Kyrle Bellew

“ Poor Chris! We became great friends. He's dead, too! How they all seem to die but me! I suppose there is a "little cherub" with an eye on me somewhere "up aloft." But I cannot help thinking there are a lot of good men gone before their proper time—or anyway long before their job was half done.
We were all fond of Chris on board the schooner—all but the captain—for somehow Mr. Chris fell in love with the captain's wife, and that's a great mistake on board ship—or on shore either if it comes to that—at least they say so. ”

“ I could not see so far away, in the moonlight, but I pictured the hot tears trickling down the poor pained face—and for a moment she seemed transformed—she was beautiful. I had been standing for perhaps a minute watching, when, between me and the moonlight, I became conscious of a moving object. It was all in white—almost ghostlike—and it glided across the Police paddock in the soft, yielding, unsounding sand, so silently it seemed almost unreal. I looked steadily and recognized the thin frail figure of the "Sub's" wife. ”

“ Having been third mate of a big ship, I never dreamt of having to go before the mast. But that didn't bother me so much, and my thoughts ran helter-skelter till I got dreaming of blue seas and skies—bright coral reefs—fairy-like islands clad with tropical trees—dusky men and women familiar to me in pictures, and a thousand wonders, that, to my imagination, seemed the most desirable things to have seen and known on earth. Isn't youth gorgeous! ”

“ The fate of Buchanan depends on your getting drunk."
"I can't do it, sir—I can't do it."
"Very well, if you can't you can't."
"My principles, sir!"
"Somebody's got to or we lose Buchanan."
"I've never touched a drop since I came on the field. It would be such a scandal!" The old man paused and thought. "Why must I get drunk?"
"To give me time."
"What for?"
"To save Buchanan."
"For God's sake, how can my getting drunk save Buchanan?"
"Higgins, I know Hughes is going to get ahead of us. The only way to stop him is to get him drunk. You must do it."
"There's Cameron, too, sir." ”

“ I can to-day see again large fires along the banks lighting up the darkness of the Indian night, with a lurid glare as we drifted along. I can hear yelling men and see them dressed as soldiers—and can recall the frequent firing of guns—and wondering why "Willie" used to make us lie down flat on the floor of the vessel's cabin, while my mother and she cowered down over us and sobbed.
I remember my father and mother kissing us all good-by, as we left the ghat with "Willie" in a native dinghy, and were taken alongside a large ship, lying out in the stream off Prinseps Ghat, Calcutta. ”

“ Grafton was the receiving place on the Clarence river for produce coming off the stations to the north; and it suddenly sprang into importance through being the nearest point of debarkation for the new gold rush that broke out at Solferino, a point in the Yugilbar ranges, seventy-five miles away. It was on a scorching day in the seventies that I and my mate, a young Scotchman who had passed for the army, and who, while waiting for his commission, had come out to Australia in the same ship with myself, first set eyes on the place. ”

“ Chris. Who was the woman, though! As they drew near I saw and recognized the captain's wife.
I didn't quite know what to do—whether to make my presence known to them or not. I did not wish to embarrass them, so I lay still on the top of the rock which overhung the path. On they came, talking very earnestly.
"It's no use, Chris, talking like that. I know you love me—loved me long before I ever met him. Can't you be content? I wouldn't marry you, with only a coasting mate's pay—now, could I? You men are so unreasonable." ”

“ He turned, looked into her beautiful eyes in the moonlight and smiled happily. "Half of that's yours, Chicken."
"Mine!"
"Yes—we're 'mates'—we've always been 'mates' and out in Australia your 'mate' always has half of everything."
"Oh, that's absurb, Hen. Half a loaf when you haven't anything else—or half—half—" She couldn't think of anything else just then.
"We were 'mates,' dear, when I went away and if we aren't to remain 'mates,' I wish I had never gone. It has been awful—alone in the bush—never seeing you. ”

“ She was a vessel of about a hundred and fifty tons, with a lot of room between decks, where a couple of men were stowing away cases of "Yankee notions"; bales of Manchester goods and cheap German cutlery filled up her lower hold. I noticed particularly how beautifully clean below she was, all newly lime-washed; on deck, although alongside the wharf, she was as clean as the proverbial new pin.
To a sailor there is something fascinating about the lines of a pretty vessel, and the little schooner was as neat a model, for a trader, as one could wish to see. ”

“ I knew what that meant, and that the schooner had seen the last of Captain Dane.
The captain's wife lay senseless on the mattress, but she was not dead. The knife had entered her breast high up and evidently gone deep. Mr. Chris got her below—half dragging, half carrying her—and did what he could to stop the bleeding. Once he came the companion way and said to me—"Will she run before it?"
"I'll keep her as long as! can, sir," I answered,—but the sea was getting up quickly, and I knew he would have to heave-to, sooner or later.
"There's nothing in your way—run her all you can." ”

“ Well, you take my advice, youngster. Go back home as quickly as you can, and if you must go to sea get your father to send you—and don't try running away any more. If you don't promise me—I'll tie you up to a stanchion till knock-off time, and then, damm me! I'll take you back myself."
My father, being so prominent and well-known all over England, the mate knew that he would have done quite the right thing for himself in acting as he threatened.
I promised him, however, to return home at once, and I left the docks with a sad heart, but more determined than ever to go to sea. ”

“ But to her he had always ben "Hen-mother." She was like a child; she had told him all her troubles, all her joys; to him her word, her wish was a law, and yet they were 'mates' who had grown necessary to each other, although they had never spoken of love.
"I know—" she said it very tenderly, as she took his hand and nestled a little closer. "I know—you want me to give you a horse-hair pillow in place of your old flock one." ”

“ Mon Dieu!'
"It was the Past!!!
"Harry, I'd sooner die a hundred deaths than feel again the pain that shot through my heart just then.
"She fell and fainted on the grass.
"I saw it all. I think there's murder in every man's soul on earth. I knelt over her for a moment. It was in mine then, I knew.
"The horrid, damning, bitter truth, was plain. I thought my head would burst; blood spurted from my mouth and nose. I felt a stifling, suffocating, choking, in my throat; and, with a cry that would come out, I cursed her there and then. I know no more." ”

“ Chris, and he came up on deck looking dazed and ten years older.
Mechanically he set about heaving the schooner to. She was a little beauty to handle, and came up to the wind like a bird, and rode on the gale quietly with a tarpaulin seized in the main rigging and her stern staysail hauled well to windward. I lashed the helm and then set about helping the mate.
"The captain's gone, sir!" I said.
"I know. Yes, I know," his mind seemed wandering. "It's awful—awful!"
"How is she, sir?"
"I don't know. She isn't conscious, but she isn't dead. How's the barometer?" ”

“ Off came the hatches, and there, to our horror, in the fierce sunlight of the tropics, with everything bright and gay about us—children laughing and playing, every one happy—we disclosed the bloated and composed corpse of the young man in the brown ulster. ”

“ I hadn't a friend in the world I could expect to greet me. Though I heard my name, I thought there must be some man among the passengers with the same name, so I took no notice. When the ship swung alongside the dolphin I jumped aboard into the mizzen-rigging and then, just as I reached the deck, out of the mist came the hail again.
"Hullo, Harold, is that you?"
I turned and peered through the rain. A slight, clean-shaven man stood on the pier-head waving a stick. God, how wet he was! I looked again. There was something familiar about him. The voice, too, I seemed to have heard before. ”

“ It's there still, Harry, and she's—ah! God—"
We'd left a shovel behind at the claim that evening. I went to fetch it, and as I crossed the creek, and stumbled through the ferns, a stifled heavy sob came down to me from where the hut lay in the quiet moonlight of that Christmas Eve. ”

“ I never see a cabbage growing, however, even to-day, but the difference between us arises in my mind; and were "Willie" once more to revisit the earth, I feel, if we met, I should still try to induce her to reconsider the matter of the plant, under whose shade I was introduced to the world.
The troublous times of the Indian Mutiny gave me my first impressions of life. Of these I have only vague recollections; and I am not sure to-day, whether those vivid pictures, that come back to me out of the mist of the past, are not the memories of my parents transmitted to me in early childhood. ”

“ I do not remember missing my father and mother—Willie to my eyes the most beautiful thing on earth was with us—and we children of the "Padre Sahib" in Calcutta Cathedral were the pets of the ship, and that same Captain Toynbee, whose name is dear to every man that sailed in those days, and for many a long year after from the port of London. ”

“ We did not know how she first came to the colony, and no one remembered not having seen her there.
On my return from quite a long journey, I inquired from one of the members of our colony about her. "I've not seen her for months. It is an age since she has been here. She must be dead."
Nothing more was said or thought of her. Artists are careless fellows, we must admit, and women make a sorry mistake to love them.
One morning about the beginning of May, 1855, I was walking through the grand Avenue of Neuilly. ”

“ Hughes brooded only over how soon he could break out into song again.
"Yer damn fool! If Paddy ain't going somewhere, what's his horse saddled up for?"
"Well,s'pose he is?" laughed Hughes. "Why yer blistering idiot, he's going to Mount Madden, what do we care?"
"Like the devil he cares a damn, about Mound Madden!"
"Oh to hell with Paddy, let's have another drink!" broke in Isaac Brown.
"Right O!" chimed in Ahlers, reaching for the whiskey.
"Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay!" began Hughes again. ”

“ She was allowed to "circulate," to lounge, to look, at her own free will, to smoke, to sleep, to talk, to sing, to leave when the spirit moved her. A creature of impulse, of natural common sense, having learned nothing for learning's sake, she had acquired in her free life all she knew, which amounted to some knowledge of the piano, some solfege, Italian and English. ”

“ Every man within a hundred miles had shaken bits of "Annie Laurie" out of that old box, which was one of the stories of Maytown, together with the worsted-worked pictures of Koenig Wilhelm and a stuffed crocodile out of the Mitchell River. The piano in the corner was a compound fractured instrument, of German origin, that emitted nothing but Wagnerian noises whether you played "God Save the Queen" or "Hail, Columbia!" on it. Ahlers had lent it to Isaac Brown for a dance some ten years before. ”

“ She glided on and on—past the rough turnstile in the wire fence of the paddock, and into the long grass, and towards the solitary figure at the graves. It was a solemn moment. These two devoted women—in the solitary bush—a thousand miles from any city—the one sorrowing, the other, in her womanly way, coming out into the night to comfort her. ”

“ That's how things stood when I joined the schooner, though I did not know this until after we had reached New Britain.
Well, we warped out, and as there was a fair slant of wind down the harbor the old man didn't bother about a tug, but sheeted home his topsail, set all the fore and aft canvas, and stood for the heads. ”

“ And so it went until Charley Ahlers said he was going home.
"G'long!" It was about ten o'clock now and Bob and Jack were both drunk.
"G'long!" said Bob. "Have another."
"No, Bob, no more."
"You're no bloody good, you ain't," cried Jack. ”

“ Look here, sir, I tell you that Mount Buchanan ground is the biggest thing I ever saw—there's millions in it."
"Hughes says there isn't anything."
"My God, what liars some people are! He—why he don't know a bit of quartz from a brickbat. Nothing in it! What's he pegged out all that ground for—seventy-five acres—if there ain't nothing in it?"
"Now, don't go off your head," I said, "I know there's something in it, but Hughes thinks I'm going to peg out and wants to get ahead of me. Now, Higgins, what's to be done? ”

“ Bah! what is the use of youth if we are all to be wise before our time! Of what use the hot blood—the light heart—and the little-thinking lighter head! It is all very well to speculate on what we should have gained—but just think, for one moment, what we should have lost! ”