Part 19

“What of your paddock, Jim?” asked Hill, the old hand of Warribah. The young boundary rider spat drily.

“The jumbucks is suckin’ mud. The water stinks of yolk. You can smell it a mile off. Ter-morrer I’ll have to fetch ’em in.”

The black and red ants ran riot in the hut and outside of it. The insect world flourished and abounded. But for all their bronze there was a pallid look about the men. Nature was no friend of theirs; they looked out on fire and blinding light.

“I never knowed it worse.”

But old Blear Eyes had.

“So _he_ blew his brains out.”

“Oh, dry up,” said Hill, but the cook murmured of ancient disasters on the Darling and the Macquarie.

“Did you die of thirst, you old croaker, and jump up to choke us?”

And still Wilson wandered to and fro in the sunlight, though the sky was inexorable.

“He’ll be shakin’ his fist at it yet,” said the cook, “and when a man does that he never comes to no good. It’s all up with them as shakes a fist at ’eaven. I’ve seen it myself. Now it was in ’79 that Jones of Quandong Flats went mad. He shook ’is fist at the sky. I seen him, and the next morning ’e was ravin’ ’orrid, as though the ’orrors of drink was on ’im. And well I knowed ’em then.”

The boss came towards them through the hot sand, and he leant in the shade against the pole on which the men’s saddles hung. The men looked downcast and half-ashamed. Sydney Jim lost all his flashness and moved uneasily. And the old cook shambled into his kitchen and fell to work upon his bread.

“There’s little water in the Ten-Mile Tank, Jim?”

“They was suckin’ mud this morning, sir,” said Jim.

Wilson tugged at his grizzled beard and pulled his sunburnt hat over his eyes.

“We should have put down wells,” said Hill.

Wilson broke into sudden blasphemy, and checked it with a kind of gasp, as though he felt that madness lay just beyond the limits of his self-control.

“So we should,” he said; “so we should.”

And he walked away.

“You took that cursin’ very quiet,” said Jim. And there was something in Hill’s eye that made him flinch.

“Oh, well,” he said apologetically, and Hill glared at him. The heat was in more than one.

“My son,” said Hill, “I’ve half a mind——”

And then he rose and followed Wilson. He caught him up and talked hard till Wilson shook his head and went inside and slammed the door.

“He should make it up with Grear, and if Grear let him down on to the river he might save some.”

For Warribah was in the back-blocks, and Grear held all the river frontage for twenty miles.

“But they hate each other, and Wilson ain’t the man to crawl,” said Hill. “He’s a good sort. I’ll go myself.”

He went back to the hut and, taking his saddle and bridle, walked to the horse paddock, which seemed as barren as a stockyard. He caught his horse, that was standing at the gate and looking wistfully towards the stable as if he knew that good feed was there.

“Come,” said Hill, and he rode south through the pine scrub towards Grear’s. He came to the station as the sun went down, and when he asked for the boss Grear came out.

“Oh you!” he said roughly. “And what d’ye want?”

He was a long, thin man with a cold eye and thin lips, and as he looked at him Hill felt that it was a foolish errand he had come on. The man was worse than he had imagined. It seemed that Wilson was right. To ask Grear for anything was to invite insult. And though Hill had come twenty miles to ask he turned away.

“I haven’t seen you for nigh on a year,” said he, “and now I’ve seen you, why, I shan’t weep if I never see you again.”

He got upon his horse solemnly and turned away, leaving Grear with an open mouth.

“I was a fool to come,” said Hill, as he ploughed his way among the sandhills. “He used to reckon that all the back-blocks was his, and Wilson took ’em up. Grear don’t forgive.”

The night had come upon the land, but there was no remission of the hot north wind. The heated earth radiated heat still, while in the clear obscure of the heavens the stars glittered like sharp points of steel. They stabbed Hill’s very heart as he rode and looked into the rainless depths of heaven. For the sky was no overarching dome at that season. It was an awful emptiness without form; it was space itself, unmitigated and terrible, and heaven’s lamps were near and far and farther still, while black, starless spaces showed like unfathomable patches in a silent sea.

“Good God!” said Hill, and fear got hold of him suddenly. He roused his horse to a canter for the sake of the noise of the motion. The sky appalled him, and a peculiar sense of reversion took him. He was hung over depths, and seemed to cling to the suspended earth.

“I’m crazy myself,” said Hill, with a quiver in his voice. And his very voice broke the silence like a pistol shot. It made him start until he heard a sheep’s faint baa in the distance. And then a mopoke called its mate in the trees by an old dry creek. Hill pulled up.

“But it ain’t a creek after all,” he said to himself. “It’s a Billabong, but it’s twenty years since water came out of the Lachlan so far as Warribah, and Grear put a dam there fifteen years ago. Ah! if the river only rose up, and came down roarin’. But it won’t; it won’t.”

As he dreamed of the river, now like a low water-hole with never a current in it, Wilson, at home, lay in an uneasy sleep. He, too, dreamed, and dreamed of rain, and he woke himself shouting, “Rain!” and in his confusion called “Mary” to his wife five hundred miles away.

“Oh God! I dreamt it again,” he said. “I dreamed of rain in our old place east, and the river came down with thunder and floods, and the land grew green in an hour—green, green!”

He fell asleep again, and when he woke at dawn he was oddly cheerful. Perhaps the rest from anxiety in that happy dream had taken part of the strain from his weary mind.

“I do feel as if it had rained somewhere,” he said; “and if the weather only breaks anywhere we may have it here.”

“Don’t you think it cooler?” he said to Hill next morning. But the sky was brass and the sun white hot.

That evening a man riding through to Conoble from Condobolin told him that he had heard it had rained east of Forbes. And another man who camped at the Ten-Mile Clump said he knew there had been a great thunderstorm to the east.

“I dreamed it, so I did!” cried Wilson; “and the Lachlan’s coming down.”

His jaw fell even as he spoke. What use was the Lachlan to him out in the beyond, when Grear’s lay between? He had no river frontage. Grear had it all.

In such a country, in spite of its apparent desolation, news travels fast. They heard that the Lachlan, so quiet at Condobolin, was running hard at Forbes. It was out in the flats, where the felled trees marked the old mining camp. There had been a storm, a great cloudburst, in its head waters, and the river grew alive. Wilson saddled up and rode thirty miles to see it, and came to the gum-lined ditch just in time to hear the stream awake. It stirred before his eyes, it became turbid, grew grey, bubbled, moved and ran, with sticks and leaves and branches on its full tide.

And still the sky overhead was fire, and the sun a flame. Wilson cursed it, and prayed to the beautiful grey water. Why should not rain come there? And soon. But as he rode back he came to sheep of his that stood against a fence, and pressed on it, as though water was beyond it. Pity stirred him; he drove them through a gate, and let them suck his last low tank.

That night Wilson came to the men’s hut under its pines in the sand dune, and called to Hill.

“Hill, I want to speak to you,” he said, and presently his man came out into the night. The stars were brilliant. Jupiter was like a little moon, and cast faint shadows.

“There’ll be no rain here,” said Wilson. “Were you sleeping? I can’t sleep! Do you hear?”

He waved his hand around the barren horizon.

“I hear,” said Hill.

He heard the sheep.

“You say that old Billabong once came down to Warribah?” asked Wilson.

Hill nodded.

“So they say. But Grear’s dam would stop it.”

“He’s no right to have it there,” said Wilson, savagely. “Look, Hill, I can’t sleep. I’ll ride out to the dam.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Hill.

“You’re a good sort, Jack,” cried the boss. And they rode together through the wonderful night, that was so terrible to them, with its hot, dry air out of the oven of the north.

When they came at last to the long, low dam they tied their horses to saplings, and sat down. Wilson spoke after a quarter of an hour’s silence.

“It would be hard to lose it after these years,” he said. “And here’s Grear’s dam with a fence atop of it. He’s a hard one, Jack!”

“Ay,” said Hill, “he’s hard.”

And Wilson, who had not really slept for days, lay down upon the earth and dozed, while the star shadows of the gaunt thin boxes moved a foot. In the hollow of the Billabong some dry reeds, like a cane-brake, rustled faintly in the air. The leaves of the trees crackled, and underneath these sharper sounds was the hum of the insect world. Far away, on every side, the sheep called uneasily for water. What had seemed silence grew into a very chorus, organic with the earth. The horses champed their bits and pawed the dusty soil; and once one whinnied, and was answered by a far-off call from Grear’s.

“I wonder what the river’s like,” thought Hill. He pulled out his pipe and lighted it. The flare of the match extinguished the starlight for a moment, and then the darkness melted once more, and he saw each separate tree, each leaf, each reed.

“I wonder.”

For if the river was in high flood, and over the banks, the Billabong must be full at Grear’s. And suddenly he heard a sound that he knew well. He laid his hand upon Wilson’s shoulder.

“D’ye hear it, sir? What is it?”

But both knew. Grear’s sheep were moving from east and west towards water.

“The blackfellows were right,” said Wilson. “The Billabong is coming down.”

The horses trampled uneasily, and seemed aware of a change. Perhaps they too smelt the grey flood as it crawled. And all the air seemed full of whispers, loud and louder yet. For even the thinned bush is alive, and holds carnival at midnight and beyond it. A snake crawled by them on the dam, and suddenly being aware of nigh enemies, it slipped away hastily, and hid in the hollow trunk of a fallen dwarf box. The sheep on Warribah grew more uneasy; he heard a distant baa, and then a nearer cry, and a plaintive chorus came down the dry, hot wind.

“I can’t listen to ’em,” said Wilson. “It makes me mad.”

He rested his head upon his knees, and kept his hands to his ears. But suddenly he rose up.

“If the water comes we’ll cut the dam, Hill.”

“I would,” said Hill.

“Go back and fetch Jim, and bring shovels,” said Wilson. “I’ll cut it. If the water comes, I’ve a right to it.”

And Hill rode homeward fast. And as he rode the boss sat still upon the dam, and looked upon the faintly outlined hollow of the ancient waterway. And again he dozed, and did not see that round the far bend of the hollow came a sneaking, quiet band of grey water, like a crawling snake. But as he slept the night chorus increased, and away to the south the full sheep baa’ed with content. The Warribah sheep heard and knew, and moved south through the night: and suddenly ten thousand broke into a gallop, and stayed in a heap against the fence that topped the dam. Their voices agonised; they woke Wilson suddenly, and he reached out his hand and touched water.

And he heard horses galloping. This was Hill returning.

“Thank God!” said Wilson, and he prayed to Heaven with sudden thankfulness.

But then he started, for the horses came from the south. They came from Grear’s, and he knew what that meant.

“I’ll do it if I have to kill him,” said Wilson. For behind him the painful chorus of the sheep was deafening. He saw them packed against the bulging wires. His heart bled for them, his children.

And then three horses burst through the thin bush.

“Oh, we’re in time,” said Grear. “I thought as much, but we’re in time. Who’s that?”

“Wilson of Warribah,” said Wilson. “Grear, you will let the water through.”

And Grear laughed.

“To you that sneaked in and took up my back-lots? Oh, it’s likely, likely!”

“But the sheep are dying, Grear.”

“Mine ain’t,” said Grear. “Get over the fence and off my land. I’ll not have you here.”

And Wilson burst into a passionate appeal that was almost a scream.

“Look here, man, if you are a man. I’ll give you ten per cent of ’em to cut the dam. They’re dying. Oh, my God! hear ’em, Grear; hear ’em! And I’ve bred ’em. I watched ’em grow. Oh, Grear, I’ll give you half!”

And Grear swore horribly.

“I’ll see them die, and see you get out. I don’t want you here.”

And now in the noise the sheep made it was difficult to hear a man speak. But the water grew up silently, and spread out, filling the hollow—a grateful and splendid sheet.

“’Tain’t all yours,” screamed Wilson. “The dam’s not legal. You’ve no right to rob me and my sheep.”

“Then go to law, you dog, and have it proved,” said Grear. And as he spoke Hill came galloping, and with him Jim and two other men. And they carried shovels.

“Look,” said Wilson. “We’re five to you three, you and your men. I mean to have the water.”

“Never!” cried Grear, and getting off his horse he walked up the dam to where Wilson stood.

“Get over the fence,” he said.

And Wilson leant against the fence and the sheep behind him. He dabbled with his hand in their wool. Their hot breath fanned him.

“Don’t, Grear, don’t,” he pleaded. “What would you think if I did the same to you?”

“You can’t,” said Grear, and he laughed. “I’ve the river at my back.”

And Hill with a spade in his hand pressed through the sheep, until he came to Wilson. He touched the boss’s shoulder, and Wilson calmed as he took the spade.

“You don’t mean that they’re to die, Grear, do you?” he asked, with a catch in his voice.

“What’s that to me?”

“It’s much to me,” said Wilson. “Oh, Grear, I’d rather be hanged than let it be.”

“Would you? Then be hanged, you rat!” said Grear.

And Wilson lifted the spade, and split Grear’s head with it, and the man fell back into the water, and dyed it with his blood. But he was dead before he touched the silver grey stream that had slain him.

And Wilson fell to work digging.

“Good God!” said Hill, and the dead squatter’s men cried out.

“Dig, dig,” said Wilson. “Dig! Grear’s got his water. I’ll have mine.”

When the sun rose his sheep were content.

“Now we’ll see what the law says,” cried Wilson. And he rode south to find the law.

THE KING OF MALEKA

By H. DE VERE STACPOOLE

1

Connart had started in life with a fine, open, believing disposition, and with that disposition for his chief asset he had entered the world of business. At thirty he had lost nearly everything but his heart, yet it was stolen from him, also, by one Mary Bateman of Boston, a quiet-looking little woman, endowed with common sense, a few thousand dollars and a taste for travel. It was this taste, combined with a slight weakness of the lungs, that induced Connart to go into the Pacific trade, also a legacy, from an English relation, amounting to some two thousand pounds odd, which enabled him to make the new start in business without calling on his wife’s capital.

Dobree of San Francisco gave him the pitch. Connart had the qualities of his defects. Men robbed him, but they liked him. Men are queer things. Dobree, in business, was a very tough person indeed, quite without any finer feelings, and never giving a cent or a chance away, yet, taking a liking to Connart, he gave him a house, a go-down, and the chance of success on this Island, by name of Maleka, for nothing.

“I had a station there up to six months ago,” said Dobree, “but I’m getting rid of my copra interests. You can have the house, charter a schooner and fill up with trade and go down there, it’s a good climate and will suit your wife. You won’t make a fortune, but you won’t do badly if you stick to your guns and don’t let the Kanakas get the weather gauge on you. There’s only one man there, Seedbaum is his name, he’s a tough customer by all accounts, but there’s copra enough for two—I know a schooner you can have, the _Golden Gleam_; she’s owned by old Tom Bowlby. I’ve got a fellow at a station on Tomasu, that’s a hundred and fifty miles west of Maleka. There’s a cargo waiting shipment there. Bowlby can drop you and your stuff at Maleka, then pick up my cargo at the other place. You won’t have your copra ready for some months and you can make arrangements with him to come back for it. You might make arrangements to work in future with Bowlby, he’s a straight man. You might work with him as partner.”

It was easy to be seen that Dobree was not only giving things away, but going out of his course to make things smooth. Connart felt glowingly thankful.

“It’s more than good of you,” said he, “but it seems to me you will lose over this, for a location like that is worth money.”

“So are cigars,” said Dobree, “but if I give a box of cigars to a friend he doesn’t complain that the gift is worth money. D——n money,” continued this money-grubber, “it’s worth nothing but the fun of making it—well, will you take your cigars, or shall I give the box to someone else?”

Connart said no more. In three weeks’ time the _Golden Gleam_, which was lying at the wharves, had taken her cargo of all the multitudinous things that go by the name of “trade,” and one bright morning, tacking against the wind from the sea, she left the Golden Gate behind her.

Mrs. Connart stood on deck, watching bald Tamalpais across the blue, scudding sea of the wake.

When you go to the Pacific Islands you die to all the things you have known, but you are at least sure that you are going to heaven—if you avoid the low islands.

Mrs. Connart knew the first fact. Down below in her cabin she carried with her the relics of the life she would no longer lead, down to a well-worn riding habit and a whip that would most likely never touch horse again, but she was not despondent, quite the reverse.

You may be sea-sick in a Pacific schooner, bucking against the swell and bending to the north-west trades, you may be mutinous, or angry, or tipsy, but despondency, that low fever of cities and civilisation, has no place out there.

“You ain’t feelin’ the sea, ma’am?” said Captain Bowlby, ranging up alongside of her.

“No,” said she, “I’m a good sailor.”

“I bet you are,” said the captain.

Bowlby had a keen eye for ships and women. He had taken a liking to Mrs. Connart at first sight. She had a steady eye and sure smile that pleased him, and some days later, alone with Ambrose the mate, he voiced his opinions.

“Looks like a mouse, don’t she? Well, there ain’t no mouse about her barring her look. She’s one of them quiet sorts that’d back-chat a congressman if she was put to it, or take a lion by the tail if it was makin’ for one of her kids. I bet she’s rudder and compass both to Connart. She and he fit as if they was welded. Did you ever take notice that there’s chaps you meet that’re only half men till they get a woman that fits them clapped on to them? If she don’t fit they go under the first beam sea they meet; if she do, weather won’t hurt them.”

Ambrose concurred. He was a concurring individual, with few opinions of his own on any matters outside his trade.

“I reckon you’re right,” said he, “though I don’t know much about women—I never had the time,” he finished, apologetically.

2

They raised Maleka at six o’clock one brilliant morning, and by nine it had developed before them, mountainous and green, showing, through the glasses, the blowing foliage, torrent traces and the foam on the barrier reef.

To Connart and his wife there seemed something miraculous in the unfolding of this island from the wastes of the blue and desolate sea. They had pictured this new home often in their minds, but they had pictured nothing like this. It had been waiting for them all their lives, and it seemed to them now that the souls of all the pleasant places they had ever seen or dreamed of were waiting to greet them on that summer-girdled reef.

As they passed the break and entered the lagoon the true island beach of blinding white sand showed its curve lipped by the emerald waters, and through the foliage came glimpses of the white houses of the little town.

“Look,” said Mrs. Connart, wide-eyed and drawing deep breaths as if to inhale the strangeness and beauty of the scene before her, “there are people on the beach, natives, and look at the canoes.”

“There’s a boat pushing off,” said Connart, “and a big fellow in a striped suit in her.”

“That’s Seedbaum,” said Captain Bowlby; “wonder what he wants, comin’ to inspect—gin, likely.”

The anchor fell, waking the echoes of the woods, and the _Golden Gleam_, swinging to the tide that was just beginning to steal out of the lagoon, lay with her nose pointing to the beach whilst the boat came alongside, and the man in the striped suit scrambled on board.

He was a big man, with bulging eyes, a shaved head, and feet encased in worn-out tennis shoes. The suit seemed made of flannelette.

Mrs. Connart at first sight took a profound dislike to this individual.

Seedbaum—for Seedbaum it was—saluted Bowlby, gave him good-day, cast his eye at the strangers and opened up.

“I knew you before you made the anchorage,” said he, “dropped in for water, I suppose.”

“No, I’ve water enough till I fetch Tomasu,” replied Bowlby, “I’ve brought some trade.”

“Trade,” said Seedbaum, offering a cigar. “Well, I don’t mind taking some prints and knives off you at a reasonable price. I’m full up with canned goods and tobacco, still—at a reasonable figure——”

“The trade’s not mine,” said Bowlby, lighting the cigar. “It belongs to the new trader—that gentleman there, Mr. Connart’s his name, let me make you known. Mr. Connart, this is Mr. Seedbaum.”

“Glad to make your acquaintance,” said Connart.

Seedbaum, fingering an unlit cigar, stared at Connart.

“Well, this gets me,” said he. “Why, Dobree cleared his last man out for good, there’s not business enough in this island for two—that’s flat—what’d he want sending you for?”

“He didn’t send me,” replied Connart.

“Then,” said Seedbaum, “what brought you here, anyway?”

“I think,” said Mrs. Connart, “this ship brought us here—and, excuse me—do you own this island?”

Seedbaum stared at her, then his glance fell before that quiet, unwavering gaze, and he turned to Bowlby.

“Well,” said he, “it’s none of my affair if the whole continent of the States comes here to find copra—if it’s to be found—but it seems to me this is a pretty dry ship.”

“Come down below,” said Bowlby.

They went below and the pop of a beer-bottle cork followed upon their descent.

“Oh, what a creature!” said Mrs. Connart. “George, why is it that humanity alone produces things like that?”

“I don’t know,” said Connart, “but I wish humanity had not produced it here.”

Seedbaum came on deck again mollified by beer. Despite the set-down he had received he nodded to the new-comers as he went over the side, and as they watched him being rowed ashore, Bowlby, leaning on the rail, spat into the water and spoke.