The Beach of Atonement

by Arthur W. Upfield

  Most men would have let the light line go for the sake of catching up the other, which held assuredly a big fish. Most men would have tingled at the prospect of such a catch. Not so Arnold Dudley. As though he little cared if the fish escaped or not, he completed the recovery of the light line, wound it on its piece of board, and placed it among the fish in his gunny-sack before picking up the heavier line.

  He found it as taut as a bow-string. Testing it with a pull, he discovered that a mighty fish was hooked. It would have been a far simpler task had he been fishing from a boat, where he could have brought the fish near and gaffed it. Here, with the spouting froth and fume of water a yard from his feet, the knife-like edge of the Pontoon waiting to sever the line; it would be absurd to bring in the fish before it was played out or drowned, when he could draw it close and haul it over the rock edge on the top of a swell. Victory to him, therefore, could result only at the finish of a long battle.

  The fight between fish and man developed. Sometimes Dudley had not a yard of line to spare; at others many yards lay coiled over his left forearm. To the north dashed the fish, to be checked ever more strongly till it turned and dashed south. Once it came straight to the Pontoon with amazing speed, rushing to the danger of a shattering collision; yet, sensing the proximity of the granite barrier, it slewed north again, and then out to sea.

  Fifteen, twenty, thirty minutes fled. At times Arnold Dudley found the straining line a support against the surging waves, which now reached his thighs, making his position ever more precarious. But now the fish was rapidly tiring. Once he saw its silver-gleaming body, long and thick and beautiful. It came to the surface on the summit of a roller, and Dudley saw it was a glorious king-fish, and estimated it to weigh about sixty pounds.

  A human voice behind him cried out with delighted admiration, yet he kept his attention on his line. Any time now he could select a big wave to bring in his catch with a rush and, a hand over hand pull. The wave was coming. A “ninth wave” it must have been, for it was a king of waves. Pulling hard on his line, he saw the fish again, and waited for the roller to reach the place. And whilst the wave raced toward the almost drowned fish, there raced toward it, too, a triangular grey-black fin, cutting the water into two widening wavelets. Dudley pulled hard. The wave lifted the fish high. He saw its gleaming body being sent skyward; saw, too, a dull white streaky body swirl upon it.

  With amazing suddenness the weight was taken from his line. The wave was at the Pontoon. It spouted up high, shoulder high, with a white-laced green back, appeared to hang for quite a time dove the lip of the rock, then surged toward Dudley, swept him off his feet, enveloped him, hurled him shoreward with a thunderous roar, bumped him on the serrated surface of the Pontoon, pounded and pummelled him, finally to lose its strength and leave him gasping and choking at the feet of Hester Long.

  When he staggered to his feet, helped by the mother and two little boys, and had wiped the water from his hair, he regarded her grimly, neither fear nor anger nor amusement in his face. Without speaking, he gathered in the line, to regard then half the head of the giant king-fish still on the hook.

  “It was a shark which took it, wasn’t it?” the woman said, vivid sympathy and disappointment in her voice. “I thought I saw its fin and then its white belly. What a shame! Are you hurt?”

  “No,” he said sharply. “Luck is out to-day. Still, I have the smaller fish.”

  He allowed her to look in the gunny-sack, whereupon she gave a cry of delight, and into her eyes flashed the real fisherman’s joy.

  “You have got a nice lot,” she cried. “But you must take care. Some of the holes in the rock are dangerous. They would suck you down if you were washed into one of them. But there! you must come and have a cup of tea. I left Miss Mallory boiling the billy. This time you mustn’t refuse.”

  “This time I shall not refuse,” he said ; adding: “How is the thumb?”

  “Quite well again. For a little while it was most awkward to milk the cows, but Miss Mallory used to ride over night and morning to help.”

  They splashed towards the narrow strip of beach. Dudley noted that his companion wore a very old pair of elastic-sided riding-boots, and that her unfashionably long skirt was fastened up above her knees. The beach gained, she unpinned the skirt and allowed it to drop to its proper length. Smiling slightly, she said:

  “Are you not cold?”

  “Not a bit,” he told her. “Only vexed at that pirate of a shark.” And, when they had scrambled up the low rock barrier and gained the sand-patch back of the head-land, he was quite warm. Even when he seated himself, at Miss Mallory’s invitation, between two eager little boys at the side of a spread tablecloth, his clothes were almost dried by the warm sunlit air.

  They gave him tea and lettuce sandwiches, buttered scones, and little cakes. The elder woman waited on him with the gentle art bespeaking the habit of waiting on a man well-beloved. Miss Mallory talked seldom, and then only with the two hungry, high-spirited little boys. After a little while Arnold Dudley, with the downright bonhomie of the Australian, said:

  “Why not introduce ourselves?”

  “Why not?” agreed the matronly woman, smiling. “I am Hester Long—Mrs. Long—of Eagle Farm.”

  Dudley found himself looking into a pair of steady grey eyes in which was a hint of sadness that could not be banished. He decided she was about his own age, even though at first glance the lines about her mouth and eyes, as well as her weather-beaten complexion, made her appear ten years older. Even in the bloom of youth Hester Long must have been plain. Now her features were almost rugged. Yet till then he had never seen anything approaching the spiritual beauty that appeared to radiate from her. Seated on a camp-stool dressed in a white blouse that accentuated the shabbiness of her old fishing-skirt and boots, with an old-time bonnet fastened to her prematurely greying hair with hatpins of the mid-Victorian period, she would have excited laughter, were it not for her wonderful shining eyes. When one looked into them one encountered Maternity. In the glory of the smile that seemed to break over her face as sunlight over a shower-drenched bush-land, the ugly spots of life vanished and were not.

  “What is your name?” she asked him simply.

  Her eyes and his were joined in level gaze. Dudley’s eyes fell before he replied quickly

  “Oh! my name is Cain—Hector Cain.”

  She knew he lied, yet liked him none the less for that. Had he looked into her eyes whilst lying she would instantly have disliked him. She was that sort of woman.

  “Now that you and I are introduced, you must let me introduce you to my friend, Miss Mallory. Edith, meet Mr. Cain!”

  Now the eyes he looked into were wide and deep-blue. He saw a pretty blonde, probably in her early twenties. Edith Mallory acknowledged the introduction with a cool nod. The accompanying smile was mechanical, for her mind appeared to be occupied with some quite sudden new interest whilst she inspected the new acquaintance.

  “Are you a relative of the Mr. Mallory who owns this land?” Dudley inquired politely.

  “Yes, I am his sister.”

  “Ah! Then you might tell him that I have relieved his land of some fifteen hundred rabbits,” he said quietly.

  “I wish you could relieve my land of a few eagle-hawks,” Mrs. Long interjected. “Do you know a good way of catching them?”

  “Well, I have caught a good many,” he admitted. “Are they worrying you?”

  “Not so much now as they have done. They killed nearly fifty of my lambs last August and September.”

  “Your lambs?”

  “Yes—my lambs, now.”

  Her voice had become infinitely sad. Dudley saw tragedy leap into the limpid grey eyes, and, because having met tragedy he hated to see tragedy, he made a promise which almost immediately he wanted to withdraw.

  “Then I will come and catch your eagles. The .Roads Board pays five shillings a head, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes.” Her voice became crisp. “And I will p
ay also a bonus of half-a-crown.”

  “Good. Then you may expect me at the farm in a few days.”

  “You’ll come ? Really?”

  “I have said so. Not to-morrow, for I have rabbit skins to send to Perth. Nor the next day, which is Saturday. We will agree on Monday.”

  “I do hope you will be able to catch them.”

  “How do you catch them, Mr. Cain?” asked Miss Mallory, rolling up the younger boy’s knickers. They watched the youngsters dash down to the safe pool which the incoming tide had not reached; whereupon Miss Mallory again regarded Arnold Dudley, this time evidently expecting and waiting for an answer.

  “There are many ways,” Dudley evaded. “Sometimes they can be poisoned; sometimes it is possible to put salt on their wedge-shaped tails.”

  She suspected but saw no laughter in his face, and wondered if he ever smiled.

  “You won’t tell me?” she challenged.

  “You would not expect a conjurer to show the way he did his tricks, would you?”

  “Well, perhaps not. Are you conjurer enough to catch an eagle with a sieve and a stick and a piece of string?”

  “Do not make me betray my stage properties. Give me two days on Mrs. Long’s farm, and I’ll produce the eagles. Are there many rabbits on your place, Mrs. Long?”

  “Yes, especially on the Ridge. You ought to get a lot of skins if you trap there.”

  “And you wouldn’t mind my trapping rabbits whilst I am at war with the eagles?”

  “Certainly not.”

  “Then you may depend upon my arrival in a few days’ time. How do I get to your place?”

  “Oh! We seem to have known you so long that I took it for granted that you knew,” Mrs. Long said, dividing her attention between him and the playing boys. “When you reach the main road you turn north, towards Geraldton. My house is the first you come to on the right. Just look at those imps! It’s a mercy I dressed them in their oldest clothes. And look! The tide is coming in so fast. If we are to get any shellfish we must hurry.” For an hour Dudley and the two women hunted for the whelk-like shellfish he had earlier used for bait. Mrs. Long talked continually of the sea, of fishing, of the danger of the rocks and the greater danger of the blow-holes.

  “Look at that nasty one there, Mr. Cain,” she said, pointing to a circular hole at the shore end of the Pontoon,

  He looked as directed. The hole was like a cylinder three yards in diameter sunk into the rock mass. How deep it was he could not then estimate; but, when each roller sent its quota of water swirling across the Pontoon the water in the hole rose and welled up over the rock-lip, thence to fall back and downward for almost five feet. Doubtless the bottom of the hole was connected with the outer sea-wall by a tunnel. Looking up, he found Mrs. Long’s eyes resting upon him. She said, very softly:

  “Ten miles north there is another rock like this, with several holes similar to that one. It is a fine fishing rock. Two years ago my husband was knocked down by a wave, just like you were this afternoon. He was knocked into a blow-hole, and never came up again.”

  “Good God!” Arnold was suddenly aghast.

  “I was fishing with him and saw him go.”

  “Terrible!” Dudley was utterly shocked by the look in her eyes. He was shocked further when she said, almost wistfully:

  “So you see, like you, I know loss and sorrow.”

  “Er—like me! How did you find out?”

  “I read every word of it on your face,” she replied; and, turning, went on hunting for shellfish.

  For a moment or two he gazed at her bent back almost blankly. He became conscious that Edith Mallory was regarding him with curious wonder, and, checking an exclamation, joined in the hunt.

  Two hours later he harnessed the horse to the old worn buggy, and held the animal’s head until the party was seated. Then, reminding him of his promise, Hester Long urged the horse forward, she herself smiling at him with bright eyes, Miss Mallory giving him one more examination, the little boys crying farewells ; and, when the vehicle passed him, he snatched the fish-lines out of his gunny-sack, and tossed the fish remaining in it into the tray back of the buggy.

  CHAPTER VII

  HESTER LONG’S EAGLES

  HAD he not so emphatically promised Hester Long to catch the eagles that menaced her lambs, Arnold Dudley would not have left the beach ; for the windswept immensity of the sea and the stolid, calm, buttressing sand hills were beginning to exert a strange fascination over him. Solitude always had appealed to Arnold Dudley, and when he first had yielded to the appeal he was quite a young man, having run away from a high school to answer the call of the New South Wales bush.

  For that his father had never forgiven him. Once he had returned home, after three years occupied as a stockman. His mother, frail and delicate, besought her only boy to seek a living in Sydney and be near her. For ten months he worked in an office, a period of his life spent in fighting down the call of the wild. And when ten months had dragged away the bush had won.

  Dudley’s mother died the Christmas Day following his second surrender, a day that found him fifteen hundred miles west of Sydney droving cattle. It happened that the boss drover was George Finlay. It also happened that George Finlay was a Western Australian by birth, took part in the gold rush to Coolgardie and several other rushes that followed, and never tired of talking of those halcyon days. He fired Dudley with his pictures of the “West”, and a year later they drove two draught horses harnessed to a dray across the continent, blazing a track used afterwards by motor-car explorers who wrote expensive books about their tremendous experiences.

  Dudley’s love of the bush, of the enormous space and freedom of the bush, had been submerged by his greater love of Ellen who hated it. To retain Ellen he went to Perth, and for a time his love for the bush and his love for Ellen warred against each other. Neither influence gave way, even though Ellen held him to the hateful, cramped, stinking city—held him till city life became a habit, and he had begun to think he had successfully closed the ears of his soul to the siren call of the bush.

  The men he had met who had hated the bush with a great hatred! Farmers’ sons and farmers’ hired hands, men anchored and clamped to a few acres, mentally clogged by the endless drudgery, who had sought the city for an easier life. They had been like the fool who ran to pick up base metal and stepped unheeding over pure gold. They wanted freedom, an easier life, and rushed to the city to become wage-slaves for so many hours a week when they would have found real freedom from man made slavery had they rushed in the opposite direction.

  Dudley had known the real freedom of the virgin bush. It attracted him and held him with the allure of a woman. During his life with Ellen the bush was as a memory of a beautiful woman he had loved, even as he loved a flesh and blood woman in his wife.

  A flesh and blood woman, however, is but a transient thing, as her love might well be also. She may grow cold, or die. But the bush never dies, never grows cold, never ceases to attract and reward. It is eternal in its allure, no less than in its life. It is able to go on forever calling to its absent lovers in the city, or on the ocean, or in a far country; and often there are moments in the lives of the absent ones when the love-call of the bush pierces the armour of human interests and human demands.

  When Ellen had been swept away from him—when the flesh and blood woman had faded out—it was to the bush he had instinctively gone. There on his beach he had met her smiling upon him, laying her protecting gown of green over him, cooling his hate-heated brain with her scents, lulling his racked nerves with her ineffable voice. She was his first love. Let her be his last, was his prayer whilst seated on the Seagulls’ Throne. And well might he pray, for as yet he did not realize the depth and breadth of the inspired saying : “It is not good that the man should be alone.”

  For if Hester Long had been instrumental in bringing to a close the phase of his mentally disrupting hatred of Tracy, she also was to be instrumental in bringing on a phase mor
e prolonged, more terrible—a phase in which the lost Ellen was to fight the bush for the soul of Arnold Dudley. Yet, whilst the bush triumphed, the man was loth to leave it, even for the few days necessary to relieve Hester Long’s farm of the eagle-hawks. Whilst watching the charging rollers laid with a cloth of diamonds by wind and sun, he sighed regret over his promise to Hester Long. He felt then as he used to feel at the moment of parting from Ellen on his business trips, and remarked the strangeness of it.

  Two hours later he reached Hester Long’s home, a very old white-washed pise dwelling set amidst ripening lupin paddocks that formed the valley between two ridges running east and west. When she came out on the veranda to welcome him, he was not a little surprised at the metamorphosis in her appearance. Dressed in a pale blue overall over serviceable house clothes, wearing shoes instead of the old riding-boots, and without the atrocious bonnet hiding a wealth of brown hair so light as to be almost golden, she looked no more than twenty-eight.

  “I am glad you have come,” she told him in her sweet voice. “Come in and have a cup of tea, and tell me what you want to do, and if there is anything I can do to help.”

  Leading him through the house, she took him into a large spotless kitchen, brick-floored, airy, and sunlit. At one side from a ceiling beam hung several sides of bacon. On a white-painted dresser were set polished milking buckets and cream basins. This kitchen was Hester Long’s kingdom, and she had taken him there not because he was a rabbit-trapper and presumably on a lower social scale than herself, but because he was her friend. A stranger she would have shown into her drawing-room, not her kingdom, and somehow Arnold Dudley came to realize that, and when he was seated by a small table set before the open window he regarded her with fresh interest.

  “You have a nice home, Mrs. Long,” he said, because he felt he must say something. “You’ve a nice farm, too, from what I have seen of it.”