Part 16
After coming ashore from my stowaway trip, I lodged in a small top room in Lower George Street, which was very different to Upper George Street. By my dwelling-house the Chinese lived in their opium dens. Some of them were very well off and had managed to secure white wives. How those white women could stand them I don’t know. At sundown they would stand by their den doors and looked like mummies peeping from their upright coffins with twinkling eyes! Wrinkled yellow faces they had, and you could always tell their presence by the peculiar smell that came in faint whiffs from their shop doors mingled with the odour of orange pekoe, for they mostly sold tea or pretended to, but really played “fan-tan” in those gambling dens, and did other awful things as the innocent old shrivelled spy stood at the door watching, picking his yellow teeth with a long skewer. No one in Australia has ever seen a Chinaman drunk; he takes his opium and nectar in an arm-chair in the stuffy room at the back of his shop, and with his long opium pipe in his mouth goes off back to China in dreams, when his stupefied head no longer hears the traffic outside as the crowds hurry by and the Jack Tars from the men-o’-war boats in the bay go rollicking up the street “half seas over,” singing, arm in arm, and inside that innocent-looking den the white wife goes through the celestial’s pockets as the Australian “bum” stands up at the street corner waiting with greedy hand to receive his half. Five hundred yards up the street stood the splendid post office and all the business shops of the commercial world of Sydney.
After a month’s stay in the town I once more went up country and secured work on a station, staying there nearly nine months. I became quite colonised as I toiled in the pumpkin fields, rode for miles over the slopes behind the flying sheep, and slept in a little outhouse by the stockman’s homestead. I would sit and dream of home as over my head the parrots wheeled away toward the sunset and the station children romped and screamed with laughter. Sometimes as I sat thinking and remembering my mind wandered back to Queensland and Ethel’s grave in the bush. I often lay in that little hut unable to sleep till dawn crept over the gum tops and the lyre-bird’s song chimed the first peeps of sunrise over the hills. Two miles away was another station whereon worked two other young Englishmen. I often rode across the bush at sundown to see them and we would sit and yarn together about England, and all get homesick over our dreams. Dell, the youngest of the two, was thrown from his horse and killed. His friend William and I often went across at evening time and placed flowers on his grave and then walked away with thick throats, unable to speak to each other.
The Australian bush is the most melancholy place in the world to brood over sorrows. The music of most of the bush birds has a prophetic note in it—they wail away as though foretelling dire disaster; after sunset myriads of frogs and locusts start to chant and chirrup mournfully; over the solitude comes at long intervals the wail of the dingo, and often like the phantom of some lost dead child from the gullies a wailful scream from a bird that no one ever sees. I have often lain in my bunk by night and looked through the little window hole and watched the migrating cranes and other birds with long outstretched necks pass under the moon, bound southward; they looked just like skeletons on wings, their bones tinkling together as they passed swiftly across the moonlit sky right overhead. I devoted a good deal of my time to music and violin-playing in those quiet bush nights, and some of the very melodies which are in the strains of my military band solos were composed at that period.
William and I became close friends, linked together by the sorrow over our dead comrade, and eventually we gave notice to our employers and both went off “on the Wallaby” and “humped the bluey,” as they say in the bush.
We followed that life for a long time and became real “sundowners.” The atmosphere of that roving life has never wholly left my mind; the songs of the birds in the gums and the winds moaning and bending the leafy clump tips overhead during the nights, as we slept below, still echo through my memories. He and I were happy together, and I found him a beautiful friend. I can see his sky-blue eyes now, as he wondered and listened to me when I told him of my adventures in the South Sea Islands. Night after night we would sit by our camp fire and stare, side by side, into the glowing embers as overhead sang some sweet night bird, serenading our memories as we dreamed of home. My chum had a quiet earnest voice and would sit there and sing wild sea chanteys as I played an accompaniment on the violin.
And often in the night I hear, Above the wind and rain, My old chum singing in the hills Those wild sea songs again.
He had an old bent-up cornet in his swag, and I took a few lessons from him, and while I practised the scales in the silence of the night the very hills seemed astonished as the echoes answered one another and died away across the solitude, and away the frightened bush animals scampered as though the devil was after them! And sometimes in the daytime as the parrots passed overhead across the blinding sky they would hear those notes and croak dismally and hurry faster on their skyward voyage.
One evening, just as we were camping for the night, we sighted over the slope a genuine old bushman tramping along with his swag on his back. We invited him to stay the night; it took a long time to wake him up, but we succeeded, and his scrubby sunburnt face lit up with delight as my comrade sang and I played the fiddle. I never before or since saw such a dried-up old relic as he was. He had a big broken nose and black teeth through chewing tobacco plug for many years. I never saw him spit; he swallowed the juice. We managed to draw a few remarks out of him, and I remember him saying that he had known Ned Kelly the bushranger in the early days and mumbled a deal about how the times had changed and the meanness of the station bosses, for he seemed to get his living by cadging at the stations as he tramped along from day to day and month by month, looking for work. He seemed very methodical in his habits, for as we sat by the fire talking, and darkness came swiftly across the slopes, he at once carefully took his boots off—he did not wear socks—and, placing them side by side under his dirty blanket swag, put his feet toward the camp fire, laid flat on his back, bit a large bit of black tobacco plug off, and chewing the end fell asleep.
He left us in the morning at daybreak, went across the scrub with his swag on his back and disappeared under the gums and never looked back once.
Some of those old swagsmen are wise old men with venerable grey beards, mouths that seldom speak, and their grey eyes gaze steadily as though they can see through you, for they have wonderful instinct developed through years of practice.
XXIV
The Deserted Hut—Visiting in the Bush—Stockriders
THERE were a lot of lonely men in those days, tramping the ocean-wide bush lands, real helmless derelicts of humanity, as they staggered on the currents of luck into the stockman’s farm at sunset, wailed their pitiful tales of better days behind, mumbled their thanks over the tea and sugar given by a kindly hand for their billy-can, and tramped away once more into the solitude of gums and scrub. On and on they go that way till they die.
One afternoon, while we were both sitting under the shade of a gum clump out of the stare of the flashing eye of the sun, I noticed some white bones gleaming in the dried-up grass and scrub. It was the skeleton of some bushman; a rotten swag blanket lay under the white skull and the knee bones were drawn up to the chest, showing the way he died out there alone. As the white night mists crept over the hollows and the winds stirred the gums over that relic of loneliness, both sad at heart, we turned away and did not camp till we were miles away from that spot. The impression left after that sight hung on us for a long time.
Once we came across an old bush shanty by a river side. We crept in its little doorless room; through chinks overhead we saw the blue sky and the blossoms of wild vines that clung over the rotting roof. The old chair was still there velveted all over with grey moss, and the hearth was thick with bush flowers. On the wall still hung the photo of a young girl; the face though nearly faded away was a strikingly sweet one; we felt instinctively that some sorrow, some long-ago romance, was connected with that photograph. There was the mouldy bunk-bed wherein the bushman had slept, and outside under an old gum, surrounded by wattle bush in full bloom, was a grave, a small roughly made cross over it, and that told us all as we stood by it while the frogs chanted in the marsh just below. I can tell you that the sight of that tiny ancestral hall, rotting out there in the silence, and the grave hard by, affected me much more than if I had stood among the ruins of Imperial Rome.
A day or so after we arrived at the station, about twenty miles from Arrawatta, and both tired out fell asleep on a bank just below a stockman’s big wooden house and were both suddenly awakened by a loud, gruff, but kindly voice saying, “Hello, youngsters, would you like some tucker?” We sat up quickly and did not require any persuasion as that big bearded fellow astride his horse told us to follow him up the slope. When we arrived inside his wife had the table already laid; they had noticed us both asleep on the slope outside and there is no place in the world that can beat the colonial squatter for helping the bush wanderers who are down on their luck. By Jove! we did have a feed, and as my friend and I told the tall daughter, the squatter and his wife our adventures and all we had seen they seemed to admire our pluck and did all they could to cheer us up and invited us to stay the night, which we did. There was a vineyard on the next slope, and in a shed close by enormous bins full of the new season’s wine. I think we must have drunk about two quarts each; I know that it livened us up, and that night before going to bed we all sang and my comrade and I sang and played to them some homeland songs. They had a visitor over from the next ranch. He was an Irishman with merry blue eyes and a large pug nose. He owned the world’s largest feet; I never saw such feet, and though he got drunk and did step dances and jigs and swayed dangerously about, he never fell, for as soon as he lost his mental balance his feet came to the rescue; on them he swayed often with a terrible port or starboard list, but always just in the nick of time slowly righted himself. Irishmen are like Englishmen out in Australia. When they hear that you are from the “Old Country” out comes their hand and in a firm grip you are sworn friends. The Irishman will give you anything you ask for, will half undress himself and place his clothes on your back, even though you don’t want them; you are liable, however, to be sworn enemies at daybreak when the reaction sets in, but if you know the way to manage them they are soon smoothed over and you will find that you can keep about half of the clothes without further threats.
We were near the border line that separates New South Wales and Queensland then, and when we left next day we came across the drovers marching across the country behind their cattle, bound south I think. I can still see them in my mind as they passed away from us over the sweltering hot plains, sitting astride their horses and cracking their stock whips over their heads as the long ring of dancing flies that wheeled round and round their big-rimmed hats parted in two and then joined itself again, started to dine viciously off the eyes, necks and steam that rose from the stockrider and his steed. It’s not all honey (except for the flies), but nevertheless the bush drovers in their wild life on the plains have happy lives; always on the move, they camp, yarn, smoke and sing across the bushlands, always many miles away from the spot where they camped the night before, and they have supplied the Australian poets with any amount of inspired work in the songs of the bush and of the rollicking men of the plains.
About a week after seeing those drovers pass by we arrived at a place called “Bummer’s Creek” and stayed there for several days, helping Riley the boss to build some outhouses. There seemed a good many loafers hanging about that small township, for the Australian bush climate does not inspire men to work. We were offered two horses at five shillings each and I at once bought them. We sat astride, William and I, and proudly waving our hands bade the men of the township farewell as we started up the slope. I plied the stock whip and in less than half-an-hour we had almost travelled three hundred yards! I was not much of a judge of horse-flesh at that time, and I felt pretty wild at being so sucked in. Two of the bushmen crept up the slope and then suddenly discharged their revolvers close to the ears of those two horses of ours, and that seemed to wake them up and off we went! Before sunset we looked back and were out of sight of the township. I got terribly sore through the protruding backbone of that stubborn beast; sometimes William would dismount and laughing get behind and push it as its big eyes stared like soap bubbles with fright. I felt sorry for it though, especially when its underlip protruded as though through extreme nausea it yearned to be sick and couldn’t. My comrade’s horse was nearly as broken up as mine. We held a consultation together and decided to turn them adrift. Away they went across the bush that night; we saw their delighted tail stumps sticking up as they galloped across a patch of moonlight and disappeared and became wild horses of the boundless plains.
XXV
Before the Mast—Bound for San Francisco—Man Overboard—I see ’Frisco High Life—My first Funeral Expenses—Joss Houses—Guest my Friend
I WILL now leave my next three months of bush life unrecorded, as it would be very much the same as I have already written about. William and I got South Sea Island mad. It was my fault. I used to tell him about my experiences and as I told him of Papoo and various other Samoan and Fijian beauties, his eyes would gleam as he listened, until at last his sole ambition in life was to go to the South Seas. Indeed I got a bit of the fever on me to go out there again, and when we at length arrived in Sydney I tried to get away with him, but as luck would have it he managed to secure a billet on the German boat as messroom steward. I was very sorry indeed to see him go, and he too when I said good-bye to him. We had been happy and seen a lot together in our twelve months’ friendship. I stood on the wharf and waved good-bye to him. Dear old William, I often wonder what became of him; I never saw him again.
A week after he left me I shipped before the mast on the _Cairnbulg_, a large sailing ship bound for ’Frisco and then round the Horn home. We had a terrible spell of bad weather. About two weeks after leaving Sydney, one evening just as sunset faded a typhoon began to blow. We were all sent aloft to take in sail; but it was too late, the mainmast split and went overboard, taking and throwing one of the crew into the raging sea. He still clung on to the tackle of the broken mast as it floated overside, and then a big sea came down and he was washed off. We hove her to and lowered the lifeboat; over came the seas like huge icebergs, crashing to the decks as she shivered and groaned and pitched with her broken masts and torn sails, swaying and screaming beneath the storm-swept sky. There was no slackness of volunteers to man the lifeboat as those white-faced sailors with the soul of pluck in their eyes stood by and the chief mate took the helm. They lowered away; three times they were nearly upset and thrown into the sea as the ship lay right over and the big iron side seemed to lay under the lifeboat’s keel. At last they got her safely on the water; the skipper stood on the poop, the hurricane whipping his shouted orders away like pistol shots as a sea came over and washed three of us along the deck. We all came crash against the bulwark side, scrambled to our feet and rushed back again to see if we could catch sight of the lifeboat that was out on the pitch-black waters. How she lived in that sea was a marvel. They came back, but without our comrade: he had gone for ever, and that night we sat in the fo’c’sle on our sea-chests puffing our pipes deep in thought, feeling very sad and wretched, and I heard the drowned sailor’s special chum crying in his bunk opposite me for a long time as overhead the look-out tramped to and fro and the fixed-up wind-jammer once more tore along on her voyage. The empty bunk of the lost sailor which was just below mine got on my nerves, and often when I was tired out and turned in I lay sleeplessly thinking of the poor fellow away in his ocean grave behind us, and would get up and go on deck and finish by sleeping on the forepeak hatchway.
When we arrived in San Francisco our ship had to go into dry dock to have a new mast fixed in and I got in with some American fellows ashore, and what with the beautiful climate and congenial society and being sick of living on “hard tack,” “soup and bully” and salt junk, I resolved to leave the ship and stay behind. One of those shore friends of mine was the manager of a dancing saloon in the north of the city, and he told me that if I could play dance music on the violin he could offer me a good salary. I got hold of a good book of dance music and, taking a small room near Kearney Street, I practised the whole day long for nearly a week, and soon got my hand in and eventually became a crack hand at the job. The orchestra for that dancing establishment consisted of two violins, a banjo and a harpist. The ladies who visited that secluded hall were painted up to the eyes, some of them were pretty old stagers painted and dressed up; whirling round the ballroom they passed off as girls in their teens.
I had a good opportunity of observing the visitors of that ’Frisco “high-class dancing saloon.” I found out after a little while that it was used for various different crimes, and one night just as we had finished the overture and the old Californian roués were taking their partners, a fashionably dressed lady burst into the room and shot her husband in the neck. I heard one of the bullets from her revolver whiz by my head. The painted lady who had been hanging on the wounded man’s arm fainted away and there was a terrible scene altogether, but the whole matter never reached the public, it was all hushed up as the victim was a gentleman who held a high position on the Bench. I think he was a judge. I did not even care to play the fiddle to that crowd, but I persevered and sawed away night after night. I received exceedingly good money for the job and had no need to mix with the crew that danced to the strains of music, as those wicked-looking members of the Californian “elite” revelled in the atmosphere of freedom and all the dubious games that caused the downfall of their old ancestors Adam and Eve.
I was then living in apartments in F—— Street; it was not a very fashionable residence, but my comrade, whose name was “Crane,” lived there, and persuaded me to live near him. He told me that he was an Englishman and talked a good deal about dear old London, thinking that it pleased me. There also lived a man in the same building who I was told was the captain of a large sailing vessel. He was a suave-speaking man, and spoke with a strong Yankee twang, wore side-whiskers, and every time I chanced to meet him on the stairway, he was most genial in his remarks and would praise my violin-playing, for I would play a good deal during the daytime, not having much else to do. One morning my friend Crane opened my room door and, coming in with a long face, sat opposite me and said, “I say, Middleton, the Captain’s in great sorrow, his wife’s dead, and if he can’t raise fifty dollars she will have to be buried in a pauper’s grave.” I was very much touched as he continued the tale, and told me several distressing details of the affection between that captain and the poor wife, and when at last he described the death scene the tears came into my eyes, and I at once volunteered to advance the necessary cash, so as to give the poor fellow’s wife a decent funeral.
Crane knew that I had nearly eighty dollars in the bank, and when I stood up and said I would go and get the money forthwith, he wiped his own eyes, so touched was he by my impulsive kindness. I went off and got the money, and coming back I said to Crane, “Where is he? Is he in his room?”
“Yes,” Crane answered, “but he’s so broken up, and moreover he’s so sensitive about borrowing money from anyone, that you had better leave it on the toilet in his room, when he goes out, and I will explain all to him.” I at once accepted his idea and understood, as I too would have been sensitive in those days at borrowing fifty dollars.