Chapter 10

He was my guest for four days. He said that he went out with the military on the morning of December 3rd, and was the first surgeon who entered the Eureka Stockade after the fight was over. He found twelve men dead in it, and twelve more mortally wounded. This was about all the information he vouchsafed to give me. I was anxious for particulars. I wanted to know what arms he carried to the fray, whether he touched up his sword on the grind-stone before sallying forth, how many men or women he had called upon to stand in the name of her gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, how many skulls he had cloven, how many diggers he had "slewed," and how many peaceful prisoners he had brought back to the Government camp. On all these points he was silent, and during his stay with me he spoke as little as possible, neither reading, writing, nor walking about. But there was something to be learned from the papers. He had been a witness at the inquest on Scobie, killed by Bentley and two others, and principally on his evidence Bentley was discharged, but was afterwards re-arrested and condemned to three years' imprisonment. Dr. Carr was regarded as a "colluding associate" with Bentley and Dewes, the magistrate, and the official condemnation of Dewes confirmed the popular denunciation of them. At a dinner given to Mr. Tarleton, the American Consul, Dr. Otway, the Chairman said:

"While I and my fellow-colonists are thoroughly loyal to our Sovereign Lady, the Queen, we do not, and will not, respect her men servants, her maid servants, her oxen, or her asses."

A Commission was coming to Ballarat to report on wrong doings there, and they were looking for witnesses. On Friday, December 8th, the camp surgeon and Dr. Carr had a narrow escape from being shot. While the former gentleman was entering the hospital he was fired at by one of the sentries. The ball passed close to the shoulder of Dr. Carr, who was reading inside, went through the lid of the open medicine chest, and some splinters struck him on the side. There were in the hospital at that time seven diggers seriously wounded and six soldiers, including the drummer boy. Troubles were coming in crowds, and the bullet, the splinters, and the Commission put the little doctor to flight. He left the seven diggers, the five soldiers, and the drummer boy in the hospital, and made straight for Colac. Fear dogged his footsteps wherever he went, and the mere sight of him had sent the impudent thief Lilias to hide behind the tussocks.

I always hate a man who won't talk to me and tell me things, and the doctor was so silent and unsociable, that, by way of revenge, I left him to the care and curses of old "Specs."

After four days he departed, and he appeared again at Ballarat on January 15th, giving evidence at an inquest on one Hardy, killed by a gunshot wound. In the meantime a total change had taken place among the occupants of the Government camp. Commissioner Rede had retired, Dr. Williams, the coroner, and the district surgeons had received notice to quit in twenty-four hours, and they left behind them twenty-four patients in and around the camp hospital.

Dr. Carr left the colony, and the next report about him was from Manchester, where he made a wild and incoherent speech to the crowd at the Exchange. His last public appearance was in a police-court on a charge of lunacy. He was taken away by his friends, and what became of him afterwards is not recorded.

Doctors, when there is a dearth of patients, sometimes take to war, and thus succeed in creating a "practice." Occasionally they meet with disaster, of which we can easily call to mind instances, both ancient and modern.

III.

Diggers do not often turn their eyes heavenwards; their treasure does not lie in that direction. But one night I saw Bez star-gazing.

"Do you know the names of any of the stars in this part of the roof?" I asked.

"I can't make out many of the Manchester stars," he replied. "I knew a few when I was a boy, but there was a good deal of fog and smoke, and latterly I have not looked up that way much; but I can spot a few of them yet, I think."

Bez was a rather prosy poet, and his eye was not in a fine frenzy rolling.

"Let me see," he said; "that's the north; Charles' Wain and the North Pole ought to be there, but they have gone down somewhere. There are the Seven Stars--I never could make 'em seven; if there ever were that number one of 'em has dropped out. And there's Orion; he has somehow slipped up to the north, and is standing on his head, heels uppermost. There are the two stars in his heels, two on his shoulders, three in his belt, and three in his sword. There is the Southern Cross; we could never see that in our part of England, nor those two silvery clouds, nor the two black holes. They look curious, don't they? I suppose the two clouds are the Gates of Heaven, and the two black spots the Gates of Hell, the doors of eternity. Which way shall we go? That's the question."

The old adage is still quite true--'coelum non animum mutant qui trans mare currunt'. When a young gentleman in England takes to idleness and grog, and disgraces his family, he is provided with a passage to Australia, in order that he may become a reformed prodigal; but the change of climate does not effect a reform; it requires something else.

Dan in Glasgow and Bez in Manchester had both been given to drink too much. They came to Victoria to acquire the virtue of temperance, and they were sober enough when they had no money.

Dan told me that when he awoke after his first week at sea, he sat every day on the topgallant forecastle thinking over his past wickedness, watching the foam go by, and continually tempted to plunge into it.

After the rum, the dray, and the four horses were seized by the police. Dan and Bez grew sober, and went to Reid's Creek, passing me at work on Spring Creek. They came back as separate items. Dan called at my tent, and I gave him a meal of damper, tea, and jam. He ate the whole of the jam, which cost me 2s. 6d. per pound. He then humped his swag and started for Melbourne. On his way through the township, since named Beechworth, he took a drink of liquor which disabled him, and he lay down by the roadside using an ant-hill for a pillow. He awoke at daylight covered with ants, which were stinging and eating him alive.

Some days later Bez came along, passed my tent for a mile, and then came back. He said he was ashamed of himself. I gave him also a feed of damper, tea, and jam limited. Dan had made me cautious in the matter of lavish hospitality. The Earl of Lonsdale lately spent fifty thousand pounds in entertaining the Emperor of Germany, but it was money thrown away. The next time the Kaiser comes to Westmoreland he will have to pay for his board and buy his preserves. Bez made a start for Melbourne, met an old convict, and with him took a job at foot-rotting sheep on a station owned by a widow lady. Here he passed as an engraver in reduced circumstances. He told lies so well, that the convict was filled with admiration, and said, "I'm sure, mate, you're a flash covey wot's done his time in the island."

The two chums foot-rotted until they had earned thirty shillings each, then they went away and got drunk at a roadside shanty; at least, Bez did, and when the convict picked his pockets, he kindly put back three shillings and sixpence, saying, "That will give him another start on the wallaby track."

Bez at last arrived at Flagstaff Hill, which was then bare, with a sand-hole on one side of it. He had had nothing to eat for twenty-four hours, and had only one shilling and sixpence in his pocket, which he was loath to spend for fear of arriving in Melbourne a complete beggar. He lay down famishing and weary on the top of the hill near Flagstaff, and surveyed the city, the bay, and the shipping. He had hoped by this time to have been ready to take a passage in one of those ships to Liverpool, and to return home a lucky digger. But he had only eighteen pence, so he said, "I am afraid, Bez, you will never see Manchester again."

There was at that time a small frame building at the west end of Flinders Street, with a hill behind it, on which goats were browsing; the railway viaduct runs now over the exact spot. Many parties of hopeful diggers from England and California had slept there on the floor the night before they started for Ballarat, Mount Alexander, or Bendigo. We called it a house of refuge, and Bez now looked for refuge in it. There he met Dan and Moran, who had both found employment in the city, and they fed the hungry Bez. Dan was labouring at his trade in the building business, and he set Bez to work roofing houses with corrugated iron. They soon earned more money than they had ever earned by digging for gold, but on Saturday nights and Sundays they took their pleasure in the old style, and so they went to the dogs. I don't know how Dan's life ended (his real name was Donald Fraser), but Bez died suddenly in the bar of a public-house, and he was honoured with an inquest and a short paragraph in the papers.

Moran had saved a hundred pounds by digging in Picaninny Gully, and he was soon afterwards admitted to serve Her Majesty again in the police department. On the Sunday after Price was murdered by the convicts at Williamstown I met Moran after Mass in the middle of Lonsdale Street. I reproached him for his baseness in deserting to the enemy--Her Majesty, no less--and in self-defence he nearly argued my head off. At last I threatened to denounce him as a "Joey" --he was in plain clothes--and have him killed by the crowd in the street. Nothing but death could silence Moran. The rest of his history is engraved on a monument in the Melbourne Cemetery; he, his wife, and all his children died many years ago.--R.I.P. He was really a good man, with only one defect--most of us have many--he was always trying to divide a hair 'twixt West and South-West side.

I met Santley after thirty years, sitting on a bench in front of the "Travellers' Rest" at Alberton, in Gippsland. He had a wrinkled old face, and did not recognise my beautiful countenance until he heard my name. He had half-a-dozen little boys and girls around him--his grandchildren, I believe--and was as happy as a king teaching them to sing hymns. I don't think Santley had grown rich, but he always carried a fortune about with him wherever he went, viz., a kind heart and a cheerful disposition. Nobody could ever think of quarrelling with Santlay any more than with George Coppin, or with that benevolent bandmaster, Herr Plock. He told me that he was now related to the highest family in the world, his daughter having married the Chinese giant, whose brothers and sisters were all of the race of Anak.

My mate, Philip, was so successful with his little school in the tent that he was promoted to another at the Rocky Waterholes, and then he went to the township at Lake Nyalong. Philip had never travelled as far as Lake Nyalong, but Picaninny Jack told him that he had once been there, and that it was a beautiful country. He tried to find it at another time, but got bushed on the wrong side of the lake; now he believed there was a regular track that way if Philip could only find it. The settlers and other inhabitants ought to be well off; if not, it was their own fault, for they had the best land in the whole of Australia.

Philip felt sure that he would find at least one friend at Nyalong-- viz., Mr. Barton, whom he had harboured in his tent at Bendigo, and had sheltered from the pursuit of the three bloodthirsty convicts. Some people might be too proud to look forward to the friendship of a flagellator, but in those days we could not pick and choose our chums; Barton might not be clubable, but he might be useful, and the social ladder requires a first step.

Thanks to such men as Dan and Bez, in Melbourne, and to other enterprising builders in various places, habitable dwellings of wood, brick, and bluestone began to be used, instead of the handy but uncomfortable tent, and, at the Rocky Waterholes, Philip had for some time been lodging in a weatherboard house with the respectable Mrs. Martin. Before going to look for Nyalong he introduced his successor to her, and also to the scholars. Her name was Miss Edgeworth.

The first virtue of a good master is gravity, and Philip had begun at the beginning. He was now graver even than usual while he briefly addressed his youthful auditors.

"My dear children," he said, "I am going away, and have to leave you in the care of this young lady, Miss Edgeworth. I am sure you will find her to be a better teacher than myself, because she has been trained in the schools of the great city of Dublin, and I, unfortunately, had no training at all; she is highly educated, and will be, I doubt not, a perfect blessing to the rising generation of the Rocky Waterholes. I hope you will be diligent, obedient, and respectful to her. Good-bye, and God bless you all."

These words were spoken in the tone of a judge passing sentence of death on a criminal, and Miss Edgeworth was in doubt whether it would be becoming under the circumstances to laugh or to cry, so she made no speech in reply. She said afterwards to Mrs. Martin, "Mr. Philip must have been a most severe master; I can see sternness on his brow." Moreover, she was secretly aware that she did not deserve his compliments, and that her learning was limited, especially in arithmetic; she had often to blame the figures for not adding up correctly. For this reason she had a horror of examinations, and every time the inspector came round she was in a state of mortal fear. His name was Bonwick. He was a little man, but he was so learned that the teachers looked forward to his visits with awe. A happy idea came into Miss Edgeworth's mind. She was, it is true, not very learned, nor was she perfect in the practice of the twelve virtues, but she had some instinctive knowledge of the weakness of the male man. Mr. Bonwick was an author, a learned author who had written books--among others a school treatise on geography. Miss Edgeworth bought two copies of this work, and took care to place them on her table in the school every morning with the name of the author in full view. On his next visit Mr. Bonwick's searching eyes soon detected the presence of his little treatise, and he took it up with a pleased smile. This was Miss Edgeworth's opportunity; she said, in her opinion, the work was a must excellent one, and extremely well adapted for the use of schools.

The inspector was more than satisfied; a young lady of so much judgment and discrimination was a peerless teacher, and Miss Edgeworth's work was henceforward beyond all question.

There were no coaches running to Nyalong, and, as Philip's poverty did not permit him to purchase a horse, and he had scruples about stealing one, he packed up his swag and set out on foot. It may be mentioned as bearing on nothing in particular that, after Philip had taken leave of Miss Edgeworth, she stood at a window, flattened her little nose against one of the panes, and watched him trudging away as long as he was in sight. Then she said to Mrs. Martin:

"Ain't it a pity that so respectable a young man should be tramping through the bush like a pedlar with a pack?"

"No, indeed, miss, not a bit of it," replied Mrs. Martin; "nearly every man in the country has had to travel with his swag one time or another. We are all used to it; and it ain't no use of your looking after him that way, for most likely you'll never see him again." But she did.

About two miles from the Waterholes Philip overtook another swagman, a man of middle age, who was going to Nyalong to look for work. He had tried the diggings, and left them for want of luck, and Philip, having himself been an unlucky digger, had a fellow feeling for the stranger. He was an old soldier named Summers.

"I am three and fifty years old," he said, "and I 'listed when I was twenty. I was in all the wars in India for nineteen years, and never was hit but once, and that was on the top of my head. Look here," he took off his hat and pointed to a ridge made by the track of a bullet, "if I had been an inch taller I shouldn't be here now. And maybe it would have been all the better. I have been too long at the fighting to learn another trade now. When I 'listed I was told my pay would be a shilling a day and everything found. A shilling a day is seven shillings a week, and I thought I should live like a fighting cock, plenty to eat and a shilling a day for drink or sport. But I found out the difference when it was too late. They kept a strict account against every man; it was full of what they called deductions, and we had to pay for so many things out of that shilling that sometimes for months together I hadn't the price of a pint o' threepenny with a trop o' porter through it."

"What was the biggest battle you ever were in?" enquired Philip.

"Well, I had some close shaves, but the worst was when we took a stockade from the Burmans. My regiment was the 47th, and one company of ours, sixty-five, rank and file, and two companies from other regiments were ordered to attack it. Our officers were all shot down before we reached the stockade, but we got in, and went at the Burmans with the bayonet. But such a crowd came at us from the rear of the stockade that we had to go out again, and we ran down the hill. Our ranks were broken, and we had no time to rally before a lot of horsemen were among us. My bayonet was broken, and I had nothing but my empty musket to fight with. I warded off the sabre cuts with it right and left, so, dodging among the horses, and I was not once wounded. It was all over in a hot minute or two, but, when the supports came up, and we were afterwards mustered, only five men of our company answered the roll-call. Of course I was one of them, and the barrel of my musket was notched like a saw by all the strokes I had parried with it." The last time Philip saw Summers he was hammering bluestone by the roadside. The pomp and circumstance of glorious war had left him in hisold age little better than a beggar.

Philip found Nyalong without much trouble, and renewed the acquaintance begun at Bendigo with Mr. Barton and the other diggers. To all appearance his promotion was not worth much; he might as well have stayed at the Waterholes. Mr. McCarthy acted as school director --an honorary office--and he showed Philip the school. He said:

"It is not of much account, I must acknowledge; we were short of funds, and had to put it up cheap. Most of the wall, you see, is only half a brick thick, and, during the sudden gusts that come across the lake, the north side bulges inward a good deal; so, when you hear the wind coming you had better send the children outside until the gale is over. That is what Mr. Foy, the last teacher did. And, I must tell you also this school has gone to the dogs; there are some very bad boys here--the Boyles and the Blakes. When they saw Mr. Foy was going to use his cane on them they would dart out of the school, the master after them. Then there was a regular steeplechase across the paddocks, and every boy and girl came outside to watch it, screaming and yelling. It was great fun, but it was not school-teaching. I am afraid you will never manage the Boyles and the Blakes. Mr. McLaggan, the minister, once found six of them sitting at the foot of a gum tree, drinking a bottle of rum. He spoke to them, told them that they were young reprobates, and were going straight to hell. Hugh Boyle held out the bottle, and said, 'Here, Mr. McLaggan, wouldn't you like a nip yourself?' The minister was on horseback, and always carried a whip with a heavy lash, and it was a beautiful sight the way he laid the lash on those Boyles and Blakes. I really think you had better turn them out of the school, Mr. Philip, or else they will turn you out."

Mr. Philip's lips closed with a snap. He said, "It is my duty to educate them; turning them out of school is not education. We will see what can be done."

As everyone knows, the twelve virtues of a good master are Gravity, Silence, Humility, Prudence, Wisdom, Patience, Discretion, Meekness, Zeal, Vigilance, Piety, and Generosity. I don't suppose any teacher was ever quite perfect in the practice of them, but a sincere endeavour is often useful. On reflection, Philip thought it best to add two other virtues to the catalogue--viz., Firmness, and a Strap of Sole-Leather.

There was a full attendance of scholars the first morning, and when all the names had been entered on the roll, Philip observed that the Boyles and the Blakes were all there; they were expecting some new kind of fun with the new master. In order that the fun might be inside the school and not all over the paddocks, Philip placed his chair near the door, and locked it. Then education began; the scholars were all repeating their lessons, talking to one another aloud and quarrelling.

"Please, sir, Josh Blake's a-pinching me." "Please, sir, Hugh Boyle is a-scroodgin." "Please, sir, Nancy Toomey is making faces at me."

It was a pandemonium of little devils, to be changed, if possible, into little angels. The master rose from the chair, put up one hand, and said: "Silence!"

Every eye was on him, every tongue was silent, and every ear was listening, "Joseph Blake and Hugh Boyle, come this way." They did so.

"No one here is to shout or talk, or read in a loud voice. If any of you want to speak to me you must hold up your hand, so. When I nod you can come to me. If you don't do everything I tell you, you will be slapped on the hand, or somewhere else, with this strap."

He held it up to view. It was eighteen inches long, three inches broad, heavy, and pliant. The sight of it made Tommy Traddles and many other little boys and girls good all at once; but Joseph and Hugh went back to their seats grinning at one another. Mr. Foy had often talked that way, but it always came to nothing.

Hugh was the hero of the school, or rather the leading villain. In about two minutes he called out, "Please, sir, Josh Blake is a-shoving me with his elbow."

"Hugh Boyle, come this way." He came.

"Now, Hugh, I told you that there must be no speaking or reading aloud. Of course you forgot what I said; you should have put up your hand."

In the course of the day Hugh received two slaps, then three, then four. He began to fear the strap as well as to feel it. That was the beginning of wisdom.

Nancy Toomey was naughty, and was sent into a corner. She was sulky and rebellious when told to return to her seat. She said, in the hearing of Tommy Traddles, "The master is a carroty-headed crawler."

It is as well to remark that Philip's hair was red; a man with red hair is apt to be of a hasty temper, and, as a matter of fact, I had seen Philip's fist fly out very rapidly on several occasions before he began to practise the twelve virtues.

Tommy put up his hand, and, at a nod, went up to the master.

"Well, Tommy, what is the matter?"

"Please, sir, Nancy Toomey has been calling you a carroty-headed crawler."

Tommy's eyebrows were raised, his eyes and mouth wide open. Philip looked over his head at Nancy, whose face was on fire. He slowly repeated:

"Nancy Toomey has been calling me a carroty-headed crawler, has she?"

"Yes, sir. That's what she called you. I heard her."

"Well, Tommy, go to your seat like a good boy. Nancy won't call names any more."

In a little more than a week perfect discipline and good order prevailed in the school.

A BUSH HERMIT.