they meet anyone. You’ll be all right.” She spoke to the others.
“You go on. You must excape! I’ll stay with him.”
Indecision surged within McLaglen. Then he saw that it would be best for him and Elizabeth to go on. Sanders wouldn’t live for more than another hour. And though he would have liked to have taken Helen with them, if she wanted to stay she would he comparatively safe. At least, she wouldn’t be taken prisoner, as they most certainly would he if they stayed.
“We’ll go, Elizabeth.” He knelt down again beside Sanders. “Good-bye, Ken. I’m sorry it had to be now.”
“Good-bye, Mac.” Sanders’ voice was now very weak. “Write my mother for me when you get out. Tell her - tell her good-bye for me.”
“Don’t worry, Ken, I’ll do that. Good-bye, Helen, and God bless you.”
“Good-bye,” said Elizabeth. She bent down and lightly kissed Sanders, and then she kissed Helen. She stood up, and tears were in her eyes as she took McLaglen’s arm, and they went down the road. They looked back once, and they saw Helen bend down her head and kiss Sanders, and there was the late day sky above and beyond them and the air was gold around them. Elizabeth said: “Oh, Mac!” and she clung tightly to his arm and she was sobbing. They went down the road and they didn’t look back again.
They walked on and time passed, and then they came up over the brow of a hill. There was the sea below them, the grey line of the coast skirting the shore.
“There it is,” said Mac, “and now all we have to pray for is a ship.”
Elizabeth smiled, “I’ve been praying ever since we left the truck. Another request won’t hurt.”
Dark clouds were beating up from the west behind them, covering the sun, and now it was turning chilly. The sea had a sullen look, flat and dull, and there was rain in the air.
They turned down the coast and kept walking. Soon it was dark, and Elizabeth took hold of McLaglen’s arm.
He asked: “Tired?”
“A bit.”
“We’ll look for some sort of shelter. There may be…”
“Mac! Look! Out there to sea - there’s a light!”
They stopped sharply, and McLaglen looked out through the the darkness. A light, moving, showed against the blackness. It was a ship travelling south. But what? British or enemy?
“I’ll have to risk a message, Elizabeth. It may be one of ours - and then again it may not. We can only hope.”
He flicked his torch. He kept this up, a second or two between each flash. Then came an answering flash.
“Got them!” He was straining his eyes into the darkness, and it was some time before he realised that the light was no longer moving. The ship was standing by.
He sent a message: Help. We are British. Two of us.
The answer was just a flash.
“They aren’t giving themselves away,” said McLaglen. “I’ll try again.”
He sent the message again. Once more there was just a flash. “I’ll go down to the water. They may send a boat in.” He took her arm and they made their way down over the rocks. There was a small beach, just a strip of sand, and here they waited. McLaglen kept flicking his torch, and the single answer- ing flash would come.
Their nerves were tuned to the jittery flicking of the torch. Elizabeth was holding McLaglen’s arm and he could feel her fingers digging in. He looked down at her.
“If this isn’t one of our ships, Elizabeth, all our run- ning away had been for nothing.” He turned and faced her fully and put his hands on her arms. She stood still and straight and looked up at him. “I don’t know what is out there for us, but in a few minutes we’ll know.” He pressed tightly with his hands and he spoke slowly. “Maybe I shouldn’t tell you this - I don’t know how you feel.” He put his arms around her and she didn’t move. “I love you, Elizabeth.”
He could see her face dimly, and the shadow pools of her eyes told him nothing. Then she put her arms up round his neck and drew his head down, and he felt her lips, soft and warm, on his, and their flight, the moment, and their fate out there in the night, were forgotten.
They heard the splash of oars. They turned their heads, but still stood with their arms round each other.
McLaglen took the risk. “Hello!” he called. Broad Scotch came back out of the gloom.
“Wha’ar-re ye? Speak oop!”
McLaglen grinned down at Elizabeth. “Hooray for Caledonia!” They could now see the dim shape of the pinnace standing off-shore about twenty or thirty yards. He called out: “There are two of us here from an ambulance unit. Come in, Scotland, and heaven bless your days!”
The boat ran in on the beach. McLaglen picked up Elizabeth in his arms and handed her to a man who leant over from the front of the boat. The man felt her softness and peered down at her.
“Holy mackerel!” he said. “It’s a bloody woman.”
“Holy mackerel!” said Elizabeth “It’s a bloody nurse!”
THE BOOK by Robert S. Close (1943)
Coming soon.
THE SKY STONE by Sidney Hobson Courtier (1947)
The gap where Welling, riding Nolands black stallion on which the branded “N” had been skilfully doctored to look like a “W”, lighted upon the churinga cave was in the heart of the Parakeelia country. It was a narrow, rugged, twisting slash through an unnamed range, rising abruptly from the sand, and it was dark and clammy and so deep in the middle you could see only a ribbon of sky far above you.
They rode into the gap in the early morning, and little wizened Brad McCurdie, the prospector, took pick, and hammer and began gouging overburden and tapping off pieces of rock. Welling, not interested in anything like work, went off on the prowl and so came upon the cave in an elbow of the southern wall. His yell brought Brad on the run, thinking something had happened.
When Brad saw the cave and the flat pieces of shale in- scribed with aboriginal markings and the heap of ceremonial stone knives and the sacred bull-roarers, he told Welling to come away, and leave the place alone. Brad wanted no trouble with his friends, the Parakeelia men, who were so called because in their territory the parakeelia grass abounded, the squat plant that held water in its mushy stem and thick leaves so that animals, and men, too, need never thirst where it grew, even though the country was bone dry with drought. If Brad had been alone, the Parakeelia men would have shown up, for, in their queer way, they liked him.
“Hell, what’s bitin’ you?” growled Welling. “I want to look round. Might be somethin’ worth havin’.” He was big, swarthy and arrogant, and fond of flaunting his strength, and there, was threat in the way he caressed his rifle. He didn’t conceal his contempt for Brad, who was scarcely more than half his weight.
So he pried into the cave and found the sky stone in a small recess dug out at the back of a crevice. “What did I tell y’?” he said to Brad.
It was black meteorolite, a stone occasionally found, in the Australian deserts. Because it came from the sky, the blacks called it the sky stone. Originally, this one might have been as big as a tennis ball, but some old oboriginal crafts- man had patiently ground it down till it had the shape of a thick, convex lense. He had polished it with fine desert dust and then engraved mystic signs on it and embellished the edge with a fret- work of tiny holes bored clean through. Brad never saw a sky stone prepared for the blackfellows’ ritual without thinking of the months, perhaps years, of slow, tenacious endeavour it represented.
“The rain-maker’s churinga,” he said. “The rain-maker uses it to control weather. Put it back, Jim, and let’s go.”
Welling slipped the sky stone into the pocket of this jodh- purs. His big voice boomed in the cave. “It goes, with me. The city museums pay real money for specimens like this.”
“Don’t reckon you ought to do that,” protested Brad, to whom taking the sky stone was a kind of desecration, for he res- pected the blackfellow’s superstitions, and never interfered with his possessions. Certainly, the Parakeelia men would regard it as desecration. “You’re asking for trouble, Jim.”
“What trouble?” snarled Welling.
“I’d hate to see you stop a Parakeelia killing stick,” said Brad mildly, for the worst he then knew against Welling was his riding a horse with an altered brand. Brad impugned no man till he was sure.
The bad weather started an hour after they had ridden out of the gap. A low mass of cloud, moved in gently from the north-west and shut down on them in a cold, wet fog. Welling began to curse. He did not carry a cape - he had very little gear - and he seemed to regard a fog, in the middle of the dry season, as a personal affront. Brad said little, but he thought of the sky stone and wondered. He could picture a naked black figure on the hilltop gesticulating and dancing and, with wild incantations, invoking the gods’ vengeance upon the profanation of their sanctuary.
Before long, the fog had thickened till they could see no more than twenty yards away. All day they rode, muffled in its grey shroud. It soaked through their clothing and blanketed sound and smothered Welling’s hoarse voice till the effort of talking tired him and he lapsed into sullen silence.
At nightfall, they tethered the horses to desert oaks in a small gully and made camp tinder an overhanging shelf of rock nearby. When Brad had draped his tarpaulin over the side and lighted a fire, the place was reasonably comfortable. After they had eaten. Welling took out the sky stone and polished it till its black surface danced in the firelight. But its beauty gave him no pleasure, and he cursed the fog till Brad expostulated.
“Waste of time swearing at the weather, Jim,” he said. “Might be good luck or bad. I wouldn’t know. But there was no call to take the sky stone. The blacks set great store by that sort of thing.”
Welling’s huge hand tightened on the stone. “I took it because I wanted it. Damn the niggers. An’ damn the fog. An’ if you reckon we’re gettin’ the fog because I took a rain-maker’s stone, then damn you for a fool.”
“I don’t reckon that at all,” returned Brad evenly. “I can’t see what a man does down here on the ground making any dif- ference to the sun and wind and clouds, though the rain-makers have done queer things. But you should’ve left the sky stone in the cave. After all, it belongs to the Parakeelia men.”
Welling was savagely domineering. “It belongs to me an’ that’s the end of it.”
Brad shook his head. “’Tisn’t the end of it. I know the Parakeelia men. They’re shy, but they’re tough. What you ought to do is turn right round and take the sky stone back to the cave.”
“Like hell I will,” said Welling. He rubbed the sky stone on his knee, held it once more to the fire-light and then pushed it back into his pocket. “It’s money. An’ it goes out with me.”
A stolen sky stone and a stolen horse, thought Brad. Two things had perplexed him since Welling had joined him three days before. One was whether Welling had stolen Tom Nolan’s big black stallion or not. Welling’s story was he had bought the animal in Hall’s Creek, which was three hundred miles north-east of Nolan’s Nooramine cattle run. Brad had no means of judging the truth of - this, for Welling was the first white man he’d seen for six weeks or more. And Brad had not asked for an explanation of the faked brand, which he had spotted as soon as he recognised the stallion.
The other hurdle baulking Brad’s thoughts was Welling’s lack of equipment. Brad, trekking south as far only as Lady long wanted to explore, had two horses, and the packhorse carried a pile of gear. Even then he considered he was travelling econ- omically. But Welling, who claimed he was going out, had only his .303 and a knapsack, mainly filled, Brad judged, with shells. He said he wasn’t worried about supplies. It was a good season for game and he would live on the country.
It didn’t add up, Brad reasoned. If you’re going out, you catch the steamer or plane at either Wyndham or Derby. You don’t contemplate crossing the worst stretch in Australia, with one horse and no supplies worth talking about. And, if you do, you don’t start off by antagonising the blacks, unless you’re, a fool.
Staring across the fire at Welling’s dark, sullen face, he said, “You’ll be sorry about the sky stone, Jim. I’m telling you.” Then, because he wanted to get a line on the stallion, he added, “Don’t forget, the nearest white man is Tom Nolan, at Nooramine, and he’s two hundred miles away.”
Welling looked up from the fire with a queer flash of eyes. “Well, it’s no use countin’ on Nolan. He’s dead.”
A sense of fateful expectancy possessed Brad. “Nolan dead!”
“Yair,” said Welling, a shade too carelessly. “Word came into the Creek before I left he’d shot himself or somethin’.”
“Good God!” cried Brad, but not for Nolan’s death, butbecause he’d got the fact he was looking for. Happy, hearty Tom Nolan was not the kind of man who shot himself. Perhaps it was the gleam of Welling’s eyes, or the tone of his voice, or the kind of secret jauntiness with which he spoke of Nolan’s death, or simply Brad’s instinct, but he knew as though he’d seen it, that Welling had shot Tom Nolan, and that he wasn’t going out, but on the run, that he hadn’t come south from the Creek, but east from Nooramine.
And the brand had been altered or his benefit. Welling had known he was out in the Parakeelia country and Welling wanted supplies. A man must have supplies to venture into the desert. Welling would dispose of him as soon as they were clear of the Parakeelia men, who would resent anything happening to Brad.
For a moment Welling and the fire swam mistily in front of Brad, and he felt cold inside. He knew then why Welling so conspicuously played with the rifle. He clung to the thought of the sky stone as his one chance, for he didn’t know the fog was to stay four days with them, and he said steadily enough,
“It’s bad about Nolan. But, Jim, you made a mistake taking the sky stone. The Parakeelia men are right after it now.”
Welling kicked the fire into fresh life. His shadow bil- lowed on the wall behind him, huge and menacing.
“Like hell they are,” he sneered. “Not in this weather.”
Brad made his voice calm and flat so that every word would sink with finality into Welling’s mind. “I know the Para-keelia men, Jim. They were in the gap though we didn’t see them. When we moved out, they moved with us. They travelled with us in the fog. And now they’re sitting out there waiting. They want the sky stone back, Jim.”
Welling spat into the fire. “They’ll want, then. You’ve got a damfool imagination, McCurdie. Been too much on your own.” But he was fingering his rifle for all that.
Brad thought, perhaps I have got a damfool imagination. He decided to test the matter. He said casually, “Well, I’ve warned you, Jim… I’ll stroll outside and have a look at the horses. And then it’ll be time to turn in.”
Welling was on his feet as quickly as Brad. When they went out into the fog, he was so close that his elbow brushed against Brad’s shoulder, and he kept it there till they returned to the camp. And he carried the rifle. Brad knew then, beyond question, that Welling was a guilty man and intended him never to get away.
Next morning, the fog was heavier and pressed so closely into the shelter they could scarcely tell that day had come. The piece of mulga wood lay on the ground, unnoticed till Brad trod on it. He picked it up and studied it for a few seconds.
“So you reckon the Parakeelia men aren’t on the job,” he said. “Look at this!”
The slab was about six inches long and four inches wide. At first glance, it seemed that someone had been doodling on theflat surface with, a sharp stone. Then, out of the hieroglyphics, five figures emerged. The first was like a bent bow and an arrow without the bow string. Next was the stick figure of a man running, and beside that another stick figure, one hand of which terminated in three little rings hanging vertically. And oval, with tiny dots around its edge, followed and the last was a rough, semi-circle, fringed with little lines. Welling pushed the tarpaulin aside and stepped out into better light. He stared at the scratches. “What is it?”
“A Parakeelia message stick,” replied Brad. “It’s for me. That sign on the end that looks like a pick is the Parakeelia sign for me. I use a pick.”
“And the rest of it?”
Brad squinted at the squiggles. “Jim, you’re not going to like this. The Parakeelia rain-maker sent this message. He’s telling me to run away and leave you. They want you on your own for you’re the man who took the sky stone. And they want the sky stone back in the cave. There’s the message, Jim.”
Welling spat a foul term of contempt. “To hell with them.”
“No good talking like that,” said Brad. “That stick was dropped under the tarp without us knowing. They could just as easy shoved a spear into us. They’re right on to us, Jim.”
“Right on to us or wrong, I’ve got the sky stone an’ I’m keeping it,” said Welling angrily. “I’ll show ’em what I think about their message.” And he threw the message stick out into the fog.
“That won’t please them,” said Brad.
“Who in hell’s worried?” Welling glowered down at Brad. “An’ what are you goin’ to do? Take the niggers’ advice an’ leave me to it?”
“I’m staying with you,” replied Brad. It was the only thing to say.
That day, they felt the fog seeping into their minds and clogging their thoughts. It swathed them clammily and sat on their breathing and chilled their lungs. It veiled them from each other, and the horses were but darker shades in its pervad- ing shadow. Its slow curling folds seemed to conceal mysterious movement, so that they often imagined they could see the black figures of Parakeelia men gliding around them. And it shut them in with the evil sensation they were riding along a moving pinnacle around which swam unknown black depths.
Sometimes they were on sand, sometimes on gibbers; some- times they knew they were traversing hillsides, but they could not see. Occasionally, the ghostly outline of a tree or overhang- ing rock would loom faintly above them. They let the horses make the pace, trusting the animals’ instinct to guide them.
Mostly Welling spoke only to curse the fog. Never once did he let Brad move away from him. All day he kept Nolan’s black stallion alongside the smaller bay Brad rode and his rifle was al- ways ready.
Once he barked, “You headin’ south?”
“We’re heading south,” answered Brad.
They made camp under a lonely tree, of which the lower limbs only were visible in the fog. Brad trimmed the twigs off the lowest branch and, slinging the tarpaulin over it, weighted tile sides down with heavy stones. He carried in the pack and then climbed the tree to get dry bark and dead twigs for a fire.
The Parakeelia men sprang their raid while he was up the tree. There came a swift rush of silent black men out of the gloom, a yell from Welling as he went down, and a whirling scurry that raged under the tarpulin. Then they were gone and Welling was firing his rifle after them. The bullets spanged off unseen rocks, but there was no sound from the Parakeelia men.
Brad came down the tree with a jump. He said, “They mean business, Jim.”
Welling swore. He was unhurt, save for a few bruises. “The black swine! But they didn’t get the sky stone. What they will get is a slug in the guts.”
The Parakeelia men hadn’t got the sky stone, but they had made a mess of Brad’s supplies. His large bag of dried meat and and canned bacon; and salt and tea canisters had been broken open and the contents strewn on the ground. Welling cursed as he surveyed the damage; but Brad, gathering up what he could, was silent. He knew the real reason for Welling’s wrath.
That was the second day of the fog. The following morning they found another message stick, similar in appearance and mark-ings to the first one.
A further warning for me to clear out,” said Brad, study- ing the stick. “And they’re coming again. You’re for it, Jim.”
Welling was red-eyed and weary; he had “been watching through the night, watching for the Parakeelia men and watching Brad.
“They don’t bluff me, McCurdie. No niggers ever done that. Give me that thing.” He snatched the stick out of Brad’s hands and threw it away and stood staring after it.
“Better if you threw the sky stone,” said Brad.
Welling spun round in rage. “For God’s sake, stop harpin’ on the sky stone. It’s mine, I tell you. I’m keepin’ it. For once an’ all, shut up about the sky stone.”
Brad lifted his eyebrows. “All right, keep your shirt on. But you know what to expect, Jim…”
They breakfasted meagrely on weak tea and damper, left over from the previous night. Brad wanted to conserve what supplies were left, and for once Welling was in complete agreement. Then they loaded the depleted pack and set out.
There was no abatement of the fog, no glimmer of the sun breaking through, no movement of a wind that would drive it away. There was only the impenetrable grey curtain, reducing, their world to a few feet of soggy ground and wet rock, and isolating them from time and space. But not from each other. Distrust and suspicion was as palpable as the fog, and they rode in silence, broken only when Welling grated a question about their direction or approxi- mate position.
Brad’s rifle reposed in the saddle-scabbard, but Welling rode with his in his hands, and he often swung the weapon ready to shoot. But when the attack did come, he was unready. A lithe black form shot up from the ground and landed behind him on the stallion’s haunches, and two sinewy arms whipped around his neck. The stallion squealed and reared, and more Parakeelia men darted in from the fog and dragged Welling out of the saddle. He writhed in the mud with the stench of greasy bodies in his nostrils and the fear of their clawlike hands in his heart.
Brad pulled his rifle from the scabbard, slipped out of the saddle and ran around the melee. But he did not shoot. The black men suddenly released Welling and sprang away. Two steps and they had vanished in the fog. Welling sat up dazedly, feeling himself. And then he was on his feet yelling like a madman. “The, horses! They’ve got the horses!”
The horses were gone, all three of them. There was a sub- dued sound or two that could have been the fog-smothered rattle of hooves on stones, and then there was nothing. Welling looked around with the eyes of a maniac. His jaw sagged and he was down, creep- ing on the misty ground on all fours. But the Parakeelia men had taken his rifle as well, and he soon gave over the useless search.
“This is your fault, McCurdie. You stood there an’ let ‘emget away with it. An’ I know the reason why, damn you! You reckon to crawfish out an’ let the niggers get me.” He lunged at Brad and grabbed his shoulders. Brad was like a child in his grasp. “You’re stickin’ it out with me. I’ll have your gun for a start.”
He wrenched the rifle from Brad and cuffed him to his knees. “I’ll have the ammo, too.”
“You’ve got all that’s left - in the magazine,” said Brad, fighting a lust to throw himself at Welling’s throat. That way lay suicide.
“That’s plenty. One shot’s enough to rip your backbone out.” Welling allowed Brad to stand up. He thrust his face for- ward. “Listen to me, you runt. Long as you’re with me, I’m safe from the niggers. I’ve dropped to that. So you stick with me till.we’re in the clear. An’ then - I’ll-see what I’ll do with you. But you got me into this mess, an’, by God, you’re gettin’ me out of it - me, an’ the sky stone, too.”
“We’ve got nothing,” said Brad. “No food, no supplies.”
Welling’s mouth set in an ugly, arrogant line. “This weather, I can go three days without eatin’. An’ so will you, damn you. Anyway, there’s blackfellow’s tucker. We won’t starve. So on your way. Head south an’ keep goin’ south. An’, so help me God! step sideways an’ I’ll shoot…”
Ploughing through the fog on foot was a different matter from riding. The horses had instinctively found the easiest path, the safest track, had sensed obstacles before they appeared. But, on foot, you were tripping over gibbers, blundering into holes or fissures, or trying to mount precipices before you realised what they were. And the gloom pressed on you like a dead weight, and your legs, unused to walking, ached with fatigue, and you were wet just as much with sweat as from the fog. And there was Welling be- hind you, cursing the fog, the Parakeelia men, and you; and all the time the threat of his trigger finger squeezing.
Something flicked past Welling’s head. Brad recongnised the whir of a killing stick. A spear sipped through the fog and quivered in the ground at Welling’s side. He glared around, bel- lowing his rage. Then a Parakeelia warrior appeared for an instant, laughing mockingly, and looking gigantic in the fog. Welling fired, but the warrior had gone before he had time to jerk the rifle round.
Brad thought, one word only to the Parakeelia men and that’s the end of Welling. They’re just out there in easy call and one word would be enough.
But that one word would be his last. Welling would smash a bullet through him the moment it was uttered. Besides, a spear through Welling wasn’t the way he wanted to finish off the man who had killed Tom Nolan. So he closed his lips tightly and plodded on.
Welling prodded him in the back with the rifle. “You headin’ the right way?”
“I’m doing my best,” panted Brad.
“You’d better, McCurdie, damn you!”
Brad had suspected it before; now he was sure; Welling was completely lost.
Late in the afternoon. Brad found some witchetty grubs in a rotting stump among a clump of desert trees and toasted them over a fire. The grubs sat heavily on the white man’s digestion, but they quietened the hunger pangs.
By then night had come, and the darkness was absolute, save for the small glow of the fire. Welling, the rifle between his knees, brooded for a time, then he abruptly ordered Brad to take off his belt.
“I won’t run’ away,” said Brad.
“No, an’ I’m makin’ sure you won’t,” rasped Welling.
He made Brad sit with his back against the trunk of a small tree and, with the belt, bound his wrists behind the trunk.
The fire died out and there was nothing but the black night and the dank smell of fog, and the wet chill cramping and numbing his body and the monotonous drip of water from the trees. And the fear that Welling’s rage might slip its tether.
About midnight, the powerful booming of bullroarers broke suddenly across the silence. Brad calculated there were at least a dozen Parakeelia men out there twirling the light slabs of wood that caused the uproar; and, though the noise set his teeth on edge, he was grateful to the black warriors for their presence.
There was no response from Welling. Brad wondered where he was, began to sweat lest he had stolen away. Then the bull- roarers ceased. A Parakeelia man shouted in his own language, and, right beside Brad, the rifle flamed and the explosion thun- dered in his ears. The Parakeelia man gave a taunting retort and Welling cursed, but did not fire again.
Brad was aware of a prickling, trembling relief that Wel- ling was ignorant of the Parakeelia dialect, else he would have taken the bullet. “Noon… The churinga cave.” the warrior had shouted. After that Brad fell asleep.
Welling shook him awake as soon as the blackness of night had slackened into dim daylight. “Fog or no fog,” said Welling, “we’re goin’ to be out of the Parakeelia country to-night. An’ then they can whistle for the sky stone, an’ me, too. McCurdie, you got to move to-day.”
Brad stamped his feet and thrashed his arms to quicken circulation. Then they set off, Welling in the rear as on the day before, and the rifle jutting forward menacingly. Brad slowly warmed up, but he did not increase his speed. He was weak and tired; and now, he knew, he had more than enough time. His only fear was that the Parakeelia men should make further demonstrations and so awaken Welling’s suspicion.
However, the Parakeelia men made no display, no sound, no attempt to torment them. There was only the fog, dense, deadening, marking a perversion of day. Seventy hours or more it had blanketed the country; surely, thought Brad, it would last another six. He pushed on, fatigue sitting on him so that he lurched as though he had to butt the fog aside. Hour after hour, till at last, the ground in front of him rose sharply, almost vertically, and was lost in the gloom. He. turned to the right and felt his way along the base of the range, scrambling over dry washes, climb- ing steep abutments, crashing through the scrub, clinging to the stony slopes. Then he turned an acute corner and headed straight into a narrow black gulf that was like the opening of a tunnel.
“Hold on!” roared Welling. “Where the hell are you goin’?”
“There’s a mountain in front of us,” returned Brad. “What would you sooner do? Climb over it, go round it, or go through the gap?”
“Go on,” said Welling.
It was dark in the gap, so dark Welling could just see Brad in front of him. Yet, when they came to the turn where the churinga cave opened out, he knew where he was. He jumped at Brad, threw him to the ground, and stood over him with the rifle down- pointed, and his finger tightening on the trigger.
With his back to the cave. Welling did not see what hit him. He went down so violently that he offered no resistance when a big man, in wet khaki and wearing the silver police badge in his hat, slipped the handcuffs on.
Grinning at Brad, Carey, the policeman, said, “The Parakeelia boys understood your messages O.K. They found me half-way between Nooramine and here, and so, her a I am… The joke’s on you, Jim.”
Welling scowled, but did not speak.
“A good joke,” went on Carey, grinning more widely still. He took, from his pocket, a slab of wood and indicated one of the squiggles. “That’s me, Jim. And the three little rings are the bracelets you’ve got on. Brad writes messages to the Parakeelia boys and you throw ’em out to them! Wonder you didn’t laugh like hell, Brad.”
Brad didn’t feel like laughing even then. The walk into the gap, while he sweated and wondered whether Carey would he at the cave or not, was too recent for him to laugh. But he did not speak about that. Instead he asked about his gear.
“Horses and pack are waiting for you on the other side,” said the policeman. “They’re honest, the Parakeelia boys, I’ve got some tea and salt to make up for the stuff they busted open… And now, we’ll be moving back to Nooramine, Welling. Stealing Nolan’s stallion and shooting Nolan when he catches you makes them anxious to see you back there.”
“Just a moment,” said Brad, “They sky stone. Welling took it. Welling puts it back.”
And, despite the handcuffs, they forced him into the cave and watched him replace the sky stone in the little recess from which he had taken it. Brad afterwards allowed it was coincidence, but he thought it queer that the first breath of the south-easterly, that blew the fog away, should whimper through the gap just then.
THE NIGHT I POISONED GRANDPA by Melva Lester (1947)
Coming soon.
MISS TARLETON by Rex Grayson (1948)
Coming soon.
A VISIT TO THE DEAD HEART by Frederick Howard (1953)
From the first stop beyond Alice Springs, Bill Caird had the passenger cabin of the Dragon Rapide to himself. Now the land- scape was shouldering up into the red backbone of an eroded range. This was the border of Fay’s country, and, if there was to be com- pleteness in his memory of her, the finding of it would be here.
This range must have been her girlhood’s horizon. In the sunset light she would have made minaret and pagoda of it, filled its silence with all the chiming nonsense that books of poetry had put in her mind. Caird looked down, at the jagged chaos. His puzzled brown eyes, so young in the handsomely middle-aged face, took conscientious note of each crag and ravine. It was important to gather every impression, to be sure of everything that he now wanted to believe about Fay. There was so much to discard and so much to accept about her, now that she was dead.
He glanced at his watch. One hour and three-quarters out from the Alice. In a few minutes he would be meeting Fay’s people.
He had cabled before he left Chicago, telling them that business would take him briefly to Australia, and asking if any of them would be within calling distance of Sydney at the time. The heartiness of their reply had roused his curiosity. In a succession of telegrams, they turned his hint of a brief and implicitly sombre duty-call into a festive visit. They discovered complex air itiner- aries for him, and implied mortal insult if he did not spend at least a day or two in their home.
The decisive argument was that none of their messages had a word about Fay. It was an implacable omission. He had to explore it.
The toy plane began to rock gently. A hatch in the cabin’s front panel opened. The pilot’s R.A.F. moustache and the tip of his nose appeared.
“Meddicott’s place ahead, Mr. Caird. Take a squint through here, over my shoulder.”
Caird moved up to the hatch. Beyond the plane’s nose, the range fell away to a pastel savannah of tawny earth and wind-bent mulga trees. A river-bed of sand scribbled its deception from west to east. A mile beyond, the mid-morning son glinted on a cluster of tin roofs.
“D’you suppose they can get me back from here to Alice Springs by to-morrow night?” Caird asked. “I have to make the Darwin plane for a Singapore connection. Mr. Meddicott wired that he’d fix something – “
“You’ll be right. I only call here once a fortnight, hut there’s a neighbour of theirs - chap from Umbrage Downs, forty mile north - who’ll get you into the Alice by Tiger Moth. They’ve been talking round the Territory on their radio for a week, fixing it.”
Caird frowned. The travel schedule of a stranger must surely have a naked triviality when it became radio small-talk over an area twice the size of Texas.
“Hold on,” the pilot called. “We’ll dust their roof for them. They always look forward to this.”
The plane tilted to a dive. Black cattle moved from the thin tree-shade, stampeding to the motors’ roar. The ground was suddenly in focus, sharp with dried hoofmarks and tussocks of sword grass. The tin roofs rushed by…. a radio mast…. a line of washing…. a canvas-shielded privy. There was a blur of faces looking up, and arms waving. The plane levelled, lifting Caird’s gaze to the cardboard raggedness of the skyline.
In a minute they were down, bumping on an earth runway. When the motors cut, the ground-warmth seemed to envelop the plane and drag it to a halt.
Caird opened the cabin door and jumped out stiffly. He walked a pace or two, fanning flies away with the broad-brimmed hat he had bought in San Francisco for this trip. The sun’s glare was like a weight that bowed his head. He watched the fore- shortened caricature of movement that his shadow made as he brushed at the inquisitive flies. He was getting fat, now there was no Fay to preach a gospel of perennial youth at him, and practise it with her unskilled salads. He noticed that his shoes still had a metropolitan sheen from Adelaide, a thousand miles and two plane changes south. He scuffed a little dust on them.
The pilot climbed down, hauling a mail bag from the cock- pit. He was so slight and delicately boned that the flowing moustache seemed to be an ill-fitting disguise stuck under his nose.
“Pity you have to scoot back to-morrow,” he said, “They love entertaining. Turn on shooting, swimming, riding, liquor galore. Here they come - the whole damn family.”
A truck appeared, weaving expertly through the trees. It pulled up with a tooting of horn beside the plane, and Fay’s fam- ily materialised.
There were five of them - the parents, the two boys and the girl. Fay had seldom spoken of them, and no words of hers could have prepared him for them.
Pa Meddicott was huge without being fat. He slid from behind the wheel of his truck and came at a light-footed run to- ward Caird. There were two hundred and twenty pounds of him, and there was a hard, demanding humour in his eyes. His bare right arm carried the long crease of an old wound, from wrist to el- bow.
“Glad to see you, Bill. But you’re a hell of a bloke, you are.” He took Caird’s hand in a tight grip. “Coming here for five minutes and then off to China or some place. Never live it down, will we, Ma?”
Ma was gauntly tall, with Fay’s grey eyes in a sunwrinkled face. She had forgotten to remove the kitchen apron from the too- bright dress of floral cotton. But there was a serenity on Ma that might once have been metropolitan poise.
She said, “It was good of him to come all this way.” She leaned forward, and her dry lips brushed Caird’s cheek. Her voice was a brittle echo of Fay’s nervous quick-fire in the presence of strangers. “There isn’t time to be formal, is there? I won’t introduce anyone. The twins - John and Monty. Just start tal- king to them about cattle or engines, and they’ll be all right. Monty is the blue shirt. And that’s Dorothy, of course, fixing tea. We always bring out tea and scones to the plane. Clarrie, did you bring any condensed milk with our mail?”
She turned to the pilot. He was putting a length of rub- ber tube into one of the wing petrol tanks. The brothers were rol- ling a drum of fuel from beside the runway. Pa had reached into the cabin to extract Caird’s flight bag. It weighed fifty pounds, but his mahogany fist held it at arm’s length, twirling it slowly as he studied the arrangement of zipper fastenings.
Caird walked toward the truck. He was remembering Fay’s one comment to him on Dorothy.
It had come in the second year of their marriage, when Fay seemed almost content with life on a minor attorney’s income. On Sundays she liked to be driven in the secondhand convertible which they couldn’t really afford, and look at reconstructed Connecticut farmhouses which were even more beyond their reach. On one excursion there was an injured cat by the roadside. Fay insisted that Caird stop the car, and she ran back to the animal. When he reached her, she was kneeling with the cat in her arms, and there was blood on her coat. He caught her as she fainted.
Afterwards, when he teased her and asked what her folk in the tough Australian cattle country would think of her, she flashed at him, “They think you’re some sort of pervert if you can’t face cruelty. Dorothy does, anyhow.”
Dorothy was unpacking scones and teacups from a basket. She had Fay’s slender height, and Fay’s trick of bowing her head in turning to look at people. The resemblance ended there. There was no tautness in Dorothy. Her eyes were placid, and her mouth set for irony.
“Hullo, Bill.” She gave him a cool, calloused hand. “I thought you’d look older.”
He smiled. “Would that be how Fay described me?”
She met his glance, not answering him for a while, but measuring all that he meant his question to convey. He knew in that moment that she accepted the challenge, that there would be no reservations when she spoke of Fay.
“On the contrary,” she said, “When Fay wrote, we always made allowance for her romancing. In your case, too much allowance. Have you learned to drink tea at all hours?”
Pa drifted over with the others. He slapped Caird on the back. “Give you a real drink when we get home. Ice in it, too. Got the best cellar in the Territory. People come miles off their course to sample it. Now, Dorothy, where’s this damn tea? Clarrie hasn’t got all day, you know.”
He handed round the cups as she filled them, “Here, Ma. Come on, fellers. It ought to be champagne. I read somewhere that millionaires in Europe take champagne for breakfast. Another few trainloads of fats, and maybe we’ll do the same. Here’s to us. Luck, Bill.”
The Meddicotts raised their cups, smiled and nodded at Caird. Behind its welcome to him, he sensed that this meeting at the fortnightly plane had a deeper significance to them. Even the boys, all incipient moustaches and hairy chests, were participating in a signal of success to the outside world. As they drank, the Meddicotts looked out, with eyes narrowed against the searching sun. He felt, suddenly, that they were vindicating themselves not only to their pitiless land but to the memory of Fay.
The plane left when the last Scone had been pressed on the pilot. Pa took a rifle from the truck, and suggested that Caird should walk with him while the others drove home to prepare lunch.
They could see the homestead, half a mile distant, with its windmill pump and radio mast as landmarks. But Pa set a course vee- ring from it, saying that they might fluke a shot at a dingo near the river.
“Dingo’s like your coyote,” he explained. “Only bigger. Cunning beasts. I hate ‘em. Government pays a bounty for scalps.”
The morning’s dome of intense light was blurring, on its rim, to a shimmer that was half mirage and half the drift of wind- borne sand. The plain carried a few conical ant hills. You couldn’t get a better house floor, Pa said, than one of ant-hill dirt.
Caird found it easy to make the appropriate answers while his mind searched back through its pictures of Fay.
He had been a major in the judge advocate’s section, at U.S. base headquarters in Brisbane, when he first met her. That was in ’43. Fay was a civilian stenographer. She had the glossy blonde grooming and the air of tireless vivacity that were standard equipment for young women at a war base. That was all that most of the fellows saw in her. But to Caird it seemed, from the firsts that there was more. It was, as far as he could define it to himself, a tensed and solitary sense of waiting. At times, when she was not aware of him watching her, he thought of her as an escaped prisoner, standing rigid in the shelter of Brisbane’s tumult and listening for the steps of a secret pursuit. But when she was with him, relaxed and listen- ing to music, her expectancy was that of a confident traveller.
A younger and more experienced lover would have read less romantic mystery into Fay. A younger man would not have had need and patience to piece the one set of illusions together, time and again.
She had wanted money. He realised that, soon after they were married. But even when they were furthest from understanding, in that first year of nervy quarrelling in New York, he knew that Fay’s goal was beyond the horizon of physical comfort. Perhaps if he hadn’t tried to cope with her restlessness by common sense. Per- haps if he hadn’t been fifteen years older than she…
“… taken half a lifetime.” Pa was saying. “Thirty years, Ma and I battled. Now we’ve beaten it. Doesn’t look much of a place to you, I suppose. Y’ought to see it after a good rain. Must show you the pictures Monty took, year before last. Hundred yards wide, the water was.”
They had reached the riverbed. The banks, shaded by tall white-boled gums, held the illusion of imminent water to the last. It was like the climax of some conjuring trick on the grand scale, Caird thought, to come suddenly on the brink and find nothing bel- ow but a broad ribbon of sand.
Pa squatted on his heels and rolled a cigarette. “We were the first whites into this section. There was a mob of myalls camped by the waterhole. We drove ’em off. Had to. It was that or let out beasts perish. Then they pushed us, just befoe sun-up, the way they do. That’s when I got this arm sliced, a spear clean through it. I shot three of them. Ma got one. Just twenty she was, and she shot that buck as he came in to finish me.”
Pa pencilled a sum on the lid of his tobacco tin. “It’s only the last four years that hasn’t been hard going. But we’re right now. Beef will never sell cheap again, the way the world is. I’d say we’re worth eighty thousand pounds. That’d be a lot, even in America, wouldn’t it?”
“More than I’ll ever handle,” Caird told him.
Pa looked round, his hard eyes smiling. “That so? I some- how thought…” He buttoned the tobacco tin carefully into a pocket. “It’s not the money, of course. It’s knowing you’ve got the game licked; you can’t be hurt any more. That’s when you get to like a place. You get fond of this country, you know. There’s wild— flowers when it rains.” He turned to Caird again. “Even Fay liked it when there were flowers.”
“I’d like you to tell me more about Fay,” Caird said.
Pa got up and tucked his rifle under one arm. “We’ll head for home. Ought to be some tucker ready.” He walked a few paces in silence. He asked abruptly, “How long is it now?”
“Since the plane crash? Five months.”
“Seems longer. Your letter said that she was on her way to Mexico for a holiday. We wondered… but maybe you’d sooner not talk about that.”
“It’s okay. Let’s get everything straight. You wondered?”
“Don’t Americans usually go to Mexico when they want a quick divorce?”
“It wasn’t that way with us. She - we both wanted time to think…” Caird’s voice trailed off. That last hour with Fay was suddenly vivid and incommunicable.
Fay crouching beside his chair while he told her of the Chicago appointment that would double his income. Fay’s thin hands heating on his knees, and her voice pleading, “It means more fight- ing, doesn’t it - always fighting your way against others? Bill, we don’t want it, do we? Bill, there must be gentle places - places where it isn’t ugly and cruel to be poor. This is a challenge for us. Why don’t we face it, before we are too old? Sell everything and go to Europe. There’s so little time to live…”
It had been unreasonable. Pa would know how unreasonable it had been. But he would not understand the indecision of a man who wanted to journey into Fay’s precarious Arcady and hold, at the same time, to safety. Fay had understood, and had gone away. The day she left, Caird wrote to Chicago, asking for more time to consider the offer; then, stung by the cowardice and futility of compromise, wired Fay that it was all right, that he would join her in a week and be free. But Fay, by then, was dead.
He said to Pa, “It isn’t easy to explain…”
“You don’t have to. I can imagine how it was.” Pa sucked his cigarette stub, and threw it away. “Fay ran out on us. Three years before the war, that was. She was seventeen. Walked off and got herself a lift on the mail truck into the Alice. We never saw her again. She didn’t tell you about that?”
“No. But you must have had some explanation?”
“Oh, she wrote. Some rigmarole about the branding. We had our first real muster, the week she quit. It needed Ma, Dorothy, the boys - all of us - to handle the bullocks. We don’t have fences here, you know. There was some clean-skins in the mob we’d brought in that I wanted to get our brand on fast, before anyone came asking questions. Fay reckoned the branding made her sick. Nobody ever did know what to make of Fay, poor kid. You don’t need to blame yourself for anything, Bill. That’s what we all think.”
They came up to the homestead. Near the main, iron-roofed building there was a mustering yard, and a huge circular tank to which the windmill raised bore water.
Home was an iron-sided kitchen, leaning against one large room walled with mud bricks. The roof spread over to give deep verandahs on all sides. Here the beds were set, a pair north and a pair south, and a single to east and west.
Ma appeared. She showed Caird the side of the verandah that was to be his sleeping place, then led him proudly into the main room.
“Pa and I built it ourselves. Not the furniture, of course.”
In twilight he saw the fine-grained mulga beams under the roof, and the floor of stamped earth. A kerosene-powered re- frigerator gleamed in one corner, alongside the radio transceiver set. A line of armchairs, balloon-cushioned and tricked out with veneer panels and velvet backs, was ranged against one mud wall under old calendars, giltframed prints, faded photographs and crossed spears.
“We’ll have dinner, and then the boys want to show you round,” Ma told him. “D’you ride, Bill? Then Dorothy thought a swim in the tank would be nice. We’ll have a cosy evening. It’s nice here, by firelight and candlelight.” Her glance took careful inventory of the room’s burnished clutter. She asked, diffidently, “Did you and Fay have a home. Bill?”
“We lived in apartments, mostly - what you call flats.”
“Yes Fay would like that. But it’s not the same as a home, I think.”
“Never quite the same,” Caird agreed.
The day was nearly ended when the Meddicotts left him briefly alone. He lay on his verandah bed, aware that some ela- borate shift of scene was going on inside the house in preparation for the evening meal.
He got up presently, changed to a clean shirt, and made a packet of the Fay souvenirs he had brought for Ma and Pa. There were a few trinkets, a diploma from a secretarial school in Sydney, the two completed and mediocre watercolours from her brief pursuit of art with that queer Brooklyn set, and prints from Caird’s own folder of honeymoon snapshots.
He saw the sun touch the western horizon. Only the diploma told anything significant about Fay. It was a certificate of es- cape, and the Meddicott homestead now seemed to be the wrong place for it. Caird shivered. The sky had paled to ice-blue, and the night would be cold.
The house door opened. Dorothy beckoned him in.
She wore a long, amber-gold dress. It enhanced her slenderness, and the candle-light behind her in the room gave him a moment’s picture of Fay.
Dorothy smiled, motioning him to transfer his stare from her to the room. A table had been brought in from the kitchen. It bore a damask cloth and a formal array of silver and crystal.
“You never know what you’ll find,” she said; “even in the dead heart.”
Pa and the boys wore jackets over their open-necked shirts. Ma appeared from the kitchen in rustling black taffeta, bearing the roast of inevitable beef on Royal Doulton china.
It seemed to Caird that the Meddicotts dined to a pretested formula for conversation. It began when Pa opened the first bottle of French claret.
“We pay two quid a pop for this stuff in Adelaide, and the freight just about doubles that by the time we drink it,” Pa grin- ned. “Remember the time, Ma, when we dried out our old tea leaves and boiled ’em again to get a drink?”
Ma’s pale eyes gleamed. “Don’t you start talking Bill under the table, now, with your hard-times talk.”
But the past, the grinding and personal past, was what gave them pleasure. They pressed it on each other and on Caird. “Do you remember…?” they prompted, leaning to the candlelight, so that flame-point reflections looked out of eyes that hunted yesterdays. “And there was that time - Bill, you wouldn’t believe…”
He smiled attentively. There were no images for him in their words. What he was seeing was Fay, with a desert wind whipping her thin frock as she ran, calling to the mail truck to wait. And the red range beyond, turreted and fabulous, ringing with the music of lost worlds. But the faces around the table would not be denied. They broke into the vision, they and the roughened fingers so care- fully touching the stems of wine glasses.
When the long meal ended with dessert and coffee, Pa and the boys insisted on shutting themselves in the kitchen to wash up. Ma tuned in a dance band on the radio. There was nothing she liked better, she said, than waltz music.
Caird pivoted solemnly with her up and down the rough floor. When she came to Chicago, he told her, they would do a waltzing round of night spots.
She looked at him gravely. “I won’t come till you’ve mar- ried again,” she told him. “You should, you know. There! It’s stopped. That was nice, Bill. Dorothy won’t dance, but I think she’d like it if you asked her.”
Dorothy was standing in the doorway.
“There’s a dingo somewhere. I just heard it howl.” She laid a hand on Caird’s arm. “If we walk out quietly and stand still, you might see it.”
There was a rising moon and a sky of outsize stars. Dorothy walked with a long stride. She said, “There really was a dingo. But we can’t talk in there, and there are things you want to know, aren’t there? About Fay.” She halted.
Caird looked at her steadily. “I have found some of the answers.”
“Have you? You think we don’t care enough about her dying - that we only remember how she ran away?”
“I’ve no right to judge that. I - ”
“But you have to judge. It’s part of the truth you want. Did Pa tell you how they fought the blacks when he and Ma came here first?”
“Yes.”
“He didn’t tell you it happened three months before Fay was born. She was the first of us, the one they risked everything for. Murdered for. A woman kills for her child, digs a grave for the dead when she’s heavy with a new life…” Dorothy paused. She folded her arms, hunching her shoulders with a shiver. “Shouldn’t that mean more to the child than a story to loathe, to run away from?”
She turned toward the house. Caird walked beside her to the shadow of the verandah.
They could hear the radio crackling faintly as Ma searched the dial for more band music. Dorothy looked out over the plain.
She said, “Maybe loyalty is more than some of us can give.”
“I don’t know. Loyalty is what you live by here. I see that.”
He tried to keep sympathy out of his voice, so that she would not know and be hurt by what was now so clear to him. He felt that the whole night shone with pity for the unloved, not for the lover and the dead. She had no awareness of this. He saw her eyes narrowing as she watched the trees, her lips parting from their ironic set. Then quickly she raised an arm and pointed.
In the distance, two shadows ran in unison, flashed from the shade to the moonlit open, paused and gambolled.
“Dingoes,” she whispered. “Sometimes they come close, when they play like that. I’ll get the rifle.”
He moved instinctively, blindly. He caught her wrist and swung her to face him.
“Let get them live,” his voice shook. “Let something go free, for once.”
She stared at him incredulously for an instant, then read the compassion and certainty in his face. She wrenched her arm free.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“It’s all right.”
There was the bleakness of understanding in the words. She stood behind him, rubbing the wrist that he had gripped. He took no notice of her, but watched the moonlight.
“Anyway, they’ve gone now,” she said. Her hand touched his shoulder hesitantly, then withdrew. “Good night, Bill,”
He heard the rustle of her gown. When she had gone, he walked in the other direction, toward his bed. He groped among discarded clothes for his cigarettes, and found the packet of Fay’s belongings. He put it back into his valise.
He looked out at the plain. There was a mist in his eyes, hut he thought that something moved once more through the twisted tracery of the mulga. It seemed that beauty formed there in clarity for an instant, a grey grace tirelessly circling and seeking under the luminous pity of night.
Caird turned toward the house door. He would go in and ask Ma to dance again. It was the least he could do, the most he could do.
Acknowledgements and permissions
Thanks to the digitisation team at the UQ Library, particularly Elizabeth Alvey and Tina Macht who have helped to make the job of transcribing and publishing The Australian Journal Story Book much easier than it could have been.
Thanks also to: Curtis Brown (Australia) for permission to publish Xavier Herbert’s “Seven Emus”; Meredith McKinney for permission to publish Jack McKinney’s “Art and Artifice”; Carmel Kenny of Equity Trusts for permission to publish Vance Palmer’s “The King of Luggertown”; Sally White for permission to publish Osmar White’s “Mulligan Taubada”. For other texts published here, every effort has been made to trace the original copyright owner of material first published in the Australian Journal under R. G. Campbell’s editorship. Where the attempt has been unsuccessful, I would be pleased to hear from copyright holders to rectify any errors or ommissions. Please contact Dr Roger Osborne: tomcollinsandcompany@gmail.com.