Part 17

That same night as I walked down the street on the way to the dancing saloon, I met Crane and the bereaved Captain. I felt a bit uncomfortable at first, and so did the Captain as he turned his face sideways, pulled his whiskers and exchanged a quick glance with Crane and then nearly tumbled over. I saw that he was “half seas over,” but I forgave him; I knew that sorrow had driven better men than the Captain to take an extra glass. Well, to cut a sad story short, I went over to the Captain’s house next day to attend the funeral. I had not been invited, but I wanted to do the thing properly. I had got the address out of Crane, and the time, and about ten minutes before the procession was to start for the cemetery I respectfully touched the knocker with a mournful tap, tap. I shall never forget the face of the awful virago who opened the door, and as soon as I mentioned the Captain’s name and told her the purpose of my visit she glared at me and then roared with laughter. I lost my temper at last and said, “I’ve paid fifty dollars for the funeral.” That finished it, and then I heard the truth. The Captain was a card-sharper and I had been done! Even the little ’Frisco kid of about ten years of age looked up into my face with a partly sorrowful and partly contemptuous expression that I was such an ass. I never knew which one really had my fifty dollars, Crane or the Captain. I suppose they shared it. I never saw the Captain again, but one night as I was going to leave my room to go off to work I saw Crane dodge on the staircase of the next floor. He had called to see if there were any letters for him. I said, “Hi, Crane, I want to speak to you.” He came into the room smiling. He had a white-livered face. “Where is my fifty dollars?” I said. And then I had my first and last fight. The look in his eyes broke the last thread of control in my temper, and I let out and gave him a terrible smash in the jaw. He hardly defended himself; he was such a coward, and so ended my friendship with Mr Crane and my trust in “confidence men.” I have met many well-dressed men since that time who agreed profoundly with all my ideas, and ended by telling me of their rich old uncle who was waiting round the corner for ten dollars to get back to his exchequer, but I’ve had my lesson, and if I met another man who wanted money to bury his wife I would not advance it till I saw the coffin, and even then I should respectfully lift the lid before I left the room.

I never saw such a wild place as ’Frisco was in those days. Seafaring men from all parts of the world congregated there much the same as in the Australian sea-board cities. I know not if they were trade union men, but they all looked very independent, chewed and spat much the same as the sailors of my previous experience, excepting they were virtuosos in the art and could send a stream of tobacco juice over their left shoulder without moving the face from its frontward stare. Most of them had billygoat whiskers, and cadaverous faces whereon was written “recklessness”; they mostly lived on beer which was handed to them in vast glasses which they called “deep seas,” “schooners” and “shea-oak.” Those who are on the rocks never bother about food, but live on free luncheons which you can help yourself to if you buy a drink; the food is sometimes “hot sausages, roast beef, cheese and biscuits.”

I found the ’Frisco restaurants Oriental palaces compared with the Australian dining-rooms. The Chinese were there by thousands, smoking their opium and sleeping in awful hovels, such as damp underground cellars, like rats in a hole, and often as you walked by Jackson Street you knew they were under the pavement because the hot, fevered stench came up through the paving stone cracks that let in air to their subterranean dens. As in Sydney they live by gambling and pray for luck in their “Joss-houses,” and you would always know that the “Fan-tan” was on by the yellow nose and alert small eyes of the old spy peeping at the door, keeping “tiggy” in case of a police raid.

At this time I got in with an elderly fellow named Guest. He was a real “knock-out” for yarning and told me many thrilling tales of adventure as we sat or walked out together. He had lived a good deal in Australia. He and I went out through the Golden Gate together, and visited Farallon Islands. He was hard up and I paid the expenses; he was a good chap and thankful too, and would have done the same for me I knew if I had run short. He seemed to know a lot about Australian gaol life and I think he had lodged in one of them against his wish, and so I have not told you his right name. He would tell me many of his experiences and I think that he had escaped from penal servitude at one time or other, for he always, when dwelling on his bush life, let out in some way or other that he nearly stumbled across a township during his wanderings, which was strange considering he should, from my own experience, have been very pleased to do so.

One night we sat together in my little room in Kearney Street. I was strumming on the fiddle and he sat by the window smoking and started one of his yarns. He had a mysterious face, and a quiet earnest voice, and whenever he was serious I would listen carefully to him, and that night he seemed more serious than usual.

“Put your fiddle down, Middleton,” he said, “and I’ll tell you about my hut experience.”

I was so impressed by that tale of his that I think I will tell it you here, as nearly as possible the way he told it to me, as I sat there by the window. Slowly he began: “I was fairly bushed once in North Queensland; it was the time of the great drought. I hadn’t even a swag and it was that sweltering hot that I lay stark naked in a swamp by a gully for half the day. I felt pretty sick too, for I had drunk nearly a quart of the frog-spawned water which was nearly black with ooze and dead reptiles, and I got the fever in my blood that bad that I kept seeing faces swim over me in the steam that rose from the two-inch-deep scum as I lay flat on my back. Phew! it makes me sweat now as I think of it.

“Well, that night as soon as the sun sank like a clot of blood below the skyline, I rose up, full of aches and pains and nearly dead, wiped myself down, put on my pants and shirt, which I had used for a towel, and started staggering off determined to make a last attempt to get to some township or shanty. I think I must have lost my head a bit then, for I got shouting and tearing at my throat as I stumbled along. The moon was up, and for miles over the flat country I could see the gum clumps standing perfectly still, for there was not a breath of wind. Presently I heard a dingo wailing and then silence again as a wind sprang up and over my head the gums’ leaves stirred a bit and the cool air washed my parched body over as though dead fingers were caressing me. Then I could hardly believe my eyes, for across the grey slopes far away I saw a small light. By God, didn’t that light buck me up as I scrambled along and crawling up a small slope on all-fours, for I was then too weak to walk up anything, I found myself standing before a small hut. Outside was a large rain-water tub. I gave the hut door a crash with my foot and then head first went for that tub. ‘Who’s there?’ someone said as I heard the bolt drawn. It was a woman’s voice. ‘It’s only me,’ I answered as she stood at the door gazing astonished as I wiped my mouth. I looked a terrible guy standing there bare-headed and steaming, for I had ducked my head in that water butt; my boots were open at the ends like an alligator’s jaws and I only had my pants on, so you can imagine I did not look the kind of visitor that a woman longed to see at a lonely bush hut at midnight. Anyway she soon saw that I was genuine enough, and in no time I was sitting inside feeling wonderfully refreshed as I drank a large pannikin of hot tea and washed down some food. She was a wistful-looking wench, and I wondered a bit where the boss was, as she sat there white-faced and the open door let the midnight wind in and the moonbeams and shadowed leaves crept over the walls and on to her face and knees from the trees outside. I told her my tale, and then she told hers. Her husband lay in the next room dead, and the young fellow who worked for him had gone off nearly fifty miles to get a coffin for the body. I felt that I was dreaming as I sat there and the night wind blew at intervals and sighed across the forest gums.

“‘When will he be back?’ I asked her.

“‘Not till to-morrow,’ she said, and as the hour was getting late and I started to yawn and nearly fell asleep as I sat on the wooden bench, she asked me if I would mind sleeping in the next room where that thing was! At first I hesitated a bit, but not liking to look a coward I pulled myself together and said, ‘Well, I don’t mind,’ for I saw that I should have to sleep outside if I didn’t, as there was only one room besides the small kitchen where we were, and just by where she sat twitching her fingers on her knees was her own bed made up. She gave me a small bit of candle and pointed to the long couch as I entered that hushed room and quietly closed the door behind me. It was a large room and as I looked around I caught sight of a long trestle up against the farther wall right opposite the small window across which hung wild vines. I began to feel pretty bad; my past experience had a bit unnerved me. Placing the candle on a little stool beside me, I settled myself on the couch, inwardly cursing my luck at being given only one inch of tallow candle. By faith, I could not keep my eyes off that thing. I heard my own breath as I lay there all of a sweat, and then the candle spluttered and went out, and as the wind blew outside, and the shadow of the boughs through the window moved to and fro on the walls just above the shrouded six-foot figure, my eyes stared and stared and it seemed as though the protruding feet moved as the moonlight crept in patches over the trestle. And then a terrible thing happened.

“I swear by all that’s holy I tell the truth—the top of the white shroud moved back and revealed a long grey-bearded face! My feet also slowly moved off that couch to make a bolt from the room, and likewise those dead feet moved slowly towards the floor to stay my flight! I was paralysed with terror. I tried to shout, but something gripped my throat. Up rose that dead man’s finger as with bright eyes gleaming he said, ‘Hush, I’m not dead!’ Outside, as he said that, I heard a whisper and the crackling of twigs and a shadow whipped across the wall as someone passed by the window. In a moment I recovered. ‘Not dead?’ thought I. ‘I’ll show you to play this trick on me,’ and I leapt to my feet, but the old bounder was too quick for me. Crash over my head went something, and before I could get out of the door he had vanished, shutting it with a bang behind him. I heard a scream. Taking a woodman’s axe from the wall I crashed away at that door to get to the woman who had befriended me. Down it came as I smashed away.

“Rushing into the room I looked round. I was too late. I stumbled over something huddled on the floor, and saw that the worst had happened. I turned round and looked through the hut door over the moonlit slopes; with the jaw-rag flapping behind him ran that monstrous man who had feigned death; in front flew a little man. I heard a scream as he uplifted his gun and shot him and then turning it on himself blew the top of his own head off. It all seemed to happen in an instant, and there was I left alone by that hut. By the door stood a coffin and that told me that the second victim was the man who had gone off to do the undertaking job. I at once started off from that cursed place, for I knew that were I found there the whole tragedy would be fastened on to me,” and saying this he knocked the ashes out of his pipe and wished me good-night and went off.”

XXVI

I play the Violin at Fashionable Concerts, etc.—Ship before the Mast for Sydney—Go Up Country—Sheep-shearing—The Shearers’ good Resolutions and the Fall

I NEVER knew what to make of Guest; he certainly believed all that he told me. He eventually came to my lodging and lived in the next room; he had an old duck, I think he said it was eighteen years old; he carried it about much the same as folks do a pet poodle. I never saw such a wise and affectionate thing as that duck was. By his bed in a large collar-box it would sit the whole night long and follow him and me about the room like a kitten. How he got it and why he was so fond of it was a mystery to me; he was the last man in the world one would have thought to have a pet duck and put up with the nuisance of it, but he had the duck right enough, and when we sat having our meals together it would push its beak under our arms and steal the dainty bits off our plates. That was nuisance enough, but the smell of it was outrageous and I very seldom had luncheon with Guest afterwards, but had most of my meals in a restaurant hard by.

I was still engaged at playing the fiddle at the dancing hall, and now and again I accepted engagements to go out to balls, etc., among the “élite” of San Francisco. It was at the palatial residence of a ’Frisco nabob out at Menbo Park that I played my first public solo. I was terribly nervous. The solo I played was Rode’s “Air in G,” and I gave as an encore the “Cavatina” by Raff. Guest was there that night; I had managed to get him a ticket and borrowed a decent suit for him. I was sorry after that I had invited him. He got drinking too much, and though I had warned him to behave himself he shouted at the top of his voice as soon as I had finished my solo, “Good old Middleton! Give us another.” I turned hot all over and the perspiration whisked off my brow as I bowed to the applause of the audience and the pretty girl at the piano gazed up into my face and quickly placed the music of the “Cavatina” on the pianoforte and I was glad to start off playing again. I made several mistakes but I don’t think anyone noticed them; my name on the programme was not Middleton but Signor Marrionette! and everyone, of course, had great faith in the playing of a gentleman with that name.

Through my musical ability and enterprise I saw a good deal of ’Frisco “high life,” and after a deal of experience I came to the conclusion that low life was only the crude essence of high life. One set wiped their noses with a silk pocket handkerchief and the other with the thumb and forefinger, but both acted under the same impulse. The real curse of those early engagements was that after I had played the ladies would circle round me, quizz me up and down, old and young plying me with questions, telling me how they would love to spend their lives listening to delicious strains of music; they thought I was a soft sentimental poetical youth, green to the ways of life, and little dreamed that I had seen them all, so to speak, dancing in the South Seas with nothing on!

I was very homesick about that time and as Guest had made up his mind to go to Alaska I made up my mind to get out of ’Frisco and home to England. I threw my job up and not having enough money to pay my fare home I set about trying to get a berth on a ship. I will not weary you with my disappointments, but I eventually after many hardships got a job as deck-hand on the _Alameda_ bound for Sydney. I had made up my mind to get to Sydney first and then get a berth on a ship that went by the Suez Canal route. After a rotten trip across tropic seas, working like a nigger, and sleeping in quarters that would have made the ’Frisco Chinamen sniff with disgust, I arrived at Woolloomoolloo Bay, was paid off and wandered about for several days.

I could not discover any of my old acquaintances that I would like to have seen. The _Lubeck_ was in dock, but though I tried all I could to see if William my friend had returned, I could get no information. There were hundreds of English fellows trying to work their passages back to England and every week the deep-sea boats came through Sydney Heads with hundreds of passengers on deck gazing with admiring eyes at the beautiful scrub-covered hills of Sydney Harbour, their hearts beating happily as the relatives and friends waved their hands on the wharf. I often stood and watched the sisters, brothers, and lovers meet, and as the ships left the wharf for England once more I stood and watched the farewell hands waving as the great P. & O. or Orient liners sailed away, taking the hearts of the pinched white-faced, ragged brigade with her.

Failing to get a berth or a job at violin-playing, I availed myself of an opportunity offered me to go up country sheep-shearing. The new friends I had fallen in with told me that I could earn a splendid wage at the job, and though I knew nothing about the work, I believed them and went off.

We went a hundred miles by rail and tramped the rest, and when I eventually reached the sheep-station I had no boots to my feet, and my trouser legs were torn away through tramping through stiff scrub. I never had such a rough job in my life as on that sheep-shearing station. Hundreds of men arrived day after day from different parts of New South Wales, and clamoured for work. They were men of all degrees, swagsmen of long experience, and men of no experience, new chums and old chums. I got in just in time to get a job as a “rouse-about,” and then became a “penner-up.”

Many of us slept in camp tents and I made a good bit of money by fiddle-playing. I extemporised a small orchestra, which consisted of a concertina, two banjos and a bone clapper, and when the work was done we would sit under the blue gums and, as the sun twinkled on the skyline and disappeared, start the concert, and never did I have such an appreciative audience as they stood, those rough unshaved men leaning against the trees or sitting on stumps smoking and listening to the melodies that took their hearts back to the homeland, and as we played away and the marsh frogs croaked they would join in the chorus of some old song and put their whole soul in it. “Play that again, matey,” they would say as some strain touched them and awoke memories of long ago. I’ve often seen the tears in the eyes of those men, and I liked them; some of them were old enough to be my father. They were mostly men of a sentimental turn of mind and good men, as far as their intentions went, but they all found it so hard to make their actions harmonise with their intentions. They work hard when they do work, and after the shearing season go off with a big cheque and a firm resolve to start a little business or go back across the seas to see the old faces again.

With their billy-can swinging in their hand and their swag on their back they start across the bush, outbound to the new life of quiet and sweetness, and then the dreadful fall comes. Hot and tired they all stumble across the grog shanty in the bush town, outside of its wooden door they drop their swags to the ground, gaze in each other’s eyes with that querying look that says in silent language, “Well, I don’t think just one drink would hurt us,” and then each one carefully looks at the other, as though to say, “Mind, Bill, only one this time,” for they have all been through the same old fiasco before, made the same good resolutions and alas, then do as they will always do, for that one drink resolves into two. Each one looks once more at the other and each one relents and grants his comrade one more drink. “Yes, Bill, but mind you that’s the last,” and then one poking his head out of the grog shanty sees the sun setting and remarks to the others, “It’s getting late, chums; we’d better camp here for the night.” They all agree, and again all agree that another drink could not possibly hurt any of them. By that time they are getting half-seas over with the extra drinks in between which they each swallowed while the other wasn’t looking! Then the loud songs commence, and the yarns of past brave deeds, and the grog seller rubs his hands, delighted to see them getting affectionate one with the other as each finds his appreciative listener. By this time their voices can be heard at the township homesteads two miles over the hills, and the folk come from far and near to hear the songs, and to see the drunken spree of the homebound shearers. Already the dance has commenced, and the banjo is going full speed, “pink-a-tee-pink,” and then a space is cleared for the grand fight over the awful insult to the man from Stony Creek who has been doubted when he said he knew where gold could be found by the ton, and he found it but it was so heavy that he couldn’t carry it into town.

By midnight all the money is nearly spent, and on the slopes by the grog shanty most of them are sprawling fast asleep, the more excitable ones lifting their hatless heads up now and again, gurgling out some spasmodic strain of the last drunken song which they were singing just before they fell down.

At daybreak they are standing outside of the grog seller’s door kicking it with their boots, their mouths fevered and parched by the awful poison which they drank the night before, and so the great resolution ends once more. With their billy-cans and swags they depart across the bush on their several ways sad men on the “Wallaby track” homeless and penniless. And so they go on till they die, and I can well tell you all this because I was with those men, heard the good resolutions, saw the tears rise in their fearless eyes as they spoke with emotion of the happy-to-be future, and then witnessed their fall. With four of them I tramped away across the bush solitudes to look for work in a world of stern reality, for wherever you go in this world you will find that you cannot live on dreams.

XXVII

Lost in the Bush—The Drought—We find dead Comrades together—Horse and Rider

IT was my luck to be on the lonely track humping the swag when a great drought swept its burning wave across the whole of Australia. On the borders of Queensland I had been with two more English emigrants working on a selector’s ranch at “Sunrise Creek.” Dorrell was the boss’s name and he had a splendid stock of sheep and many acres of land under cultivation. He proved a fine man to us lads and treated us as though we were his own sons. I taught his daughter to play the violin and he was so proud when she was first able to play “Home, Sweet Home” that he smacked me on the back and gave me a week’s holiday. But life in a selector’s homestead is extremely monotonous, and after staying there six months I bade them all farewell, and with a kindred spirit started off to tramp to Maranoa with the idea of getting across to Queensland and into more lively surroundings.