Trooper to the Southern Cross

by Angela Mackail Thirkell

  ‘If you will leave Henry and come with me, I’ll never touch it again,’ he said, with his face all twitching.

  ‘Henry is a perfectly good husband except that I don’t care for him,’ she said, ‘and I am not going to leave Henry for a drug-fiend, even if I do love him like hell.’ I felt more than ever that I ought to be somewhere else, but it was getting more difficult to move every minute.

  ‘You say you love me and you won’t raise a finger to help me,’ said Smith in a husky kind of voice.

  ‘I know exactly what you are,’ said Mrs Henley, and you’d have thought she was talking about the weather. ‘You are going straight to the devil, and if I were alone I’d come too. But I’m not going to let Henry down. I shall forget you some day. You will forget me even sooner, and that is quite a good revenge for you. It hurts me even now to think how easily you will forget.’

  He started in to try to explain, but she got up and said she would come down to the pier and see him off. I slipped away then to fetch Celia, but I felt uncomfortable about what I had heard. We didn’t need a dope fiend to make the rest of the voyage more pleasant, especially one that had just been turned down by a woman and would naturally be a bit peeved. However, there’s no sense in looking for troubles, so I collected Celia and Mrs Dicky and the shopping, and we went down to the pier. It is only a step from the G.O.H. to the waterfront, and as Mrs Henley and Smith were just in front, it was difficult not to get near them. However, I did say to Mrs Dicky I thought there was trouble ahead of us, and being a brainy little woman she got on to what I meant at once. Smith was yarning away to Mrs Henley, and I guessed he was trying to worry her again. I didn’t know if it was my business quite, but I chipped in and said:

  ‘Can you go over with my missis and Mrs Dicky, Skipper? I’ve got one or two jobs I must do.’

  He looked at me as if he would eat me, but Mrs Henley said:

  ‘Of course he will. Good-bye, Captain Smith.’ She shook hands, and he looked at her the way I’ve seen a man look when he has had a bad stomach wound and you are going to give him a shot of morphia.

  ‘Good-bye, think of me in hell,’ he said. ‘I’ll go there now as fast as I can.’

  The other ladies were getting into the boat, so they didn’t hear this, and they didn’t hear her say ‘You will forget’, which she said in quite a laughing kind of way. The boat went off and I waited a minute to see if I was wanted, but she said:

  ‘Thanks, Major Bowen, I am not going to faint. Good-bye.’

  And off she walked. I saw a woman once, up in the Mallee, her two kids had gone off into the bush and got lost. They got a black tracker at last and found them after three days, but of course the poor kiddies were dead. Mrs Henley had the same look that woman had. I never heard of her again, and don’t know what happened to her. No one could help Smith except himself, and she did the decent thing in sticking to her husband. The little job I had mentioned was really an invention, so I got a boat and went off to the ship. I had a feeling there would be plenty to do on board, and such proved to be the case.

  The first thing I did, I saw that Celia and Mrs Dicky were all right. Mrs Dicky said Smith had been a bit glum at first, but he had brightened up wonderfully and made himself agreeable to them both.

  ‘I suppose you won’t mind if he flirts with Celia,’ said Mrs Dicky.

  ‘His troubles,’ I said, knowing Celia would turn him down well and truly if he became a nuisance. ‘What about you, Mrs Dicky?’

  But she only laughed.

  The man I wanted was Jerry, and after hunting in the smoke-room and lounge and on the boat deck, I found him forward, leaning over the railing, looking down into the well deck.

  ‘Well, old son,’ I said, ‘how goes it?’

  ‘Like a singed possum,’ said Jerry. ‘That was a pretty lot you sent us on board last night. Old Doc Bird has been picking bits of glass out of them ever since, and half the men are like the morning after the night before.’

  ‘I don’t blame them,’ I said. ‘If it hadn’t been for Father Glennie and Jack Howe and a few others, there’d have been no morning after for some of us, and particularly for Hobson.’

  Then Jerry started in to tell me all about the night before. He and Stanley, the one that had the French wife that was going to have a kid, had been on duty that evening. The men were all pretty noisy, because their cobbers kept on bringing beer from shore, and though no one was actually tight, they were all pretty merry. The Colonel had had a locksmith to make new keys for the cells and there was a guard to see the men didn’t interfere. Well, they didn’t interfere, but when the keys were finished they just took them and chucked them into the harbour. The Colonel was wild and said he would have a court-martial the following day, but the officers didn’t pay much attention, as they had him pretty well sized up, poor old fellow. Picky wasn’t a bad sort really, but he had no more guts than a Portugoose, and as for Anderson he jumped like a frog if anyone spoke to him. All that day he had kept out of the way of the diggers as much as he could, and whenever he poked his nose on deck, some of the boys would start singing ‘If you were the only girl in the world’, and Andy would pretend he didn’t hear. Jerry said it beat the band.

  Well, it seems as evening came on the men began dropping in by twos and threes, some the worse for drink, some just happy. Most of them had bought a lot of stuff in the bazaars, souvenirs and so on, and silks for their girls, and some of them got dropped into the water and there was some little ill-feeling, the boatmen being largely blamed for what occurred. But, as Jerry said, an Indian boatman hasn’t the physique of our fellows and cannot be expected to get a digger and all his parcels up the ship’s ladder on his own. Our boys said the boatmen had made them drop the parcels so that they could pick them out of the water and take them home, but from what I have seen of troops coming on board after a spree, I should say they were quite able to drop their parcels without asking anyone’s help.

  Anyway, things calmed down a bit and the boys got singing down on the well deck, and Jerry and Stanley began to congratulate themselves that their troubles were over, when a boat came alongside and a nigger in it with a yarn about wanting to see the Colonel. The corporal on duty took him along to old Picking, and no one knows what Picking made of it all, but luckily the corporal, who was an old soldier, knew a bit of the language and understood the man to say he had a letter. So the letter being addressed to Jerry, they sent for him.

  ‘And I can tell you I fairly got the wind up,’ said Jerry. ‘Old Picking kept on saying “What shall we do”, and Andy was as little good as a sick cow, so I told the old Colonel he’d better leave it to me, and I told Andy if he showed his pretty face on the troop decks that night I’d eat up what was left of him.’

  Then Jerry and Stanley raided some of the cabins to look for revolvers, but could only raise three or four, which they gave to a few fellows they could rely on. Jerry then went in to tell Mrs Jerry not to be frightened, but he had better have left things alone, for young Dick had just gone off to sleep and when Jerry came in and turned the light on he woke him up. Mrs Jerry fairly hit the roof. From what Jerry told me, I don’t think he had ever been so strafed. She said the ship could be full of drunken murderers if it liked, but the first one that came into the cabin she would tell him off well and truly, and if Jerry wanted to be a murderer too, that was the way to do it, coming banging into the cabin just when the child was going to sleep. Mary was in the other cabin and the nurse was ashore for the night with some friends, so Mrs Jerry had the place to herself, and she fairly ran the old Colonel out of the cabin and told him next time he came in he could take his boots off.

  ‘Since when’, Jerry said, ‘I’ve not had my boots off all night.’

  So having done all he could to make Mrs Jerry happy and comfortable, Jerry went down to D deck where the rude and licentious soldiery were beginning to come aboard. These were the men who had been in the rickshaw riots and down on the steps. Most of these had bottles, but luckily full
ones, and Jerry reckoned they would have the sense not to stoush anyone with a bottle while there was any beer in it. There were one or two making themselves objectionable, but Stanley and a couple of good sergeants hustled them off to the cells. A sergeant was put on sentry, and though there were no keys, the men weren’t too drunk to recognize a guard with a gun when they saw one.

  The next thing that came along was the boat-load that had the big fellow in it that had tried to do me in. When they came up to the ship Jerry saw he would have to stand by for trouble. He said it took four men to get that big fellow — Heenan his name was, a Mick of course — and one sergeant had lost a tooth and another had a black eye before they had finished. Things were then fairly peaceful till daylight, but Jerry stayed up all night, being one who took no chances. The crew grumbled a bit at the mess, but some of the boys gave them a hand in clearing away the blood and glass and things, and by the time I got on board the ship looked fairly clean — which was all she ever was.

  We left Colombo shortly after midday, and I should say the name of Australia was none too popular there for some time to come. After lunch Colonel Picking had an officers’ meeting and put Andy up to asking for a court-martial for the men who were in the shavoo the night before, but Jerry shut him up well and truly.

  ‘See here, Mr Anderson,’ said he in a very cutting and sarcastic way, ‘if this were a girls’ school we’d ask you to be the teacher, but it isn’t, and what’s more it’s high time you got some horse sense. Our job is to get these troops back to Australia with as few casualties as possible. How can you have a court-martial with hundreds of men in a mutinous state and not enough of us to keep them in order? They’ll laugh at you, and very likely cut your throat later.’

  No one could deny this, so no one said anything.

  ‘And another thing,’ said Jerry, ‘what weapons have we got? Will you give orders, sir,’ he said to Colonel Picking, ‘for all officers to bring their revolvers in here, now, and take stock?’

  The Colonel looked surprised, but he was only too glad to anything Jerry said, so he ordered all present to get their guns and bring them to his cabin right-away. I never had one, having had mine borrowed, as I believe I mentioned before, in France, so I just waited. I could see Jerry had something up his sleeve, but whether it was a white rabbit, or what, I couldn’t say.

  Well, I soon knew, as one man after another came back empty handed. Higgins was on sentry-go at the door, so it didn’t matter his hearing, but the language was all of a quite violent kind. The only ones who had their guns were the ones who had been on duty the night before. Of those who had been on shore, not one could find his anywhere.

  ‘What’s the joke?’ said one of them to Jerry.

  ‘You bet your sweet life it’s no joke,’ Jerry said. I’m only proving to you that you can’t have a court-martial. What happened is that some of the bad eggs went through the officers’ quarters last night. I had my suspicions, and now I know. It was a nice neat job, waiting till everyone was ashore and then going through the cabins. I daresay they borrowed some other little things as well. That shows what the guard is like. Christ!’ he said, in a nasty voice that made little Nancy jump, ‘some of you deserve to get your revolvers pinched, and if it weren’t for the women and kiddies, I’d say you all do.’

  Jerry then spoke his opinion on a few things. He was nice and respectful to old Picking, but it was easy to see that Picking would have been elsewhere were it possible. So Jerry put it to Picking, what were we to do. There were about six revolvers among us, besides what a few of the sergeants might have, and the whole ship, as you might say, against us, with God knows how many guns. When Jerry had finished his piece, Colonel Picking asked him what we were to do. So Jerry said the guard must consist in future entirely of sergeants, and the officers must take over all sentry duty, etc. There was a lot of arguing one way and another, but it was settled the way Jerry wanted it at the end. I left them at it, as I had to go to the surgery.

  When I got down, I found old Doc Bird in among the kiddies’ food.

  ‘Did I tell you I’d get more of this patent stuff on at Colombo, Tom?’ he said. ‘That’s right,’ I said.

  He let out a kind of a groan. To make a long story short, he had got a bit muddled and given his orderly who went on shore the wr’ng instructions. The patent food was there all right, but he had only ordered about two-thirds of what I had told him we needed.

  ‘Well, Doc,’ I said, ‘we’ll have to do what we can with condensed milk from the ship’s stores and fruit juice. Thank the Lord it’s only as far as Fremantle.’

  I could have kicked myself for not standing over him while he wrote out the order, but there was my chit, quite O.K., and if the old chump had to go copying it out wrong, who could ever have expected a thing like that?

  ‘Fruit juice?’ he said. ‘There’s no fruit come aboard as far as I know.’

  Here I became quite annoyed and sent a fellow to find Higgins.

  ‘See here, Higgins,’ I said when he came along, ‘what about that fruit we were to take on board?’

  ‘Excuse me, sir,’ Higgins said, ‘but the troops got it all.’

  ‘Holy Cripes,’ I said, and settled myself comfortably to hear the rest.

  ‘It was this way, sir,’ Higgins said. ‘The troops were a bit above themselves what with the little turn-up last night and all the drink they’d had, so when the boats with the fruit came alongside this morning, they got down to the ladder, and they just borrowed everything as it came aboard.’

  ‘And where the devil is it now?’ I asked.

  ‘Well, sir,’ Higgins said, ‘some they ate, the diggers being very fond of fruit. All the squashy ones they threw at the Indians, sir, and the rest is in their cabins.’

  I was so angry I made for the door. It was a silly thing to do, and Higgins stopped me. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said, ‘but I wouldn’t go to the men’s quarters, not at present. Have you your revolver, sir?’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, sitting down again, ‘you know about that too, do you?’

  Higgins opened the door and looked out. Then he stuck his head suddenly out of the window on to the deck, but no one was there, so he told us what Jerry had guessed already, namely that some of the diggers had been through our quarters last night. He said they were real professionals that did the job, and they’d got the guns without disturbing the cabins, all quite neat and quiet.

  ‘All but the one who went to Colonel Fairchild’s cabin, sir,’ said Higgins with a grin. ‘He didn’t know Mrs Fairchild was there, and he came out quicker than he went in.’

  I must say I was tickled by the idea of some great husky fellow getting ticked off by Mrs Jerry, and had to laugh very heartily.

  ‘Well, Doc,’ I said, ‘how are we going to feed those poor kiddies, I don’t yet see, but something we’ve got to do.’

  ‘I managed to save a case of oranges for you, sir,’ said Higgins. ‘It’s in the first-class surgery where the troops aren’t likely to go, and I labelled it Castor Oil.’

  He was a great little fellow, Higgins.

  Well, I may say that I hope never to have to feed a lot of kiddies on insufficient rations again, but we managed. Higgins scrounged round for condensed milk, and I did quite a lot of research work on cornflour and biscuits and things, boiled with a little sugar, and we had the oranges, and we kept the poor little beggars going, but some of them got a horrid pasty look and made me feel like a murderer. I may as well say that whatever else may have happened at Fretnantle, I saw to it that we got proper supplies of food on for the kiddies. Old Doc Bird wasn’t too pleased at my butting in, but though he was a dear old fellow, I didn’t think he was the man to be trusted on the job.

  Further trouble for the medical staff shortly eventuated. I mentioned that we took on some new passengers at Colombo. There was a Captain Peel and his wife and two kiddies. He was a very sick man, having had some sort of fever in India, and about the colour of made mustard. I will say for old Doc Bird
that he knew a lot about fever, and by the time we got to Sydney Peel was a different man. His wife had been a hospital nurse, a type I never much appreciate in private life, as they either have no children and think it will interest you to know exactly why, or else if they have kiddies they tell you about your confinements, which is no treat to a doctor. I thought these kiddies — a nice little boy and girl they were — looked a bit off colour, but put it down to India and thought no more. However, two days later they had temperatures and spots. Doc Bird said measles, and I daresay he was right. One infantile spot looked much like another to me in those days. Now it’s different, though even so I am bound to say that there are times when you can’t tell German measles from the other sorts. But the mothers always know, so I let them choose till I can say definitely which it is.

  So there we were with two infectious cases and no warning given. I must say it was the one lucky thing that did happen on that voyage that no one else got it. Providence must have been thinking of something else at the time, or we could surely have had a nice run of measles through the ship.

  Celia and Mrs Dicky had had measles more than once, so they gave a hand with the nursing. We rigged up some kind of quarantine with sheets and disinfectants and did what we could and didn’t make a fuss, and lots of the passengers never knew what was happening. The kiddies had it very lightly, but even so the heat was considerable, and I felt very sorry for the poor little beggars shut up in that cabin all day. Celia and Mrs Dicky helped to keep them amused, and it all helped to pass the time away. Mrs Peel wasn’t much help. She had had her kiddies too late in life and was like a fussy old hen with them.

  I haven’t said much about Stone and Anstruther lately. As a matter of fact they had been mostly in their men’s quarters, doing instruction and physical jerks, and were getting a bit fed up with the whole affair. Stone had gone on the jag at Colombo and was lying low for a few days. He had bought about sixty of those big coloured straw hats and given them to all his friends. Young Dick had lost his topee overboard and then he lost four hats that Stone gave him, and it wasn’t till Jerry had found him trying to push a deck chair over the railing that he realized the way the hats had gone. After that young Dick had to think up other ways of getting into mischief.