Gripped By Drought

by Arthur W. Upfield

  “Todd–a speech.”

  “Wot, me?” gasped Todd.

  “You–speak,” and in Mary’s voice was the brittle hardness of cast-iron.

  “Well, ladies and gents,” Todd began, having struggled to his feet, “I’m no speaker, silent water running deep, but on behalf of my wife and myself I beg to thank you all for your kindness, and the honour you have done us to-day.”

  Apparently Todd Gray found it less difficult to sit down than to stand up, but when he sat down Ten Pot Dick rose abruptly.

  “As the best man I’d like to say a few words,” he said, visibly refraining from expectorating through the open window. Pointing an accusing finger at the groom, he went on: “Todd ’ere sez ’e ain’t no speaker. Don’t you go and believe it. Last night he cornered me in the bar of the Menindee an’ he talked stars and suns and universes for three solid hours. He kep’ it up till he got stone sober. Talk! He make a kookaburra fall off’n a branch. Don’t ask him to talk no more, ’cos he might start on the stars and things again. Well, ’ere’s ’ow to all of yous! I ’ope as how yous all have enjoyed theirselves as much as I have done.” And alone he drank two glasses of beer with astounding celerity.

  The breakfast was over. Mary O’Doyle impulsively kissed Ann Shelley and almost kissed Feng Ching-wei. The sergeant strolled away to his office. Ten Pot Dick disappeared into the bar. Ann Shelley and Feng stood on the porch watching the broad figure of Mary O’Doyle and the short, slight figure of her husband walk slowly to the Menindee Hotel. Ann’s voice was husky.

  “lt has been glorious, Feng,” she said softly.

  “I am very glad, Ann. Thank you for being so nice to Mary O’Doyle.”

  “Why not? You were nice to her.”

  “Mary is my cook,” he countered, smiling at her with eyes masking the ache in his heart.

  4

  The newly-wed stayed three days in Menindee. It was a perfectly glorious time. Todd Gray and Ten Pot Dick removed successfully the accumulated alkaloids and other poisons contained in the water they had been drinking for many months, by the introduction of the counteracting poison of alcohol, and found the process pleasurable; whilst Mary O’Doyle, having decided to defer her husband’s reclamation till their return to Atlas, made many friends in Menindee, and met several people who remembered her driving her bullock team and wagon to the river wharf, there to unload the huge bales of wool.

  Came inevitably the day they were to start the return journey in Todd Gray’s spring cart. Knowing that the journey of fifty miles to Atlas would occupy two long days, the first stage being at least twenty-two miles, Mary had everything in readiness to be packed on the cart first thing in the morning.

  A dear father and two beloved husbands had given her a thorough insight into the psychology of Man at the moment Man has to leave the hotel that cheers for a further long period of dry privation. She gave neither her husband nor her husband’s extraordinary friend any leisure after breakfast had been eaten, but kept them busy harnessing the horse and loading the cart with the many purchases she had made, besides food for the journey.

  “Well, everything’s on board, eh?” Todd remarked to no one in particular.

  “That’s so,” agreed Ten Pot Dick absently.

  “Well,” Todd Gray repeated, looking slyly at Ten Pot Dick, “we better have a last drink and get on. Come on, Mary! A glass of wine will fortify you for the road.”

  In poor Mary’s defence it must be stated that her husband had behaved himself very well that morning, that both he and his best man were then quite sober, and that her heart was as soft as a bride’s heart should be. It was at this precise instant that Mary fatally weakened. She consented, and the three entered the private room at the rear of the bar. The drinks were served.

  “One more!” Ten Pot Dick urged desperately. “’ave another small glass of wine, Mrs. Gray. It won’t hurt you.”

  Mary O”Doyle glared and consented reluctantly.

  Then Todd said that Mary would have to “shout”. Mary who, in the old days, had done much “shouting”, relaxed from stern morality and did “shout”. Anyway, it would not happen again, once she got the “runt” safely away from Menindee.

  The horse harnessed to the spring-cart went to sleep. It slept for nearly an hour, and was violently aroused by Ten Pot Dick lurching into it. There was no need for him to grasp the bridle convulsively and hold it with great determination to prevent the horse bolting, since the horse was beyond the bolting age; yet he manfully did so whilst Todd Gray and two friends pushed Mary O’Doyle into the back of the cart, when she at once fell asleep on the several rolled swags. Those horrible men then slipped back into the bar, where they remained a further hour.

  When eventually seated on the cross-board laid from side to side of the cart, with Mary O’Doyle sleeping peacefully behind them, Todd Gray urged the horse forward, and encouraged it whilst it strained and pulled the cart over the deep sand to the harder downriver track leading to Atlas.

  Once clear of the town, the horse needed no driving. He knew the way home, knew that home was a desirable place. He lowered his head, pushed hard into the collar, and plodded, plodded ever southward.

  The reaction of the human brain to alcohol is varied in a hundred interesting ways. The clever captain of a South Seas trading schooner made it a rule to get any new hand thoroughly drunk before permitting the new man to sail with him. He knew that alcohol will make visible the indulger’s secret personality; and, therefore, by getting his new man drunk, the captain was able really to gauge the man’s character. We may think we know a person thoroughly, but really we know only what that person chooses to reveal. Alcohol is the acid test of human character. It will bring out a person’s evil or good, to be noted by those interested. A wise man accepts for a friend only him who has been so tested by alcohol, and found not wanting.

  Alcohol will at first exhilarate most minds. Its action then will begin to vary. Some it will make lethargic, others will react with laughter and song, or with violence, whilst a few will find their minds stimulated to heights never reached without its aid.

  The effect of half a dozen glasses of wine on Mary O’Doyle was to send her to sleep. Four times as many pots of beer produced the same effect on Ten Pot Dick. But, unlike fortunate Mary O’Doyle, Ten Pot Dick was unable to sleep because he was not permitted to sleep by Todd Gray, whose brain was fired by a mixture of beer and whisky. In his case alcohol cleared from his mind all the clogging veils of forgetfulness, so it had unbarred access to the vast store of knowledge gained from the books he had read and studied.

  He began to talk about the stars. His voice now was clear, cultured, forceful, his real personality swamping the one superimposed on it by his life in the bush.

  “There are millions of men like you, Ten Pot’“ he said. “Millions of men like you who live their little futile lives, blessed by ignorance–for, after all, ignorance is a blessing–and content to eat and swill, swill and eat, like pigs in their sties. Now hear me–don’t go to sleep! I would like to show you a famous picture depicting an old man raking the muck in search of a lost jewel, while behind him hovers an angel offering a crown blazing with far better jewels. You and those other millions are like the man with the muck-rake. You never think to look upwards from the muck in which you stand, to gaze at the glories of our solar system, our universe about it, and the hundreds of universes beyond ours. Do you know how many stars have been actually photographed by the Americans with their great telescopes?”

  “No,” mumbled Ten Pot Dick.

  “They have photographed a thousand million stars. One thousand millions. Hey! Get down and open the gate.”

  “Gate! Which gate?”

  “You poor blind idiot! The gate you are looking at. There is only one gate.”

  Still undecided which gate to open, Ten Pot Dick managed to reach one of them, and was astonished to observe that when he pushed it open the other ninety-and-nine automatically opened at the precise instant.r />
  “Have a look, and see if the girth-strap wants tightening,” Todd commanded.

  The wild-whiskered man fumbled among countless girth-strap buckles, and made sure each was in order, by unfastening the one. The result was that immediately Todd Gray urged the horse forward the shafts of the cart flew upward, and he, with Mary O’Doyle and all the loading, slipped out on the ground because he had previously forgotten to fasten up the tail-board.

  It was an occurrence unsuited to the temperament of the horse, old though he was, and he was stopped only by the lightning spring Todd made to grasp his bridle.

  “Pull down the shafts, you sot!” he shouted, and when Ten Pot Dick had obeyed he himself made sure that the girth-strap was securely buckled. His mind still fired by imagination and full of stars and universes, anxious to continue his discourse, he climbed into the cart via the step immediately in front of the wheel, and then urged the horse through the gateway and pulled up for his companion to rejoin him. Ten Pot Dick gazed around with a puzzled expression, closed the one hundred gates at the same time, grunted whilst he clawed his way to the cart seat, whereupon the horse was again urged forward and went on plodding, plodding along the downriver track.

  “Missus––” said Ten Pot Dick.

  “She’s all right,” countered Todd Gray impatiently. “As I was saying, Dick, the Americans have actually photographed a thousand million stars. And when they get their new two-hundred-inch telescope erected, they will be able to photograph another thousand million stars. Do you know how many stars there are reckoned to be by the latest calculations?”

  “No,” murmured Ten Pot Dick with closed eyes. Then his eyes opened wide for an instant, when he said: “Missus is––”

  “I am not discussing my wife,” interrupted Todd Gray grandly. “You keep awake now and listen to me. The latest estimate of the total number of stars is thirty thousand millions. The universe in which is our solar system contains only three million stars. The whole universe revolves on a mysterious axis at the rate of two hundred miles a second, and completes an entire vast circle every three hundred million years. Other universes are travelling through space at like speeds, universes beyond ours, comprising thousands of millions of stars, and beyond them are yet other universes.

  “Your mind cannot grasp the number of the stars, and the distances each from the other. My mind cannot grasp it, nor can any mortal mind. The farthest star from us that we can see with the naked eyes is but a stone’s throwaway compared with the distance of the farthest star between it and that seen by the biggest telescopes. Do you understand?”

  “No,” Ten Pot Dick admitted sleepily. Then: “Er–yes, I mean. Your missus––”

  “Leave my wife out of the conversation, please. To continue. I will honour you by revealing to you the secrets of space and time which Sir James Jeans, who wrote Problems of Cosmogony and Stellar Dynamics, which you should read, Ten Pot; Dr. A. S. Eddington, who wrote Space, Time, and Gravitation, a work a little beyond you; and the Master, Einstein, who states quite accurately that there is no straight line anywhere in Nature, have not been able to discover. They are men who have resolutely refused to admit imagination to their science. Their brains are fed by facts and figures. They do not drink like we do, Ten Pot, for they decline to permit their minds to become stimulated, fearing that under stimulation imagination will creep upon them. If anyone of those brilliant men got scientifically drunk, he would see at once the secret of Space and the secret of Time at the bottom of a pint pot. For, like all great problems, the solution of these seemingly insoluble secrets is absurdly simple.”

  “You don’t say!” muttered Ten Pot Dick, with a quick flash of interest.

  “I do say, Ten Pot. Now listen attentively. Hermes Trismegistus said of the universe: ‘What is above is like what is below; what is below is like what is above.’ If we take up a piece of rock we find that it comprises millions of electrons, some with attendant satellites, and space between them exactly in proportion to the space between the star worlds. In simple words, we have in our piece of rock a miniature universe.

  “Now the astronomers, the mathematicians, and the philosophers all ask: What is beyond the farthest star? I can tell them. Beyond the farthest star, on and on, we come to the same star again. There is no end to the universes. Now, pay attention! Also there is no end to the atoms comprising this planet. Imagine an astronomer on one of the atoms in our piece of rock. He invents an enormously powerful telescope. With it he can see all the atoms in the earth. There is no straight line. To the man of intelligence that is definitely proved. Even vision is not straight. The astronomer on the atom, peering through his gigantic telescope, circles the whole world, and, if there is no atom of matter within his line of vision, he would see the back of his own head. It is, or would be, the same if an earth astronomer could use a million times supertelescope, and peered through it at the universe. Provided that no celestial matter blocked his line of vision, he would see the opposite side of the earth, because his line of vision would go out into space on a giant curve which would end at the back of his head, did not the earth on which he stood form the fatal blot of matter which would cut short his line of vision. Do you understand?”

  “You bet! Go on!” Ten Pot responded in his sleep.

  “The theologians are just as much at sea regarding the secret of life as the astronomers and others are regarding space,” continued Todd Gray. “Yet the secret is as simple of solution as the others. The nearest approach to the secret of life, before I discovered it, was the Jewish conception of heaven: seven heavens, one above the other. When a scientist says: ‘There can be no life after death because there is no proof’, it merely indicates that he has not lived to see the bottom of a pint pot. You have observed the bottoms of many pint pots, but, like the man with the muck-rake, you are too ignorant to hold it against the light, as it were, and read. The secret of life is this. At birth a man’s soul has arrived on earth from life on one of the atoms with which it is crammed. At death a man’s soul goes on to the mighty universal world which is formed by the, to us, countless stars, which to that universal world are atoms. Do you understand that?”

  “Yes,” stated the atrocious liar.

  “Well then, when those facts have become thoroughly established in your shrunken brain, get down and open the gate.”

  “Wot! Another one?”

  “Exactly. We have arrived at the three-mile gate from Menindee.”

  “The

  missus––”

  “Why harp on the missus? Open the gate.”

  With care Ten Pot Dick reached the heaving ground. With greater care he negotiated the distance between the cart-step and the several gates. The gate he grasped he opened wide, and then leaned against it and closed his eyes. Horse, cart, and driver passed through. Carefully Ten Pot Dick closed the gate. As carefully he completed the voyage to the cart-step. Todd Gray gazed down on his upturned, flaming face.

  “The missus––” Ten Pot Dick managed to say, and stopped at that, because now he was becoming used to being cut short after he had spoken those two words. Todd Gray sighed.

  Well, what about the missus?” he said with the calmness of desperation. “We left ’er back at the last gate.” Todd Gray turned round and looked down into the completely empty cart. His eyes winked, and, surprisingly, he came sober at that instant.

  “Strike me dead!” he said with the sibilant hiss of the astounded.

  “I bin trying to tell yous for hours that she fell out when the shafts went up,” Ten Pot Dick wailed. Todd groaned loudly. The secrets of space and time no longer occupied his mighty brain. He said:

  “Open the blasted gate! We gotta go two miles for the missus, them stores, and that bottle of rum I slipped inside a swag roll.”

  CHAPTER XV

  THE WARNING

  I

  IT was the third week in November when Mr. Rowland Smythe again came to Atlas, the sun then blazing with daily increasing heat, and the hot nor
th winds blowing across the grassless wastes and raising from the corrugated surface clouds of red dust. The financial expert arrived about four o’clock, when Mayne happened to be on his way in from Forest Hill. Consequently Feng Ching-wei received him.

  “Government House is full, Smythe. Would you not rather put up with me?” I would, rather,” assented the red-faced, grey-haired, tubby man. “Someone somewhere told me that Atlas now has installed an ice-making plant. Good! I’ll have a lump of ice dropped into a thin tumbler.”

  “Just the ice?” Feng said, chuckling. “Well, you might pour a little Chablis over the ice and a dash of soda-water.”

  Feng ministered to the wants of his guest and led him at once to the spare bedroom, where Smythe’s chauffeur was stowing several cases. Two minutes later the visitor was sighing and blowing beneath a shower. Twenty minutes after that he was drinking tea with Feng on the veranda. From Government House garden came to them high-pitched voices.

  “Full house, you said, Feng?”

  “Yes,” Feng replied quietly. “You will have to meet them later, I suppose.”

  “You speak as though meeting them would be an ordeal.” “lt will be an ordeal,” Feng said with slight emphasis.

  “You will meet Mr. Eric Tanter, who plays the piano very well. Tanter the pianist, you know. There are the three Singleton girls, resting after a season of revue. They are all right, even if their voices are too high-pitched and will fray your nerves. Mr. Bancroft is the famous Sydney engineer, a quiet, reserved man whom both Mayne and I like immensely. But his wife! I will not attempt to prejudge your opinion of Mrs. Bancroft.” “Oh!”

  “Do you happen to know anything about the Russians?”

  “The Russians! Certainly not-excepting that they are bloodthirsty and seldom wash themselves.”

  With difficulty Feng refrained from laughing. He said:

  “I don’t refer to the present Bolsheviks. I mean, do you know anything about the great creative novelists of Russia?”