by Tom Collins
Whilst engaged in these not unpleasing studies, I caught a momentary glimpse of something, ten yards away to the left, which seemed to be moving slowly against the wind. The volume of flying dust was, of course, far from uniform in density; and presently I caught sight of the object again. It was a man, creeping slowly and painfully across the stubbly knobs of cotton-bush on his hands and knees. I hailed him in a voice that took the skin off my throat, but another glimpse showed him still travelling; his head bent almost to the ground. I rose carefully to my feet, facing the shower, but only to be hurled down on top of the faithful Pup, and savagely snapped at. Then I went like a quadruped till I reached the wayfarer, and caught him by the ankle. He looked round; I beckoned, and crept back to my former seat, whilst he followed close behind. Then a bearded, haggard, resolute face, framed by an old hat tied down over the ears, confronted me.
“You look like some worn and weary brother, pulling hard against the stream,” I shouted.
The dry, cracked lips moved without speech, and the bloodshot eyes left my face to scan the pack-saddle beside me.
“Water?” I suggested.
He nodded. Cleopatra was close behind me, propped against the wind. I drew myself up by the near stirrup, till I could unbuckle the water-bag from the cantle. Though filled with half a gallon of water not two hours before, it was now half-empty. I drew the cork; my visitor clasped the cool, damp canvas between his trembling hands, and, with fine self-control, barely wetted his lips again and again. At last he took a moderate drink.
“Making for Patagonia Tank,” he hoarsely remarked.
“You were going past it. It’s about a mile and a half straight across there. I’ve just come from it.”
“Disappointed of water last night,” he continued. “It was dark when I struck the little tank I was making for, and I found her dry; and my throat like a lime-kiln. Too dog-tired to go any further, so I rested till morning, and then struck for the Patagonia, with a devil of a headache to help me along. I knew of another tank nearer, but I wouldn’t trust myself to find her in the dust. I helped to sink the Patagonia. Fine tank—ain’t she?”
“First-class. Have you no swag?”
“I had a very good one a few hours ago, but Lord knows where she is now. I left her behind when the wind put me on all-fours. Kept pretty well in the same quarter, I think?”
“About the same.”
“That’ll be a bit of a guide. You’ll be staying here till she slackens-down?”
“There’s nothing else I can do.”
“Well, I’ll stay with you. If you shoot me straight for the swamp, I’ll be right. I’ll spell to-night at the tank, and then have a try for my swag.”
“You’ll find two very decent coves camped at the tank, with the engine and pump. They’ll put you on your feet.”
“Good again.”
“Which way are you travelling?” I asked.
“Any way. Work’s scarce; contractors camped for want of water; too late for burr-cutting; nothing doing. I wish to God the rabbits would come something worth while.”
And so the profitless conversation (conversation is generally profitless) went on by fits and starts, till the sand and dirt-pellets ceased to drift. Half-an-hour later, it was an almost perfect calm, though the air was still charged with dust.
By this time, I had re-packed, and was ready to start. My guest was now on his feet, but shaky enough. With Bligh-like impartiality, I meted out half a pint of water to him, the same quantity to Pup, and the remaining quarter-pint to myself.
“Got a bit of tobacco to spare?” he asked. “Mine’s all in my swag.”
“Certainly,” I replied. “Are you hard-up? Because I can lend you five bob till we meet again.”
“No, thank-you. I’ve got a couple or three notes left; and even if I hadn’t, I’d think twice before I touched your money. Money’s a peculiar thing.”
“Especially in the sense of being peculiar to certain sections of society,” I replied. “Now strike straight across there, and you’ll fetch the tank in a mile and a half.”
“What’s your name?” he demanded, as I placed my foot in the stirrup.
“Collins.”
“Well, so-long!”
“So-long.”
My horses went off freely. I struck the wicket-gate with accuracy, and bowled on toward the declining sun, which showed dull and coppery through suspended dust; till, just at that hour which calls the faithful Mussulman to prayer, and the no less faithful sundowner to the station store, I reached my destination.
One glance was enough. Two strange horses were in the paddock; the kerosene-tins still stood in the sheltered angle by the chimney, but the flowers were dead; the smooth-trodden radius round the door was no longer swept except by the winds of heaven, and was becoming a midden whence antiquaries of future ages might sift out priceless relics with unpronounceable names. A strange dog came to the door-step, gave a single bark, and re-entered; then Jack the Shellback appeared, and, recognising me, got a larger quantity of profanity and indecency into his cordial welcome than you might think possible. Scarce as water was, he cursed me into washing the sand out of my hair with two consecutive goes of the precious liquid, whilst he swore the saddles off my horses, and obscene-languaged some supper for me. Even before the shower, the whole area of my mortal shrine, back from high-water mark round neck and wrists, had been pistol-proof with a thousand samples of dust, patiently collected over the same number of miles; but that didn’t trouble me. I could get rid of it—along with much moral and mental virtue, unfortunately—possibly at the Runnymede swimming-hole, or failing that, at the place where the Lachlan had been.
“Stiff little breeze we had,” I remarked, as I sat down to supper.
“Well, no,” replied Jack, in reluctant and compassionate negative; and this was the only part of his long reply fit to place before the sanctimonious reader. He went on to tell me, in the vulgar tongue, that if I had ever been at sea, I would think nothing of a whiff like that. He told me of storms he had weathered—particularly, one off Christiana Cooner, a solitary island in the south Atlantic—and the effect of his discourse is that I have ever since been careful, in the company of sailors, to avoid speaking of the winds I have encountered.
“I’ll fix you up for a hat,” he continued, in language of matchless force and piquancy. “Bend her; she’ll about fit you. I dropped across her one day I was in the road-paddock.”
‘She’ was a drab belltopper, in perfect preservation, with a crown nothing less than a foot and a half high, and a narrow, wavy brim. She proved a perfect fit when I ‘bent’ her. I wore her afterward for many a week, till one night she rolled away from my camp, and I saw her no more, though I sought her diligently. Take her for all in all, I shall not look upon her like again.
“Now, if you’d a pair o’ skylights athort your cutwater, you’d be set up for a professor of phrenology, or doxology, or any other ology,” suggested Jack, with one oath, two unseemly expletives, and two obscenities.
“How is that for high?” I asked, putting on a pair of large, round, clouded lenses, which my experience of ophthalmia has warned me to carry continually. Then, without interrupting my good host’s torrent of unrepeatable congratulation, I turned aside and unstrapped a portion of Bunyip’s pack. Presently I advanced and resumed my seat, with the ancestor of all pipes pendent from my mouth. The hat, glasses, and pipe chorded (if I may use that expression) so perfectly that Jack’s merriment died-away in a reverent petition to be struck dead.
The pipe has already been referred-to in these annals. It was probably the most artistic, the most opulent-looking, the most scholarly, the most imposing, and, from a Darwinian point of view, the most highly specialised, meerschaum ever seen on earth. It was a pipe such as no smoker parts with during life, but bequeaths to his best-beloved son—a pipe such as would make any man wish to have a Benjamin, but for the fear that the heir-presumptive might be exposed to unfair temptation, and the old man hims
elf to grave peril.
This nonpareil lies before me now, on an old, cracked dinner-plate, with my knife and tobacco. Its head, ideally perfect as that goddess who rose from similar material, carries, in spite of its vast size, no suggestion of the colossal, but rather of the majestic. Its aspect would be overpowering but for the soothing and reassuring effect of colour—as where, at point of contact, the opaque snow of the upper half, with cirrhus-like edge, overlies rather than meets the indescribable wealth of lucent and fathomless umber, which soul-satisfying colour intensifies toward the rounded heel, softening to a paler tint in its serene re-ascent, till the meerschaum terminates in a heavy, semi-cylindrical collar, of almost audacious simplicity. Then a thick, flexible, silk-chequered stem takes up the wondrous tale, in its turn extending, with a most magnanimous restraint, barely four inches ere transferring its glories to the worthy keeping of such a piece of Baltic amber as you shall not match in any democratic community. The slight silver mounting hints a princely concession to the great pipe family; and the two little red crackers, depending from the junction of mouthpiece and stem, whilst giving no encouragement to presumptuous rivalry, soften the austere, unapproachable, super-Phidian perfection of the whole ongsomble.
Here it occurs to the subtle critic that this is something like what a novelist would write. A novelist is always able to bring forth out of his imagination the very thing required by the exigencies of his story—just as he unmasks the villain at the critical moment, and, for the young hero’s benefit, gently shifts the amiable old potterer to a better land in the very nick of time. Such is not life. And to avoid any shadow of the imputation in which that incident-begging novelist wallows, I must now turn aside for one moment to tell how I came into possession of such a pipe as no other Australian bushman ever owned. As for the digression—well, I suppose even the most insubordinate reader is by this time educated up to my style.
Shortly before the previous wool-season, I had found myself, on a rather chilly night, drawing toward the western boundary of Gunbah, on the track from Hiliston to Hay. A spark of red fire, miles ahead, told of someone camped at a clump on Iliilliwa, just about the spot I had marked out as my own destination—there being grass anywhere inside the boundary of Iliilliwa, and none in the road-paddocks of Gunbah. As I drew nearer, the impotent tinkle of one of those hemispherical horse-bells indicated a new-chum’s camp.
I casually noticed a man sitting before the fire, though he vanished before I arrived, leaving an empty camp-stool. As I unsaddled my horses, he reappeared out of the darkness—a large, blonde, heavily-moustached young fellow, with a light rifle in the hollow of his arm. Being too hungry for conversation, I merely tendered about three words of civil remark whilst raking out some coals for my quart-pot; and he resumed his seat in silence, watching me across the fire.
But during my ample repast—the second one of the day—I introduced myself more fully, and partly won my way through the suspicious reserve of the strong man armed. By the time my supper-service was re-packed, and I was stretched in Aboriginal contentment beside the fire, I had noticed, by the uncertain light, an eight-by-six tent, which seemed to contain two camp-bedsteads, on one of which lay a sleeping man. Some yards behind the tent stood a spring-cart.
My new acquaintance, becoming quite frank and cordial, supported his end of the conversation in rather laboured English, with a slight foreign accent. Gold-mining was the topic which had risen to the surface; and, as an hour—two hours—passed, I was fairly abashed by the extent and accuracy of his information. He talked so confidently, so scientifically, and, as far as my knowledge went, so veraciously, not only of the principal Australian gold-fields, but of the different notable claims, that curiosity broke through ceremony, and I asked him how long he had been out.
Just three weeks, he told me. His name, he added, with an inimitable bow, was Franz von Swammerbrunck, very much at my service. His friend, Schloss, and himself, fellow-students, had left Frankfort only three months before.
“Frankfort-on-the-Main, or Frankfort-on-the-Oder?” I asked, veiling a mild and inoffensive pedantry under the guise of friendly interest.
His courteous reply tailed-off naturally into such a volume of condensed information as re-impressed on my mind a fact which we are, perhaps, too prone to lose sight of—namely, the existence of a civilisation north of Torres Straits. Desiring, of course, to avail myself of some few rays of this boreal light, I tried to steer the conversation in the direction of bainting and boetry (for such subjects go well at camp-fires), but Franz hung so persistently on one rein that I had to give him his head, and he edged back to gold-mining. Turn the discourse whatever way I would, that wearisome topic was adroitly made to occur as if of its own accord.
“But don’t let me be keeping you out of bed,” I remarked, at length.
“Tear Mr. Tongcollin, you haf dot impertinence perpetratenefer,” replied my companion earnestly. “Dis schall pe mineperiod mit der sentry-vatch. Dot molestation to youzelluf solitaryvill pe, unt von apology ver despicable iss to me reqvire ass derconseqvence. Bot you magnificent-superb garrulity mos peen to derstrange-alien-isolate in dot platty dilemma mit Schloss unt mine-zelluf, invaluable unt moch velcome. Dot goot-define kevartz reef, by instance, vich you loquacious-delineate, mit der visible golt destitute—by tarn! he schall mine eyes from der skleep fly-away mit der enchantment-glitter! Ach Gott! Nefer py vhite man vitness, you schall say, pefore fife unt seex yare pass-gone, unt by pushmen diminutive nomber unt platty few altogedder. Bot der localisation-topography unt der route you schall py der map mit you gross magnanimity indicate, unt Gott pless! Tousand pig tank you, Mr. Tongcollin! For von trifle-moment, you ver munificent reprieve”—
He entered the tent, and spoke to the sleeper, with suppressed eagerness in his voice. The watch below attired himself and came forth; then followed a formal introduction; and in another couple of hours—such was the clearness and receptivity of these young men’s minds—I had made them acquainted with all I knew of the geology of Upper Riverina. And not less remarkable than their infatuation for non-auriferous reefs was their vivid interest in bushrangers and blackfellows; but whereas they received my crude geological information with the attention which its frankness certainly merited, it was plain that their idea of prospecting the back-blocks with the pick in one hand and the rifle in the other, remained unshaken by my repeated assurances of peace and safety. That was all right. The topography of the wilderness was the thing they wanted; they would manage the peace and safety for themselves. Schloss, in particular, was almost as eager for the inevitable brush with outlaw or savage as he was for the no less inevitable golden reef.
In due time, the stars paled to indistinctness, then to invisibility, and the landscape came into view in the fresh, chilly dawn, showing a strong grey horse feeding with Fancy and Bunyip, two hundred yards away. I was in no hurry to start, but my friends were like greyhounds in the leash. Therefore, whilst I dozed off to sleep, they packed up their elaborate camp, and harnessed their horse in the spring-cart. They would stop for breakfast after a few hours’ travelling; meantime, they had a cup of coffee. I roused myself to reiterate the directions I had already given respecting the locality of half a dozen reefs in the back-blocks; then my friends stowed away their maps and diagrams, and shook hands with me so affectionately—so Germanly, in fact—that I called up a certain sardonic expression of face, as the best safeguard against possible kissing. Finally, when they were seated side by side under the tilt of the spring-cart, Swammerbrunck said, whilst his blue eyes twinkled with merriment.
“Vit Mr. Spreenfeldt shall you peen von acquaintance?”
Yes; I was slightly acquainted with Mr. Springfield. He was the landlord of a hotel in Hay.
“Vill you said, mit you proximate-ensuing interview, dot der two Yarman moreprogues schall peen ass pig fools ass efer!”
I promised to deliver the message, whereupon the wise men of the north laughed heartily. Then the three of us raised our hats with
aristocratic gravity; and the vehicle moved away toward the land of Disillusionment. As I lay down again, I heard the poor fellows burst into unintelligible song; and, after the spring-cart had jogged a quarter of a mile, one of the adventurers looked past the edge of the tilt toward me, and waved his handkerchief. Not having any similar article on me at the time, I half-rose and returned the farewell with my hat.
As big fools as ever! Between asleep and awake, I pondered on the quantity and quality of Australian-novel lore which had found utterance there. The outlawed bushrangers; the lurking blackfellows; the squatter’s lovely Diana-daughter, awaiting the well-bred greenhorn (for even she had cropped-up in conversation)—how these things recalled my reading! And yet they were quite as reasonable as the discovery of the rich reef by the soft-handed, fastidious young gentleman-digger.
I had only wasted time in asseverating that barren reefs are twice as plentiful as half-tucker reefs; ten times as plentiful as wages reefs; and a hundred times as plentiful as pile reefs. Both margraves had listened with polite toleration when I compassionately added that the pile reef is always discovered by an ungrammatical person, named Old Brummy, or Sydney Bob, or Squinty-eyed Pete, or something to the same general effect; and this because few ‘gentlemen’ can stoop low enough, and long enough, and doggedly enough, to conquer; whereas Brummy &c., doesn’t require to stoop at all—and his show is little better than Buckley’s.
Also, the barons had derived keen enjoyment from my honest suggestion, that the ‘gentleman’s’ best show is to discover the discoverer, and prevail upon the latter, per medium of fire-water and blarney, to affix his illegible signature to some expropriating document. And yet those visionaries were highly informed men—at least, as far as schools, lecture-rooms, laboratories, museums, and the whole admirable machinery of modern academic and technical training could take them. This, let me add, is the record of an actual occurrence. It will just show you how much the novelist has to answer for; following, as he does, the devices and desires of his own heart; telling the lies he ought not to have told, and leaving untold the lies that he ought to have told.