John Arthur Barry

“ Be this as it may, Skipper M‘Cracken filled up until he could fill no more. The ’tween deck was like a freshly-opened sardine tin; on the main deck they lay in double tiers. Many roosted in the tops. The boats on the davits and the long-boat on the skids swarmed with the home-going children of the Flowery Land. The better class, merchants, tradesmen, etc., had secured everything aft, from the captain’s cabin to the steward’s pantry, for which accommodation fabulous sums found their way into the pockets of M‘Cracken and his mates. ”

“ To stow each of the upper top-sails it took twenty-four men and two boys—nearly, in fact, the ship’s company; and, if the courses had not already been furled, I do not think we could ever have managed them. The foot-ropes were like glass, the reef-points as rigid as bar iron, and one’s hands, after a minute aloft, had no more feeling in them than the icy canvas they tried to grasp. Through the fog, as we slowly descended the slippery ratlines, we imagined we could see great bergs looming indistinctly; and in our strained ears echoed the ever-impending crash as the wind gradually freshened. ”

“ Come out and crawl after me, and I’ll learn you how to do your work!’
He disappeared, and Ashby followed him like a flash. In a trice every soul was outside—some clinging to the running gear around the foremast, others on the galley, others in the fore rigging.
I could see no sign of any of the head sails being adrift. All, except the set fore-topmast stay-sail, lay on their booms, masses of sodden canvas, off which poured green cataracts as the Dido lifted her nose from a mighty plunge. ”

“ Imagine, if you can, the big ship creeping timorously and uncertainly through the thick Polar darkness and mist, a shapeless mass of yet thicker darkness, emitting here and there ruddy flashes of light, reflected momentarily back from snow-covered deck or coil of frozen rope. No sound breaks the silence except a gentle lap-lapping of water under her fore-foot as the canvas just fills enough to draw. ”

“ Thus, in a new guise, and in a new land, the old “Bunyip,” rejuvenated and embellished, with, so to speak, colours flying and band playing, leaves its long rest at moorings, and once more sets sail in modest confidence that age will not have rendered its timbers less seaworthy, but rather have preserved and toughened them in such wise as may enable the old vessel to successfully compete with the modern craft of her class that have since appeared. ”

“ Battling with his longing, he contrasted the weevilly biscuits and salt junk of the fo’k’stle with the wholesome damper and fresh mutton and beef of the hut.
He thought of the ‘all night in’ of undisturbed rest, contrasting it with the ‘Watch ahoy! Now then, you sleepers, turn out!’ of each successive four hours.
He thought, too, of tyrannous masters and mates; of drenched decks and leaking fo’k’stles, of frozen rigging, of dark wild nights of storm, and of swaying foot-ropes and thundrous canvas slatting like iron plates about his ears; of hunger, wet, and misery. ”

“ One evening, as if drawn up by some mighty hand, the fog lifted, disclosing the sun, cold, red, and angry-looking, glaring at us out of a sombre sky, and flushing the water and the bergs round about with a flood of purple light, on which our masts and rigging cast tremulous, long, black shadows, crossing and recrossing in a quivering maze, with big, shapeless blotches here and there for the sails. ”

“ Wondrous yarns of fierce blacks, of men perishing of thirst and hunger in the lonely bush, of wild cattle, of bucking horses, of the far inland life. And, in return, they told him tales of the stormy seas, and drank heartily at his expense. The port was busy, wages high, and men scarce. But Peter’s audience never failed him. The fame of the ‘Jolly Bushman down at Gallagher’s’ had spread about the shipping, and whole crews used to drop in of an evening to listen to Peter and drink his beer and rum. ”

“ Imagine, too, just as the tired men are about to drag their half-frozen limbs below, a sudden deeper silence, and a strange feeling of warmth and calm pervading the ship; the sails giving one mighty creaking flap up there in the gloom; the crash and rattle of ice falling from their frozen folds, and a cluster of awe-struck, up-turned faces, shining pallidly in the glow of the galley fire, as the Boadicea, but for a slight roll, lies idle and at rest.
Everyone knows and feels that something unusual has taken place, but no man there can say what it is. ”

“ Late that night, a weary, footsore traveller entered the principal public-house in Dingo Creek, and began to ask incoherent questions about a buggy and a black-fellow, the latter, he averred, an emissary of Satan, who had led him into the wilderness, and there deserted him—a story that the rough host and his equally rough customers could make neither head nor tail of.
‘It’s a rum go altogether,’ said the former to one of his digger friends, after poor Spicer had retired, nearly dead beat, to his rough-slabbed room, whence he could hear all that went on in the bar. ”

“ Thus the Australian Gazetteer, speaking of the far-inland village of Jillibeejee. For days you shall have ridden over bush roads, fetlock deep in dust, through monotonous open forest, or over still more monotonous plain, ere, far away on a dry brown ridge, you catch the glitter of something in the bright, hot sunshine. This proceeds from the first roof in Jillibeejee. Then, making your horse stride carefully over the Trickle Trickle, whose banks are apt to crumble, you breast the ridge and take a bird’s-eye view of the township as it lies frying in the sun. ”

“ Awakened towards the small hours by the roarings of Eclipse, triumphantly apprising the world at large that his belly was full, I found the lantern still burning, and could see Treloar’s eye ‘in a fine phrenzy rolling,’ as he scribbled rapidly. Years afterwards I read in the Bombay Pioneer ‘How the Night Falls on Yamnibar,’ and thought it passable.
It was anything but pleasant work, this groping about old workings. It was also very dangerous. Many were the close shaves we had of being buried, sometimes alive, at others flattened out. ”

“ It is still blowing hard; but our captain is more than satisfied; and, under everything she can carry, the Boadicea rushes, like a frightened stag, fast away, northwards and eastwards, out of those dismal seas of ice and fog, snow, and unknown islands, a very nightmare of navigation, into which one merchant skipper, at least, will never willingly venture again. ”

“ The ship for a minute seemed to stand quite still, as if waiting to hear the answer, and each man turned to look at his neighbour.
Then Ashby, jumping down, with a curious set expression on his face, walked up to the mate and said very loud,—
‘Don’t send a man where you’d be frightened to go yourself.’
‘You infernal soger!’ shouted the other, enraged beyond measure at this first sign of rebellion in his victim. ‘Come out here and I’ll show you all about that! ”

“ As for myself, although rated as third mate, I was little more than a lad at the time, and thought the whole thing simply magnificent, hoping that we might penetrate still further into the unknown ‘regions of thick-ribbed ice’ ahead of us, whilst visions of a Southern Continent, bears, seals and walruses, floated through my imagination. To be sure I was well clothed and comfortably housed, which, perhaps, made all the difference. We are very apt to look at things one-sidedly, and with regard only to the character of our own particular surroundings. ”

“ Just then the moon shone out from behind a bank, and, not ten yards away, stood a horseman, his head drooping on his chest, his body rocking slightly in the saddle.
I gave a sigh of relief. Drunken riders are common enough in the Bush. And, with all trepidation vanished, I sang out gruffly enough,—
‘Better get off, mate, before you fall off! Come and have a drink of tea!’
He would be a nuisance, of course, with the inevitable bottle of rum in his swag, and in his person all the loathsome imbecility inseparable from the sobering-up [16] process. But, as an institution, he had to be attended to. ”

“ Down the Gulf with a fair wind rattled the Dido, through Investigator Straits and out into the Southern Ocean, whilst Jack cast a regretful look at the lessening line of distant blue, and exclaimed once more,—
‘Damn deep water!’
That evening the officers spin a coin, and proceed to pick their respective watches.
To his disgust, Jack is the very first man chosen by the fierce chief mate, who has won the toss, and who at once says,—
‘Go below the port watch!’—his own.
It is blowing a fresh breeze when he comes on deck again at eight bells. It is his wheel. He finds his friend Bill Baker there. ”

“ If the grass had been burnt I was a dead man fifty times over. Presently, I struck a cattle pad, and, at the same moment, caught sight of the Grand Stand. Now they saw what I was after, and put on a spurt, yelling harder than ever. As they arrived at the foot of the rock I was half-way up the narrow, almost perpendicular, track, going like a goat, whilst spears, tomahawks and nullahs hit all around me. One spear grazed my leg, sticking in the breeches, and a stone tomahawk knocked my hat off. I afterwards made use of that spear. ”

“ The traveller worked hard for an hour, and finished his task, handling the axe as if born to it, and provoking the cook’s admiration to such an extent that he went one better than his promise, and proffered a pint of tea and a lump of ‘brownie.’
Presently, lighting his pipe, and undoing his swag, the new-comer, remarking that there was nothing like a read for passing the time away, took out a gorgeously bound volume, sat down at the table, and was soon so interested that he let his pipe go out. Save for the cook, the long kitchen was empty, all the men being away on the run. ”

“ But in the calm and mist he unwittingly, and without evil intent (being, as their Highnesses could see, only a poor trader) came too near, when to his amazement showers of bullets and great cannon balls tore his sails to pieces; and, but for the coops being piled high on deck, assuredly every soul must have perished.
In spite of explanations and shouts for mercy he was repeatedly fired into, all his cargo killed, sixty new coops of the best bamboo knocked to atoms; one of his crew desperately wounded, his vessel irretrievably damaged. ”

“ Through darkness was I to make the last journey towards that dread bourne whence no traveller returns? The slow death in the darkness, drifting about on the bitter waters of that secret sea—that was the thought that my soul revolted from. And strange thoughts, horrible thoughts, a man thinks placed as I was. At times his reason leaves him, his whole soul rises in impious revolt, and the devil rages freely therein, as if already his victim’s bed were made in hell. ”

“ When the mate, with a terribly long face, had reported to the captain, as nearly as he could, the amount of cargo missing, and proposed as a set-off, to put one-half of each watch in irons until arrival, the skipper had only laughed.
He obviously enjoyed the responsible man’s dismay.
‘Nothing of the sort,’ he replied. ‘We can’t do without ’em. We’re bound to get a good blow or two ’tween here and Port Phillip Heads, and where would we be with half the men in irons, and the rest sulking? You’re a fool, Sparkes. I’m goin’ to smooth ’em down. ”

“ Gradually freshening, and hauling still to the south, the wind at length made it necessary to shorten some of the plain sail the Dido had carried right across. On the 24th land was sighted, and the captain, coming on deck with his pockets full of tools and little tin things, told us that it was Cape Horn.
The fo’k’stle-head was crowded with men, one minute all gazing at the land, the next staring aft.
‘What the deuce are those fellows garping at?’ growled the mate, walking for’ard. ”

“ But all too surely had the thing that men call Fate laid fast hold on the Dreamer. And the boarding-house-keeper cashed his advance note—returning nothing—and carted him to the Dido, and left him stretched out on the fo’k’stle floor, not knowing or caring where he was, or who he was, or where he was going, and oblivious of all things under the sun. ”

“ Amanda Brown was eighteen, buxom, bare-footed, curly-haired, red-cheeked, could ride as she put it ‘anythin’ with hair on,’ use an axe like a Canadian, and was reckoned the best hand at breaking in a young bullock to the team of anyone about. And she, since her finding of Cruppy in the ranges, leech-infested and draggled, had taken him under her protection. But even she was powerless to influence the feeling of public indignation, daily growing stronger, against the Inspector, the teacher, and the ‘Gov’ment,’ and which ended in Cruppy being requested to clear out from Brown’s. ”

“ But the love of life is strong indeed within us; so that when after shooting this subterranean cataract, or whatever it might have been, I found my boat once more steadily gliding along, ever with the same dull gurgle of cleft water at her bows, a faint ray of hope took the place of despairing calm. ”