From Chart House To Bush Hut Part 10

Quoth Archie: "What the devil are you talking about, madame?"

"W-why, isn't that Ah Chi, Chinatown?"

"Good Lord, no! This is Davidson, Messrs. Blank and Co." Collapse of matron.

I had to sit by the bedside of more than one alien watching them die; mostly at night, for the reason that, if they possibly can, they will get up and try to crawl away somewhere just before their pa.s.sing. An unpleasant job, sitting waiting, like a ghoul or a vulture, and trying not to seem impatient.

None of us objected to attending the little j.a.ps, though. They were always scrupulously clean, and, though n.o.body save a fool wants to see many of them knocking round here, yet they are real men one can respect, aye! and like--in their own country.

Every week saw fresh scrub-falling accident cases brought in. One in particular ought to be recorded, as showing that peace hath her heroes as well as war. An old chap, aged about sixty, scrub-falling by himself, had a tree jump back at him, jambing his foot and grinding it to pulp.

He tied a bit of string round below the s.h.i.+n, cut off the bits of foot still dangling, and then crawled two miles through the scrub to a road.

The cream cart pa.s.sed shortly, outward bound.

"What's up, Bill?"

"Oh, had a bit of an accident" (he had his coat over the leg). "Pick me up when you come back. Y'll only be about twenty minutes or so, eh? Oh, well, I can last double that," and he lit his pipe.

Old Buckboard whipped his nags to a canter, and got back in less than the quarter-hour. Then he saw the injury.

"Christ!" he said; "if I'd seen that, their bloomin' cream cud a' gone t'ell."

"Yes, I know," said old Bill. "That's why I didn't show it yer."

After it was fixed up at the hospital, the doctor was sympathising with him.

"'S all right, Doc," he broke in; "I'll be savin' footgear now."

The weeks pa.s.sed on, and I, being personally a.s.sociated with the rest of the staff, saw things that the casual patient never heeds. For instance, the gentle, patient nurses, never out of temper, always calm, cool and prompt. No complaints, despite the comparatively meagre pay and long hours; the querulous complaints of sick men, made irritable by long hours of pain, pa.s.sing over them like water off a duck's back, or to be met with a cheerful smile, and a "Well, now, cheer up; it's not that bad, I'm sure." Only when off duty and "done up" does the mask drop a little. And mighty little real grat.i.tude they get from the average patient, or thanks either, beyond a few conventional phrases.

Just before I left the hospital there came tragedy to my selection. Old Paddy and a mate were falling my road, the council having decided to fall all roads adjacent to cleared selections, and the son of a neighbouring selector, a lad some twelve years old, used to bring their tucker out to them. On this occasion the lad had stopped to watch them let a big drive go, although they had told him to trot along. Paddy's mate was at work on the driver, while he himself was brus.h.i.+ng round their next drive.

A call: "Look out, Paddy; she's crackin'."

Paddy trotted along to the boy, who was astride a slow old mare that wouldn't get a move on. "Come on, kid. Git a bit further off. Told yer t' git outer this before."

A wild yell: "She's comin' back! Run, man, run!! Oh, Gord! the boy!"

The lad dug his heels into the mare's ribs, but she only shook her head, and started a slow walk. Paddy made a jump for him, caught him round the waist, and tried to drag him out of the saddle. Too late. Next second the tree caught the boy across the shoulders, drove him into the horse, and both into the earth, Paddy being thrown to one side with but a few bruises and scratches. Imagine the feelings of the poor mother!

Outwardly though she took it like a Spartan; but it was no surprise that when her baby was born, five months later, she went West without an effort to hold on to life, heart-broken. May her soul find rest! Make no mistake; the slain trees can, and do, often get their revenge.

I left the hospital towards the end of May, all square, and with enough over to get to the Richmond, where I had to show up by 25th June. I saw the Lands Commissioner to obtain permission to leave my selection for a short while.

"That's all right," he said. "So long as it's bona fide wage-earning, and we know where you are, we don't penalise a selector with a good record. Drop me a post card once a month, and you can stop away till the end of the year." I thanked him and promised.

Next day I was on the "briny" en route for Brisbane; had rather a stormy pa.s.sage down. I paid a duty call to the Lands Office, and informed them I was highly satisfied, and into the willing ears of several reporters poured a glowing account of the district, which duly appeared in next day's papers.

I went by train to Lismore, and on to Broadwater by boat, and I enjoyed the interesting boat trips up the Tweed and down the Richmond. I got to Broadwater about 6 p.m. on a dismal day pouring with rain, to find a strike on and the mill hung up. I won't say anything about the strike, but, well--a pound a week and tucker isn't much, now is it? I had cut things rather fine--in fact I had only about five s.h.i.+llings left; so I interviewed the manager, who gave me permission to camp in the barracks along with a couple of decent blokes who came regularly from Sydney each year, and who, being like myself under an award, didn't join the strike camp.

They remembered me. "h.e.l.lo, Senex, you here again?"

"Yes; and d.a.m.n near broke, too."

"Cripes! You're not the only pebble on the beach. We are, too."

"Well, what are you going to do about tucker?" said I.

"Reckon the best thing we can do is to have what you sailor blokes call a tarpaulin muster," said Jim. "What you got, Bill?"

Bill turned out his pockets. "Oh! seven and a sprat."

Jim had eight bob, and I five and six. By combining our resources and buying cheap stuff "in bulk" we lived eight days on that lot, till the strike finished and work started. Jim had built a fish trap, which was mainly responsible for our success, the river teeming with fish of all sorts. I was duly appointed deckhand on one of the tugs, powerfully engined but slightly ancient. The bloke in charge was rather a martyr to liver complaint, but he was ordinarily so decent that one could easily be tactful, and pa.s.s over the livery bouts. The engineer was German, but when the war started he became "Hanoverian"--as indeed I believe he was, only he didn't say so before. Not at all a bad sort, but apt to lose his head when things went wrong.

We'd be toddling along with a string of empty punts astern, when the regulation "doodlum-clink" would suddenly change to a series of terrific bangs. A wail of despair from below. "It's der whack.u.m (vacuum) agin!"

Then would we tie up to the handiest wharf and effect repairs, with much banging of hammers and clas.h.i.+ng of tools thrown angrily about. Next day, perhaps, we would haul a punt off a shallow place, stirring up much mud.

A few minutes later a powerful smell of burning rubber, and loud oaths in a strong German accent, would apprise us of another disaster. Up would come the "sheaf," tearing his hair and dancing on his cap. "What's wrong, Franz?" says our skipper, with that quietly sarcastic att.i.tude which is more maddening than a blow.

"Blitzen und picklehaubes! Der Cotdom gon-denzer iss choged vit zand!!"

"Well, clear the d.a.m.n thing then. What'r'ye makin' such a fuss for?"

"But der rupper backing iss burnt!" with much gesticulation.

"Well," says the skipper, with a disgusted look. "Want me to give you one o' m' boots to mend it with? Put a new bit of rubber in!"

Franz, not apparently having thought of it before, dives below again, and we wait until the orgy of oaths, bangs, thumps and thumb-smas.h.i.+ngs has ceased, and he comes up again, wiping his brow, to inform us that "she's all right now till someting eless goes."

But it was always the "whack.u.m," and it "went" pretty often, in fact nearly every day for a month, and Franz talked wildly of "shucking his yob." This statement roused old Tom (the skipper) to ribald contumely.

"What! You 'shuck' your 'yob.' Why! a bloomin' charge of dynamite wouldn't s.h.i.+ft you, and you know it, and" (with bitter emphasis) "you can't stuff me with that, old 'shap.'"

At last one day Franz's bete noir broke so badly that we were left alongside a downstream wharf for ten hours while he took the whole caboodle up to the mill in a launch, to be properly seen to. After that it went all right. Time pa.s.sed quickly, the work was interesting, even the deckhand's job calling for the exercise of some brains and common-sense, and I averaged about 12 a month right through.

It was a bitter satire on deep sea life. When I was mate of an 8000-ton steamer I got 10 and find my own uniform, instruments, etc., and had a position to live up to. Here, deckhand on a little tub we could have carried on our p.o.o.p, I was actually banking more than my pay as mate, no position to keep up, and, having no responsibility, sleeping well at night!

We sometimes came up late, and the river on a fine night is really beautiful. We brought up the last load of the season on 22nd January, 1915, and the same night I took pa.s.sage in the "Brundah" for Sydney, with about 60 in my pocket. She was due at Broadwater at 10 p.m., and I went up to old Tom's place to bid him good-bye.

At nine o'clock we heard a siren. "h.e.l.lo, she's before her time. Hurry up, Charlie." She had just cast off when I reached the wharf, so I chartered a trap and drove h.e.l.l for leather through a pelting rain storm to Wardell. I tumbled into the ferry skiff, tipped the boatman to put me alongside the "Brundah," scrambled frantically aboard, to find--she was going to tie-up till daylight. In due course we left the river, arrived in Sydney after a rather stormy pa.s.sage, and thus ended the second stage of my journey.

CHAPTER XX.

MARRIED.

I got the wedding ring in Sydney. I was always rather a bashful person, and I went from shop to shop without entering, because there were girls behind the counter. At last I came to one. Ah! a man here. This'll do me. And in I dived.

"Yes, sir; and what can I get for you?"