章节正文
It was awful embarrassing. It must have made him awkward to deal with
in a fight.
`"Good day, mates," he said.
`"Good day," we said.
`"It's hot."
`"It's hot."
`We went into the bar, and Poisonous got behind the counter.
`"What are you going to have?" he asked, rubbing up his glasses with a rag.
`We had two long-beers.
`"Never mind that," said Poisonous, seeing me put my hand in my pocket;
"it's my shout. I don't suppose your boss is back yet?
I saw him go in to Mulgatown this morning."
`"No, he ain't back," I said; "I wish he was. We're getting tired
of waiting for him. We'll give him another hour, and then some of us
will have to ride in to see whether he's got on the boose,
and get hold of him if he has."
`"I suppose you're waiting for your cheques?" he said, turning to fix
some bottles on the shelf.
`"Yes," I said, "we are;" and I winked at Jim, and Jim winked back
as solemn as an owl.
`Poisonous asked us all about the trip, and how long we'd been on the track,
and what sort of a boss we had, dropping the questions offhand now an' then,
as for the sake of conversation. We could see that he was trying to get
at the size of our supposed cheques, so we answered accordingly.
`"Have another drink," he said, and he filled the pewters up again.
"It's up to me," and he set to work boring out the glasses with his rag,
as if he was short-handed and the bar was crowded with customers,
and screwing up his face into what I suppose he considered
an innocent or unconscious expression. The girl began to sidle in and out
with a smart frock and a see-you-after-dark smirk on.
`"Have you had dinner?" she asked. We could have done with a good meal,
but it was too risky -- the drovers' boss might come along
while we were at dinner and get into conversation with Poisonous.
So we said we'd had dinner.
`Poisonous filled our pewters again in an offhand way.
`"I wish the boss would come," said Jim with a yawn. "I want to get
into Mulgatown to-night, and I want to get some shirts and things
before I go in. I ain't got a decent rag to me back. I don't suppose
there's ten bob amongst the lot of us."
`There was a general store back on the creek, near the drovers' camp.
`"Oh, go to the store and get what you want," said Poisonous,
taking a sovereign from the till and tossing it on to the counter.
"You can fix it up with me when your boss comes. Bring your mates along."
`"Thank you," said Jim, taking up the sovereigncarelessly and dropping it
into his pocket.
`"Well, Jim," I said, "suppose we get back to camp and see how the chaps
are getting on?"
`"All right," said Jim.
`"Tell them to come down and get a drink," said Poisonous;
"or, wait, you can take some beer along to them if you like,"
and he gave us half a gallon of beer in a billy-can. He knew
what the first drink meant with Bushmen back from a long dry trip.
`We got on our horses, I holding the billy very carefully, and rode back
to where our swags were.
`"I say," said Jim, when we'd strapped the swags to the saddles,
"suppose we take the beer back to those chaps: it's meant for them,
and it's only a fair thing, anyway -- we've got as much as we can hold
till we get into Mulgatown."
`"It might get them into a row," I said, "and they seem decent chaps.
Let's hang the billy on a twig, and that old swagman that's coming along
will think there's angels in the Bush."
`"Oh! what's a row?" said Jim. "They can take care of themselves;
they'll have the beer anyway and a lark with Poisonous
when they take the can back and it comes to explanations.
I'll ride back to them."
`So Jim rode back to the drovers' camp with the beer,
and when he came back to me he said that the drovers seemed surprised,
but they drank good luck to him.
`We rode round through the mulga behind the shanty and came out
on the road again on the Mulgatown side: we only stayed at Mulgatown
to buy some tucker and tobacco, then we pushed on and camped for the night
about seven miles on the safe side of the town.'
II. Told by One of the Other Drovers.
`Talkin' o' Poisonous Jimmy, I can tell you a yarn about him.
We'd brought a mob of cattle down for a squatter the other side of Mulgatown.
We camped about seven miles the other side of the town,
waitin' for the station hands to come and take charge of the stock,
while the boss rode on into town to draw our money. Some of us
was goin' back, though in the end we all went into Mulgatown
and had a boose up with the boss. But while we was waitin'
there come along two fellers that had been drovin' up north.
They yarned a while, an' then went on to Poisonous Jimmy's place,
an' in about an hour one on 'em come ridin' back with a can of beer
that he said Poisonous had sent for us. We all knew Jimmy's little games --
the beer was a bait to get us on the drunk at his place;
but we drunk the beer, and reckoned to have a lark with him afterwards.
When the boss come back, an' the station hands to take the bullocks,
we started into Mulgatown. We stopped outside Poisonous's place
an' handed the can to the girl that was grinnin' on the verandah.
Poisonous come out with a grin on him like a parson with a broken nose.
`"Good day, boys!" he says.
`"Good day, Poisonous," we says.
`"It's hot," he says.
`"It's blanky hot," I says.
`He seemed to expect us to get down. "Where are you off to?" he says.
`"Mulgatown," I says. "It will be cooler there," and we sung out,
"So-long, Poisonous!" and rode on.
`He stood starin' for a minute; then he started shoutin', "Hi! hi there!"
after us, but we took no notice, an' rode on. When we looked back last
he was runnin' into the scrub with a bridle in his hand.
`We jogged along easily till we got within a mile of Mulgatown,
when we heard somebody gallopin' after us, an' lookin' back
we saw it was Poisonous.
`He was too mad and too winded to speak at first, so he rode
along with us a bit gasping: then he burst out.
`"Where's them other two carnal blanks?" he shouted.
`"What other two?" I asked. "We're all here. What's the matter
with you anyway?"
`"All here!" he yelled. "You're a lurid liar! What the flamin' sheol
do you mean by swiggin' my beer an' flingin' the coloured can in me face?
without as much as thank yer! D'yer think I'm a flamin' ----!"
`Oh, but Poisonous Jimmy was wild.
`"Well, we'll pay for your dirty beer," says one of the chaps,
puttin' his hand in his pocket. "We didn't want yer slush.
It tasted as if it had been used before."
`"Pay for it!" yelled Jimmy. "I'll ---- well take it
out of one of yer bleedin' hides!"
`We stopped at once, and I got down an' obliged Jimmy for a few rounds.
He was a nasty customer to fight; he could use his hands,
and was cool as a cucumber as soon as he took his coat off:
besides, he had one squirmy little business eye, and a big wall-eye,
an', even if you knowed him well, you couldn't help watchin' the stony eye --
it was no good watchin' his eyes, you had to watch his hands,
and he might have managed me if the boss hadn't stopped the fight.
The boss was a big, quiet-voiced man, that didn't swear.
`"Now, look here, Myles," said the boss (Jimmy's name was Myles) --
"Now, look here, Myles," sez the boss, "what's all this about?"
`"What's all this about?" says Jimmy, gettin' excited agen.
"Why, two fellers that belonged to your party come along to my place
an' put up half-a-dozen drinks, an' borrered a sovereign,
an' got a can o' beer on the strength of their cheques.
They sez they was waitin' for you -- an' I want my crimson money
out o' some one!"
`"What was they like?" asks the boss.
`"Like?" shouted Poisonous, swearin' all the time. "One was a blanky long,
sandy, sawny feller, and the other was a short, slim feller with black hair.
Your blanky men knows all about them because they had
the blanky billy o' beer."
`"Now, what's this all about, you chaps?" sez the boss to us.
`So we told him as much as we knowed about them two fellers.
`I've heard men swear that could swear in a rough shearin'-shed,
but I never heard a man swear like Poisonous Jimmy when he saw
how he'd been left. It was enough to split stumps. He said he wanted
to see those fellers, just once, before he died.
`He rode with us into Mulgatown, got mad drunk, an' started out along the road
with a tomahawk after the long sandy feller and the slim dark feller;
but two mounted police went after him an' fetched him back. He said
he only wanted justice; he said he only wanted to stun them two fellers
till he could give 'em in charge.
`They fined him ten bob.'
The Ghostly Door.
Told by one of Dave's mates.
Dave and I were tramping on a lonely Bush track in New Zealand,
making for a sawmill where we expected to get work, and we were caught
in one of those three-days' gales, with rain and hail in it and cold enough
to cut off a man's legs. Camping out was not to be thought of,
so we just tramped on in silence, with the stinging pain coming between
our shoulder-blades -- from cold, weariness, and the weight of our swags --
and our boots, full of water, going splosh, splosh, splosh along the track.
We were settled to it -- to drag on like wet, weary, muddy working bullocks
till we came to somewhere -- when, just before darkness settled down,
we saw the loom of a humpy of some sort on the slope of a tussock hill,
back from the road, and we made for it, without holding a consultation.
It was a two-roomed hut built of waste timber from a sawmill,
and was either a deserted settler's home or a hut attached
to an abandonedsawmill round there somewhere. The windows were boarded up.
We dumped our swags under the little verandah and banged at the door,
to make sure; then Dave pulled a couple of boards off a window and looked in:
there was light enough to see that the place was empty.
Dave pulled off some more boards, put his arm in through a broken pane,
clicked the catch back, and then pushed up the window and got in.
I handed in the swags to him. The room was very draughty;
the wind came in through the broken window and the cracks between the slabs,
so we tried the partitioned-off room -- the bedroom -- and that was better.
It had been lined with chaff-bags, and there were two stretchers left
by some timber-getters or other Bush contractors who'd camped there last;
and there were a box and a couple of three-legged stools.
We carried the remnant of the wood-heap inside, made a fire,
and put the billy on. We unrolled our swags and spread the blankets
on the stretchers; and then we stripped and hung our clothes about the fire
to dry. There was plenty in our tucker-bags, so we had a good feed.
I hadn't shaved for days, and Dave had a coarse red beard with a twist in it
like an ill-used fibre brush -- a beard that got redder the longer it grew;
he had a hooked nose, and his hair stood straight up (I never saw a man
so easy-going about the expression and so scared about the head),
and he was very tall, with long, thin, hairy legs. We must have looked
a weird pair as we sat there, naked, on the low three-legged stools,
with the billy and the tucker on the box between us,
and ate our bread and meat with clasp-knives.
`I shouldn't wonder,' says Dave, `but this is the "whare"*
where the murder was that we heard about along the road.
I suppose if any one was to come along now and look in he'd get scared.'
Then after a while he looked down at the flooring-boards close to my feet,
and scratched his ear, and said, `That looks very much like a blood-stain
under your stool, doesn't it, Jim?'
--
* `Whare', `whorrie', Maori name for house.
--
I shifted my feet and presently moved the stool farther away from the fire --
it was too hot.
I wouldn't have liked to camp there by myself, but I don't think Dave
in a fight.
`"Good day, mates," he said.
`"Good day," we said.
`"It's hot."
`"It's hot."
`We went into the bar, and Poisonous got behind the counter.
`"What are you going to have?" he asked, rubbing up his glasses with a rag.
`We had two long-beers.
`"Never mind that," said Poisonous, seeing me put my hand in my pocket;
"it's my shout. I don't suppose your boss is back yet?
I saw him go in to Mulgatown this morning."
`"No, he ain't back," I said; "I wish he was. We're getting tired
of waiting for him. We'll give him another hour, and then some of us
will have to ride in to see whether he's got on the boose,
and get hold of him if he has."
`"I suppose you're waiting for your cheques?" he said, turning to fix
some bottles on the shelf.
`"Yes," I said, "we are;" and I winked at Jim, and Jim winked back
as solemn as an owl.
`Poisonous asked us all about the trip, and how long we'd been on the track,
and what sort of a boss we had, dropping the questions offhand now an' then,
as for the sake of conversation. We could see that he was trying to get
at the size of our supposed cheques, so we answered accordingly.
`"Have another drink," he said, and he filled the pewters up again.
"It's up to me," and he set to work boring out the glasses with his rag,
as if he was short-handed and the bar was crowded with customers,
and screwing up his face into what I suppose he considered
an innocent or unconscious expression. The girl began to sidle in and out
with a smart frock and a see-you-after-dark smirk on.
`"Have you had dinner?" she asked. We could have done with a good meal,
but it was too risky -- the drovers' boss might come along
while we were at dinner and get into conversation with Poisonous.
So we said we'd had dinner.
`Poisonous filled our pewters again in an offhand way.
`"I wish the boss would come," said Jim with a yawn. "I want to get
into Mulgatown to-night, and I want to get some shirts and things
before I go in. I ain't got a decent rag to me back. I don't suppose
there's ten bob amongst the lot of us."
`There was a general store back on the creek, near the drovers' camp.
`"Oh, go to the store and get what you want," said Poisonous,
taking a sovereign from the till and tossing it on to the counter.
"You can fix it up with me when your boss comes. Bring your mates along."
`"Thank you," said Jim, taking up the sovereigncarelessly and dropping it
into his pocket.
`"Well, Jim," I said, "suppose we get back to camp and see how the chaps
are getting on?"
`"All right," said Jim.
`"Tell them to come down and get a drink," said Poisonous;
"or, wait, you can take some beer along to them if you like,"
and he gave us half a gallon of beer in a billy-can. He knew
what the first drink meant with Bushmen back from a long dry trip.
`We got on our horses, I holding the billy very carefully, and rode back
to where our swags were.
`"I say," said Jim, when we'd strapped the swags to the saddles,
"suppose we take the beer back to those chaps: it's meant for them,
and it's only a fair thing, anyway -- we've got as much as we can hold
till we get into Mulgatown."
`"It might get them into a row," I said, "and they seem decent chaps.
Let's hang the billy on a twig, and that old swagman that's coming along
will think there's angels in the Bush."
`"Oh! what's a row?" said Jim. "They can take care of themselves;
they'll have the beer anyway and a lark with Poisonous
when they take the can back and it comes to explanations.
I'll ride back to them."
`So Jim rode back to the drovers' camp with the beer,
and when he came back to me he said that the drovers seemed surprised,
but they drank good luck to him.
`We rode round through the mulga behind the shanty and came out
on the road again on the Mulgatown side: we only stayed at Mulgatown
to buy some tucker and tobacco, then we pushed on and camped for the night
about seven miles on the safe side of the town.'
II. Told by One of the Other Drovers.
`Talkin' o' Poisonous Jimmy, I can tell you a yarn about him.
We'd brought a mob of cattle down for a squatter the other side of Mulgatown.
We camped about seven miles the other side of the town,
waitin' for the station hands to come and take charge of the stock,
while the boss rode on into town to draw our money. Some of us
was goin' back, though in the end we all went into Mulgatown
and had a boose up with the boss. But while we was waitin'
there come along two fellers that had been drovin' up north.
They yarned a while, an' then went on to Poisonous Jimmy's place,
an' in about an hour one on 'em come ridin' back with a can of beer
that he said Poisonous had sent for us. We all knew Jimmy's little games --
the beer was a bait to get us on the drunk at his place;
but we drunk the beer, and reckoned to have a lark with him afterwards.
When the boss come back, an' the station hands to take the bullocks,
we started into Mulgatown. We stopped outside Poisonous's place
an' handed the can to the girl that was grinnin' on the verandah.
Poisonous come out with a grin on him like a parson with a broken nose.
`"Good day, boys!" he says.
`"Good day, Poisonous," we says.
`"It's hot," he says.
`"It's blanky hot," I says.
`He seemed to expect us to get down. "Where are you off to?" he says.
`"Mulgatown," I says. "It will be cooler there," and we sung out,
"So-long, Poisonous!" and rode on.
`He stood starin' for a minute; then he started shoutin', "Hi! hi there!"
after us, but we took no notice, an' rode on. When we looked back last
he was runnin' into the scrub with a bridle in his hand.
`We jogged along easily till we got within a mile of Mulgatown,
when we heard somebody gallopin' after us, an' lookin' back
we saw it was Poisonous.
`He was too mad and too winded to speak at first, so he rode
along with us a bit gasping: then he burst out.
`"Where's them other two carnal blanks?" he shouted.
`"What other two?" I asked. "We're all here. What's the matter
with you anyway?"
`"All here!" he yelled. "You're a lurid liar! What the flamin' sheol
do you mean by swiggin' my beer an' flingin' the coloured can in me face?
without as much as thank yer! D'yer think I'm a flamin' ----!"
`Oh, but Poisonous Jimmy was wild.
`"Well, we'll pay for your dirty beer," says one of the chaps,
puttin' his hand in his pocket. "We didn't want yer slush.
It tasted as if it had been used before."
`"Pay for it!" yelled Jimmy. "I'll ---- well take it
out of one of yer bleedin' hides!"
`We stopped at once, and I got down an' obliged Jimmy for a few rounds.
He was a nasty customer to fight; he could use his hands,
and was cool as a cucumber as soon as he took his coat off:
besides, he had one squirmy little business eye, and a big wall-eye,
an', even if you knowed him well, you couldn't help watchin' the stony eye --
it was no good watchin' his eyes, you had to watch his hands,
and he might have managed me if the boss hadn't stopped the fight.
The boss was a big, quiet-voiced man, that didn't swear.
`"Now, look here, Myles," said the boss (Jimmy's name was Myles) --
"Now, look here, Myles," sez the boss, "what's all this about?"
`"What's all this about?" says Jimmy, gettin' excited agen.
"Why, two fellers that belonged to your party come along to my place
an' put up half-a-dozen drinks, an' borrered a sovereign,
an' got a can o' beer on the strength of their cheques.
They sez they was waitin' for you -- an' I want my crimson money
out o' some one!"
`"What was they like?" asks the boss.
`"Like?" shouted Poisonous, swearin' all the time. "One was a blanky long,
sandy, sawny feller, and the other was a short, slim feller with black hair.
Your blanky men knows all about them because they had
the blanky billy o' beer."
`"Now, what's this all about, you chaps?" sez the boss to us.
`So we told him as much as we knowed about them two fellers.
`I've heard men swear that could swear in a rough shearin'-shed,
but I never heard a man swear like Poisonous Jimmy when he saw
how he'd been left. It was enough to split stumps. He said he wanted
to see those fellers, just once, before he died.
`He rode with us into Mulgatown, got mad drunk, an' started out along the road
with a tomahawk after the long sandy feller and the slim dark feller;
but two mounted police went after him an' fetched him back. He said
he only wanted justice; he said he only wanted to stun them two fellers
till he could give 'em in charge.
`They fined him ten bob.'
The Ghostly Door.
Told by one of Dave's mates.
Dave and I were tramping on a lonely Bush track in New Zealand,
making for a sawmill where we expected to get work, and we were caught
in one of those three-days' gales, with rain and hail in it and cold enough
to cut off a man's legs. Camping out was not to be thought of,
so we just tramped on in silence, with the stinging pain coming between
our shoulder-blades -- from cold, weariness, and the weight of our swags --
and our boots, full of water, going splosh, splosh, splosh along the track.
We were settled to it -- to drag on like wet, weary, muddy working bullocks
till we came to somewhere -- when, just before darkness settled down,
we saw the loom of a humpy of some sort on the slope of a tussock hill,
back from the road, and we made for it, without holding a consultation.
It was a two-roomed hut built of waste timber from a sawmill,
and was either a deserted settler's home or a hut attached
to an abandonedsawmill round there somewhere. The windows were boarded up.
We dumped our swags under the little verandah and banged at the door,
to make sure; then Dave pulled a couple of boards off a window and looked in:
there was light enough to see that the place was empty.
Dave pulled off some more boards, put his arm in through a broken pane,
clicked the catch back, and then pushed up the window and got in.
I handed in the swags to him. The room was very draughty;
the wind came in through the broken window and the cracks between the slabs,
so we tried the partitioned-off room -- the bedroom -- and that was better.
It had been lined with chaff-bags, and there were two stretchers left
by some timber-getters or other Bush contractors who'd camped there last;
and there were a box and a couple of three-legged stools.
We carried the remnant of the wood-heap inside, made a fire,
and put the billy on. We unrolled our swags and spread the blankets
on the stretchers; and then we stripped and hung our clothes about the fire
to dry. There was plenty in our tucker-bags, so we had a good feed.
I hadn't shaved for days, and Dave had a coarse red beard with a twist in it
like an ill-used fibre brush -- a beard that got redder the longer it grew;
he had a hooked nose, and his hair stood straight up (I never saw a man
so easy-going about the expression and so scared about the head),
and he was very tall, with long, thin, hairy legs. We must have looked
a weird pair as we sat there, naked, on the low three-legged stools,
with the billy and the tucker on the box between us,
and ate our bread and meat with clasp-knives.
`I shouldn't wonder,' says Dave, `but this is the "whare"*
where the murder was that we heard about along the road.
I suppose if any one was to come along now and look in he'd get scared.'
Then after a while he looked down at the flooring-boards close to my feet,
and scratched his ear, and said, `That looks very much like a blood-stain
under your stool, doesn't it, Jim?'
--
* `Whare', `whorrie', Maori name for house.
--
I shifted my feet and presently moved the stool farther away from the fire --
it was too hot.
I wouldn't have liked to camp there by myself, but I don't think Dave
- waiting [´weitiŋ]
n.等候；伺候 (初中英语单词) - solemn [´sɔləm] a.严肃的；隆重的 (初中英语单词)
- supposed [sə´pəuzd] a.想象的；假定的 (初中英语单词)
- innocent [´inəsənt] a.无罪的；单纯的 (初中英语单词)
- sovereign [´sɔvrin] a.至高无上的 n.君主 (初中英语单词)
- tobacco [tə´bækəu] n.烟草(叶)；卷烟 (初中英语单词)
- charge [tʃɑ:dʒ] v.收费；冲锋 n.费用 (初中英语单词)
- customer [´kʌstəmə] n.顾客，买主，主顾 (初中英语单词)
- lonely [´ləunli] a.孤独的；无人烟的 (初中英语单词)
- working [´wə:kiŋ] a.工人的；劳动的 (初中英语单词)
- timber [´timbə] n.木材；木料；横梁 (初中英语单词)
- coarse [kɔ:s] a.粗(糙)的；粗鲁的 (初中英语单词)
- hooked [hukt] a.钩状的；上瘾的 (初中英语单词)
- presently [´prezəntli] ad.不久；目前 (初中英语单词)
- awkward [´ɔ:kwəd] a.笨拙的；为难的 (高中英语单词)
- seeing [si:iŋ] see的现在分词 n.视觉 (高中英语单词)
- crowded [´kraudid] a.充(拥)满了的 (高中英语单词)
- unconscious [ʌn´kɔnʃəs] a.无意识的；不觉察的 (高中英语单词)
- decent [´di:sənt] a.体面的，正派的 (高中英语单词)
- amongst [ə´mʌŋst] prep.其中之一 =among (高中英语单词)
- carelessly [´kɛəlisli] ad.粗心地；疏忽地 (高中英语单词)
- gallon [´gælən] n.加伦 (高中英语单词)
- parson [´pɑ:sən] n.教区牧师 (高中英语单词)
- bridle [´braidl] n.(马)笼头；束缚 (高中英语单词)
- crimson [´krimzən] a.&n.深(紫)红(的) (高中英语单词)
- remnant [´remnənt] n.残(剩)余 a.剩余的 (高中英语单词)
- poisonous [´pɔizənəs] a.有毒的；讨厌的 (英语四级单词)
- trying [´traiiŋ] a.难堪的；费劲的 (英语四级单词)
- cucumber [´kju:kʌmbə] n.黄瓜 (英语四级单词)
- weariness [wiərinis] n.疲倦；厌烦 (英语四级单词)
- taking [´teikiŋ] a.迷人的 n.捕获物 (英语六级单词)
- holding [´həuldiŋ] n.保持，固定，存储 (英语六级单词)
- ghostly [´gəustli] a.鬼的；朦胧的 (英语六级单词)
- sawmill [´sɔ:mil] n.锯木厂；锯机 (英语六级单词)
- abandoned [ə´bændənd] a.被抛弃的；无约束的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
章节正文
京公网安备 11011202003401号
