I don't remember which. We were old chums, and we nearly always
wanted to fight each other when we got a bit on, and we'd fight
if we weren't stopped. I remember once Jim got maudlin drunk
and begged and prayed of me to fight him, as if he was praying for his life.
Tom Tarrant, the coach-driver, used to say that Jim and me must be related,
else we wouldn't hate each other so much when we were tight and truthful.
`Anyway, this day, Jim got the sulks, and caught his horse and went home
early in the evening. My dog went home with him too; I must have been
carrying on pretty bad to
disgust the dog.
`Next evening I got
disgusted with myself, and started to walk home.
I'd lost my hat, so Peter Anderson lent me an old one of his,
that he'd worn on Ballarat he said: it was a hard, straw, flat,
broad-brimmed affair, and fitted my
headache pretty tight.
Peter gave me a small flask of whisky to help me home. I had to go
across some flats and up a long dark gully called Murderer's Gully,
and over a gap called Dead Man's Gap, and down the ridge and gullies
to Redclay Creek. The
lonely flats were covered with blue-grey gum bush,
and looked
ghostly enough in the
moonlight, and I was pretty shaky,
but I had a pull at the flask and a
mouthful of water at a creek and felt
right enough. I began to
whistle, and then to sing: I never used to sing
unless I thought I was a couple of miles out of earshot of any one.
`Murderer's Gully was deep and pretty dark most times, and of course
it was
haunted. Women and children wouldn't go through it after dark;
and even me, when I'd grown up, I'd hold my back pretty holler, and
whistle,
and walk quick going along there at night-time. We're all afraid of ghosts,
but we won't let on.
`Some one had skinned a dead calf during the day and left it on the track,
and it gave me a jump, I promise you. It looked like two corpses
laid out naked. I finished the whisky and started up over the gap.
All of a sudden a great `old man' kangaroo went across the track
with a thud-thud, and up the siding, and that startled me.
Then the naked, white glistening trunk of a stringy-bark tree,
where some one had stripped off a sheet of bark, started out
from a bend in the track in a shaft of
moonlight, and that gave me a jerk.
I was pretty shaky before I started. There was a Chinaman's grave
close by the track on the top of the gap. An old chow had lived
in a hut there for many years, and fossicked on the old diggings,
and one day he was found dead in the hut, and the Government
gave some one a pound to bury him. When I was a nipper
we reckoned that his ghost
haunted the gap, and cursed in Chinese
because the bones hadn't been sent home to China. It was a
lonely,
ghostly place enough.
`It had been a smotheringly hot day and very close coming across the flats
and up the gully -- not a
breath of air; but now as I got higher
I saw signs of the thunderstorm we'd expected all day, and felt the
breathof a warm
breeze on my face. When I got into the top of the gap
the first thing I saw was something white
amongst the dark bushes
over the spot where the Chinaman's grave was, and I stood staring at it
with both eyes. It moved out of the shadow
presently, and I saw that it
was a white bullock, and I felt relieved. I'd hardly felt relieved when,
all at once, there came a "pat-pat-pat" of
running feet close behind me!
I jumped round quick, but there was nothing there, and while I stood
staring all ways for Sunday, there came a "pat-pat", then a pause,
and then "pat-pat-pat-pat" behind me again: it was like some one
dodging and
running off that time. I started to walk down the track
pretty fast, but hadn't gone a dozen yards when "pat-pat-pat",
it was close behind me again. I jerked my eyes over my shoulder
but kept my legs going. There was nothing behind, but I fancied I saw
something slip into the Bush to the right. It must have been the
moonlighton the moving boughs; there was a good
breeze blowing now. I got down
to a more level track, and was making across a spur to the main road,
when "pat-pat!" "pat-pat-pat, pat-pat-pat!" it was after me again.
Then I began to run -- and it began to run too! "pat-pat-pat" after me
all the time. I hadn't time to look round. Over the spur and down the siding
and across the flat to the road I went as fast as I could split my legs apart.
I had a scared idea that I was getting a touch of the "jim-jams",
and that frightened me more than any outside ghost could have done.
I stumbled a few times, and saved myself, but, just before I reached the road,
I fell slithering on to my hands on the grass and gravel.
I thought I'd broken both my wrists. I stayed for a moment
on my hands and knees, quaking and listening, squinting round
like a great gohana; I couldn't hear nor see anything. I picked myself up,
and had hardly got on one end, when "pat-pat!" it was after me again.
I must have run a mile and a half
altogether that night.
It was still about three-quarters of a mile to the camp,
and I ran till my heart beat in my head and my lungs choked up in my throat.
I saw our tent-fire and took off my hat to run faster. The footsteps stopped,
then something about the hat touched my fingers, and I stared at it --
and the thing dawned on me. I hadn't noticed at Peter Anderson's --
my head was too swimmy to notice anything. It was an old hat of the style
that the first diggers used to wear, with a couple of loose
ribbon ends,
three or four inches long, from the band behind. As long as I walked quietly
through the gully, and there was no wind, the tails didn't flap,
but when I got up into the
breeze, they flapped or were still
according to how the wind lifted them or pressed them down flat on the brim.
And when I ran they tapped all the time; and the hat being tight on my head,
the tapping of the
ribbon ends against the straw sounded loud of course.
`I sat down on a log for a while to get some of my wind back and cool down,
and then I went to the camp as quietly as I could, and had
a long drink of water.
`"You seem to be a bit winded, Dave," said Jim Bently, "and
mighty thirsty.
Did the Chinaman's ghost chase you?"
`I told him not to talk rot, and went into the tent, and lay down on my bunk,
and had a good rest.'
The Loaded Dog.
Dave Regan, Jim Bently, and Andy Page were sinking a shaft at Stony Creek
in search of a rich gold
quartz reef which was
supposed to exist
in the
vicinity. There is always a rich reef
supposed to exist
in the
vicinity; the only questions are whether it is ten feet or hundreds
beneath the surface, and in which direction. They had struck
some pretty solid rock, also water which kept them baling.
They used the
old-fashioned blasting-powder and time-fuse.
They'd make a
sausage or
cartridge of blasting-powder
in a skin of strong
calico or
canvas, the mouth sewn and bound
round the end of the fuse; they'd dip the
cartridge in melted
tallowto make it water-tight, get the drill-hole as dry as possible,
drop in the
cartridge with some dry dust, and wad and ram
with stiff clay and broken brick. Then they'd light the fuse
and get out of the hole and wait. The result was usually an ugly pot-hole
in the bottom of the shaft and half a barrow-load of broken rock.
There was plenty of fish in the creek, fresh-water bream, cod, cat-fish,
and tailers. The party were fond of fish, and Andy and Dave of fishing.
Andy would fish for three hours at a stretch if encouraged
by a `nibble' or a `bite' now and then -- say once in twenty minutes.
The
butcher was always
willing to give meat in exchange for fish
when they caught more than they could eat; but now it was winter,
and these fish wouldn't bite. However, the creek was low,
just a chain of muddy water-holes, from the hole with a few bucketfuls in it
to the sizable pool with an average depth of six or seven feet,
and they could get fish by baling out the smaller holes or muddying up
the water in the larger ones till the fish rose to the surface.
There was the cat-fish, with spikes growing out of the sides of its head,
and if you got pricked you'd know it, as Dave said. Andy took off his boots,
tucked up his
trousers, and went into a hole one day to stir up the mud
with his feet, and he knew it. Dave scooped one out with his hand
and got pricked, and he knew it too; his arm swelled, and the pain throbbed
up into his shoulder, and down into his
stomach too, he said,
like a toothache he had once, and kept him awake for two nights --
only the toothache pain had a `burred edge', Dave said.
Dave got an idea.
`Why not blow the fish up in the big water-hole with a
cartridge?' he said.
`I'll try it.'
He thought the thing out and Andy Page worked it out.
Andy usually put Dave's theories into practice if they were practicable,
or bore the blame for the
failure and the chaffing of his mates
if they weren't.
He made a
cartridge about three times the size of those they used in the rock.
Jim Bently said it was big enough to blow the bottom out of the river.
The inner skin was of stout
calico; Andy stuck the end of a six-foot
piece of fuse well down in the powder and bound the mouth of the bag
firmly to it with whipcord. The idea was to sink the
cartridge in the water
with the open end of the fuse attached to a float on the surface,
ready for
lighting. Andy dipped the
cartridge in melted bees'-wax
to make it water-tight. `We'll have to leave it some time
before we light it,' said Dave, `to give the fish time
to get over their scare when we put it in, and come nosing round again;
so we'll want it well water-tight.'
Round the
cartridge Andy, at Dave's
suggestion, bound a strip
of sail
canvas -- that they used for making water-bags --
to increase the force of the
explosion, and round that he pasted
layers of stiff brown paper -- on the plan of the sort of fireworks
we called `gun-crackers'. He let the paper dry in the sun,
then he sewed a covering of two thicknesses of
canvas over it,
and bound the thing from end to end with stout fishing-line. Dave's schemes
were
elaborate, and he often worked his inventions out to nothing.
The
cartridge was rigid and solid enough now -- a
formidable bomb;
but Andy and Dave wanted to be sure. Andy sewed on another layer of
canvas,
dipped the
cartridge in melted
tallow, twisted a length of fencing-wire
round it as an afterthought, dipped it in
tallow again,
and stood it carefully against a tent-peg, where he'd know where to find it,
and wound the fuse
loosely round it. Then he went to the camp-fire
to try some potatoes which were boiling in their jackets in a billy,
and to see about frying some chops for dinner. Dave and Jim were at work
in the claim that morning.
They had a big black young retriever dog -- or rather an overgrown pup,
a big, foolish, four-footed mate, who was always slobbering round them
and lashing their legs with his heavy tail that swung round like a stock-whip.
Most of his head was usually a red, idiotic, slobbering grin of appreciation
of his own silliness. He seemed to take life, the world,
his two-legged mates, and his own
instinct as a huge joke.
He'd retrieve anything: he carted back most of the camp rubbish
that Andy threw away. They had a cat that died in hot weather,
and Andy threw it a good distance away in the scrub; and early one morning
the dog found the cat, after it had been dead a week or so,
and carried it back to camp, and laid it just inside the tent-flaps,
where it could best make its presence known when the mates should rise
and begin to sniff suspiciously in the
sickly smothering atmosphere
of the summer
sunrise. He used to retrieve them when they went in swimming;
he'd jump in after them, and take their hands in his mouth,
and try to swim out with them, and
scratch their naked bodies with his paws.
They loved him for his good-heartedness and his foolishness,
but when they wished to enjoy a swim they had to tie him up in camp.
He watched Andy with great interest all the morning making the
cartridge,
and hindered him
considerably,
trying to help; but about noon
he went off to the claim to see how Dave and Jim were getting on,
and to come home to dinner with them. Andy saw them coming,
and put a panful of mutton-chops on the fire. Andy was cook to-day;
Dave and Jim stood with their backs to the fire, as Bushmen do
in all weathers,
waiting till dinner should be ready.
The retriever went nosing round after something he seemed to have missed.
Andy's brain still worked on the
cartridge; his eye was caught
by the glare of an empty kerosene-tin lying in the bushes,
and it struck him that it wouldn't be a bad idea to sink the
cartridgepacked with clay, sand, or stones in the tin, to increase
the force of the
explosion. He may have been all out,
from a
scientific point of view, but the notion looked all right to him.
Jim Bently, by the way, wasn't interested in their `damned silliness'.
Andy noticed an empty treacle-tin -- the sort with the little
tin neck or spout soldered on to the top for the
convenience of pouring out
the treacle -- and it struck him that this would have made
the best kind of
cartridge-case: he would only have had