章节正文
the "boys" gathered round with a supply of liquor, and waited,
and somewhere along in the small hours there was a howl,
as of a strong Irishman in Purgatory, and presently the voice of the Flour
was heard to plead in changed and awful tones --
`"Pray for me soul, boys -- pray for me soul! Let bygones be bygones
between us, boys, and pray for me lovely soul! The lovely Flour's
in Purgatory!"
`Then silence for a while; and then a sound like a dray-wheel
passing over a packing-case. . . . That was the only time on record
that the Flour was heard to swear. And he swore then.
`They didn't pray for him -- they gave him a month. And, when he came out,
he went half-way across the road to meet the doctor, and he --
to his credit, perhaps -- came the other half. They had a drink together,
and the Flour presented the doctor with a fine specimen of coarse gold
for a pin.
`"It was the will o' God, after all, doctor," said the Flour.
"It was the will o' God. Let bygones be bygones between us;
gimme your hand, doctor. . . . Good-bye."
`Then he left for Th' Canary.'
The Babies in the Bush.
`Oh, tell her a tale of the fairies bright --
That only the Bushmen know --
Who guide the feet of the lost aright,
Or carry them up through the starry night,
Where the Bush-lost babies go.'
He was one of those men who seldom smile. There are many
in the Australian Bush, where drift wrecks and failures
of all stations and professions (and of none), and from all the world.
Or, if they do smile, the smile is either mechanical or bitter
as a rule -- cynical. They seldom talk. The sort of men who, as bosses,
are set down by the majority -- and without reason or evidence --
as being proud, hard, and selfish, -- `too mean to live,
and too big for their boots.'
But when the Boss did smile his expression was very, very gentle,
and very sad. I have seen him smile down on a little child
who persisted in sitting on his knee and prattling to him,
in spite of his silence and gloom. He was tall and gaunt,
with haggard grey eyes -- haunted grey eyes sometimes --
and hair and beard thick and strong, but grey. He was not above forty-five.
He was of the type of men who die in harness, with their hair
thick and strong, but grey or white when it should be brown.
The opposite type, I fancy, would be the soft, dark-haired, blue-eyed men
who grow bald sooner than they grow grey, and fat and contented,
and die respectably in their beds.
His name was Head -- Walter Head. He was a boss drover
on the overland routes. I engaged with him at a place
north of the Queensland border to travel down to Bathurst,
on the Great Western Line in New South Wales, with something over
a thousand head of store bullocks for the Sydney market.
I am an Australian Bushman (with city experience) -- a rover, of course,
and a ne'er-do-well, I suppose. I was born with brains and a thin skin --
worse luck! It was in the days before I was married, and I went by
the name of `Jack Ellis' this trip, -- not because the police were after me,
but because I used to tell yarns about a man named Jack Ellis --
and so the chaps nicknamed me.
The Boss spoke little to the men: he'd sit at tucker or with his pipe
by the camp-fire nearly as silently as he rode his night-watch
round the big, restless, weird-looking mob of bullocks
camped on the dusky starlit plain. I believe that from the first he spoke
oftener and more confidentially to me than to any other of the droving party.
There was a something of sympathy between us -- I can't explain what it was.
It seemed as though it were an understood thing between us
that we understood each other. He sometimes said things to me
which would have needed a deal of explanation -- so I thought --
had he said them to any other of the party. He'd often, after brooding
a long while, start a sentence, and break off with `You know, Jack.'
And somehow I understood, without being able to explain why.
We had never met before I engaged with him for this trip.
His men respected him, but he was not a popular boss: he was too gloomy,
and never drank a glass nor `shouted' on the trip: he was reckoned
a `mean boss', and rather a nigger-driver.
He was full of Adam Lindsay Gordon, the English-Australian poet
who shot himself, and so was I. I lost an old copy of Gordon's poems
on the route, and the Boss overheard me inquiring about it; later on
he asked me if I liked Gordon. We got to it rather sheepishly at first,
but by-and-by we'd quote Gordon freely in turn when we were alone in camp.
`Those are grand lines about Burke and Wills, the explorers,
aren't they, Jack?' he'd say, after chewing his cud, or rather
the stem of his briar, for a long while without a word.
(He had his pipe in his mouth as often as any of us, but somehow I fancied
he didn't enjoy it: an empty pipe or a stick would have suited him
just as well, it seemed to me.) `Those are great lines,' he'd say --
`"In Collins Street standeth a statue tall --
A statue tall on a pillar of stone --
Telling its story to great and small
Of the dust reclaimed from the sand-waste lone.
. . . . .
Weary and wasted, worn and wan,
Feeble and faint, and languid and low,
He lay on the desert a dying man,
Who has gone, my friends, where we all must go."
That's a grand thing, Jack. How does it go? --
"With a pistol clenched in his failing hand,
And the film of death o'er his fading eyes,
He saw the sun go down on the sand,"' --
The Boss would straighten up with a sigh that might have been half a yawn --
`"And he slept and never saw it rise,"'
-- speaking with a sort of quiet force all the time. Then maybe
he'd stand with his back to the fire roasting his dusty leggings,
with his hands behind his back and looking out over the dusky plain.
`"What mattered the sand or the whit'ning chalk,
The blighted herbage or blackened log,
The crooked beak of the eagle-hawk,
Or the hot red tongue of the native dog?"
They don't matter much, do they, Jack?'
`Damned if I think they do, Boss!' I'd say.
`"The couch was rugged, those sextons rude,
But, in spite of a leaden shroud, we know
That the bravest and fairest are earth-worms' food
Where once they have gone where we all must go."'
Once he repeated the poem containing the lines --
`"Love, when we wandered here together,
Hand in hand through the sparkling weather --
God surely loved us a little then."
Beautiful lines those, Jack.
"Then skies were fairer and shores were firmer,
And the blue sea over the white sand rolled --
Babble and prattle, and prattle and murmur' --
How does it go, Jack?' He stood up and turned his face to the light,
but not before I had a glimpse of it. I think that the saddest eyes on earth
are mostly women's eyes, but I've seen few so sad as the Boss's were
just then.
It seemed strange that he, a Bushman, preferred Gordon's sea poems
to his horsey and bushy rhymes; but so he did. I fancy his favourite poem
was that one of Gordon's with the lines --
`I would that with sleepy soft embraces
The sea would fold me, would find me rest
In the luminous depths of its secret places,
Where the wealth of God's marvels is manifest!'
He usually spoke quietly, in a tone as though death were in camp;
but after we'd been on Gordon's poetry for a while he'd end it abruptly with,
`Well, it's time to turn in,' or, `It's time to turn out,'
or he'd give me an order in connection with the cattle.
He had been a well-to-do squatter on the Lachlan river-side,
in New South Wales, and had been ruined by the drought, they said.
One night in camp, and after smoking in silence for nearly an hour,
he asked --
`Do you know Fisher, Jack -- the man that owns these bullocks?'
`I've heard of him,' I said. Fisher was a big squatter,
with stations both in New South Wales and in Queensland.
`Well, he came to my station on the Lachlan years ago
without a penny in his pocket, or decent rag to his back,
or a crust in his tucker-bag, and I gave him a job. He's my boss now.
Ah, well! it's the way of Australia, you know, Jack.'
The Boss had one man who went on every droving trip with him;
he was `bred' on the Boss's station, they said, and had been with him
practically all his life. His name was `Andy'. I forget his other name,
if he really had one. Andy had charge of the `droving-plant' (a tilted
two-horse waggonette, in which we carried the rations and horse-feed),
and he did the cooking and kept accounts. The Boss had no head for figures.
Andy might have been twenty-five or thirty-five, or anything in between.
His hair stuck up like a well-made brush all round, and his big grey eyes
also had an inquiring expression. His weakness was girls, or he theirs,
I don't know which (half-castes not barred). He was, I think,
the most innocent, good-natured, and open-hearted scamp I ever met.
Towards the middle of the trip Andy spoke to me one night alone in camp
about the Boss.
`The Boss seems to have taken to you, Jack, all right.'
`Think so?' I said. I thought I smelt jealousy and detected a sneer.
`I'm sure of it. It's very seldom HE takes to any one.'
I said nothing.
Then after a while Andy said suddenly --
`Look here, Jack, I'm glad of it. I'd like to see him make a chum
of some one, if only for one trip. And don't you make any mistake
about the Boss. He's a white man. There's precious few that know him --
precious few now; but I do, and it'll do him a lot of good
to have some one to yarn with.' And Andy said no more on the subject
for that trip.
The long, hot, dusty miles dragged by across the blazing plains
-- big clearings rather -- and through the sweltering hot scrubs,
and we reached Bathurst at last; and then the hot dusty days and weeks
and months that we'd left behind us to the Great North-West seemed as nothing,
-- as I suppose life will seem when we come to the end of it.
The bullocks were going by rail from Bathurst to Sydney.
We were all one long afternoon getting them into the trucks,
and when we'd finished the boss said to me --
`Look here, Jack, you're going on to Sydney, aren't you?'
`Yes; I'm going down to have a fly round.'
`Well, why not wait and go down with Andy in the morning? He's going down
in charge of the cattle. The cattle-train starts about daylight.
It won't be so comfortable as the passenger; but you'll save your fare,
and you can give Andy a hand with the cattle. You've only got
to have a look at 'em every other station, and poke up any that fall down
in the trucks. You and Andy are mates, aren't you?'
I said it would just suit me. Somehow I fancied that the Boss seemed anxious
to have my company for one more evening, and, to tell the truth,
I felt really sorry to part with him. I'd had to work as hard
as any of the other chaps; but I liked him, and I believed he liked me.
He'd struck me as a man who'd been quietened down by some heavy trouble,
and I felt sorry for him without knowing what the trouble was.
`Come and have a drink, Boss,' I said. The agent had paid us off
during the day.
He turned into a hotel with me.
`I don't drink, Jack,' he said; `but I'll take a glass with you.'
`I didn't know you were a teetotaller, Boss,' I said.
I had not been surprised at his keeping so strictly from the drink
on the trip; but now that it was over it was a different thing.
`I'm not a teetotaller, Jack,' he said. `I can take a glass or leave it.'
And he called for a long beer, and we drank `Here's luck!' to each other.
`Well,' I said, `I wish I could take a glass or leave it.' And I meant it.
Then the Boss spoke as I'd never heard him speak before. I thought
and somewhere along in the small hours there was a howl,
as of a strong Irishman in Purgatory, and presently the voice of the Flour
was heard to plead in changed and awful tones --
`"Pray for me soul, boys -- pray for me soul! Let bygones be bygones
between us, boys, and pray for me lovely soul! The lovely Flour's
in Purgatory!"
`Then silence for a while; and then a sound like a dray-wheel
passing over a packing-case. . . . That was the only time on record
that the Flour was heard to swear. And he swore then.
`They didn't pray for him -- they gave him a month. And, when he came out,
he went half-way across the road to meet the doctor, and he --
to his credit, perhaps -- came the other half. They had a drink together,
and the Flour presented the doctor with a fine specimen of coarse gold
for a pin.
`"It was the will o' God, after all, doctor," said the Flour.
"It was the will o' God. Let bygones be bygones between us;
gimme your hand, doctor. . . . Good-bye."
`Then he left for Th' Canary.'
The Babies in the Bush.
`Oh, tell her a tale of the fairies bright --
That only the Bushmen know --
Who guide the feet of the lost aright,
Or carry them up through the starry night,
Where the Bush-lost babies go.'
He was one of those men who seldom smile. There are many
in the Australian Bush, where drift wrecks and failures
of all stations and professions (and of none), and from all the world.
Or, if they do smile, the smile is either mechanical or bitter
as a rule -- cynical. They seldom talk. The sort of men who, as bosses,
are set down by the majority -- and without reason or evidence --
as being proud, hard, and selfish, -- `too mean to live,
and too big for their boots.'
But when the Boss did smile his expression was very, very gentle,
and very sad. I have seen him smile down on a little child
who persisted in sitting on his knee and prattling to him,
in spite of his silence and gloom. He was tall and gaunt,
with haggard grey eyes -- haunted grey eyes sometimes --
and hair and beard thick and strong, but grey. He was not above forty-five.
He was of the type of men who die in harness, with their hair
thick and strong, but grey or white when it should be brown.
The opposite type, I fancy, would be the soft, dark-haired, blue-eyed men
who grow bald sooner than they grow grey, and fat and contented,
and die respectably in their beds.
His name was Head -- Walter Head. He was a boss drover
on the overland routes. I engaged with him at a place
north of the Queensland border to travel down to Bathurst,
on the Great Western Line in New South Wales, with something over
a thousand head of store bullocks for the Sydney market.
I am an Australian Bushman (with city experience) -- a rover, of course,
and a ne'er-do-well, I suppose. I was born with brains and a thin skin --
worse luck! It was in the days before I was married, and I went by
the name of `Jack Ellis' this trip, -- not because the police were after me,
but because I used to tell yarns about a man named Jack Ellis --
and so the chaps nicknamed me.
The Boss spoke little to the men: he'd sit at tucker or with his pipe
by the camp-fire nearly as silently as he rode his night-watch
round the big, restless, weird-looking mob of bullocks
camped on the dusky starlit plain. I believe that from the first he spoke
oftener and more confidentially to me than to any other of the droving party.
There was a something of sympathy between us -- I can't explain what it was.
It seemed as though it were an understood thing between us
that we understood each other. He sometimes said things to me
which would have needed a deal of explanation -- so I thought --
had he said them to any other of the party. He'd often, after brooding
a long while, start a sentence, and break off with `You know, Jack.'
And somehow I understood, without being able to explain why.
We had never met before I engaged with him for this trip.
His men respected him, but he was not a popular boss: he was too gloomy,
and never drank a glass nor `shouted' on the trip: he was reckoned
a `mean boss', and rather a nigger-driver.
He was full of Adam Lindsay Gordon, the English-Australian poet
who shot himself, and so was I. I lost an old copy of Gordon's poems
on the route, and the Boss overheard me inquiring about it; later on
he asked me if I liked Gordon. We got to it rather sheepishly at first,
but by-and-by we'd quote Gordon freely in turn when we were alone in camp.
`Those are grand lines about Burke and Wills, the explorers,
aren't they, Jack?' he'd say, after chewing his cud, or rather
the stem of his briar, for a long while without a word.
(He had his pipe in his mouth as often as any of us, but somehow I fancied
he didn't enjoy it: an empty pipe or a stick would have suited him
just as well, it seemed to me.) `Those are great lines,' he'd say --
`"In Collins Street standeth a statue tall --
A statue tall on a pillar of stone --
Telling its story to great and small
Of the dust reclaimed from the sand-waste lone.
. . . . .
Weary and wasted, worn and wan,
Feeble and faint, and languid and low,
He lay on the desert a dying man,
Who has gone, my friends, where we all must go."
That's a grand thing, Jack. How does it go? --
"With a pistol clenched in his failing hand,
And the film of death o'er his fading eyes,
He saw the sun go down on the sand,"' --
The Boss would straighten up with a sigh that might have been half a yawn --
`"And he slept and never saw it rise,"'
-- speaking with a sort of quiet force all the time. Then maybe
he'd stand with his back to the fire roasting his dusty leggings,
with his hands behind his back and looking out over the dusky plain.
`"What mattered the sand or the whit'ning chalk,
The blighted herbage or blackened log,
The crooked beak of the eagle-hawk,
Or the hot red tongue of the native dog?"
They don't matter much, do they, Jack?'
`Damned if I think they do, Boss!' I'd say.
`"The couch was rugged, those sextons rude,
But, in spite of a leaden shroud, we know
That the bravest and fairest are earth-worms' food
Where once they have gone where we all must go."'
Once he repeated the poem containing the lines --
`"Love, when we wandered here together,
Hand in hand through the sparkling weather --
God surely loved us a little then."
Beautiful lines those, Jack.
"Then skies were fairer and shores were firmer,
And the blue sea over the white sand rolled --
Babble and prattle, and prattle and murmur' --
How does it go, Jack?' He stood up and turned his face to the light,
but not before I had a glimpse of it. I think that the saddest eyes on earth
are mostly women's eyes, but I've seen few so sad as the Boss's were
just then.
It seemed strange that he, a Bushman, preferred Gordon's sea poems
to his horsey and bushy rhymes; but so he did. I fancy his favourite poem
was that one of Gordon's with the lines --
`I would that with sleepy soft embraces
The sea would fold me, would find me rest
In the luminous depths of its secret places,
Where the wealth of God's marvels is manifest!'
He usually spoke quietly, in a tone as though death were in camp;
but after we'd been on Gordon's poetry for a while he'd end it abruptly with,
`Well, it's time to turn in,' or, `It's time to turn out,'
or he'd give me an order in connection with the cattle.
He had been a well-to-do squatter on the Lachlan river-side,
in New South Wales, and had been ruined by the drought, they said.
One night in camp, and after smoking in silence for nearly an hour,
he asked --
`Do you know Fisher, Jack -- the man that owns these bullocks?'
`I've heard of him,' I said. Fisher was a big squatter,
with stations both in New South Wales and in Queensland.
`Well, he came to my station on the Lachlan years ago
without a penny in his pocket, or decent rag to his back,
or a crust in his tucker-bag, and I gave him a job. He's my boss now.
Ah, well! it's the way of Australia, you know, Jack.'
The Boss had one man who went on every droving trip with him;
he was `bred' on the Boss's station, they said, and had been with him
practically all his life. His name was `Andy'. I forget his other name,
if he really had one. Andy had charge of the `droving-plant' (a tilted
two-horse waggonette, in which we carried the rations and horse-feed),
and he did the cooking and kept accounts. The Boss had no head for figures.
Andy might have been twenty-five or thirty-five, or anything in between.
His hair stuck up like a well-made brush all round, and his big grey eyes
also had an inquiring expression. His weakness was girls, or he theirs,
I don't know which (half-castes not barred). He was, I think,
the most innocent, good-natured, and open-hearted scamp I ever met.
Towards the middle of the trip Andy spoke to me one night alone in camp
about the Boss.
`The Boss seems to have taken to you, Jack, all right.'
`Think so?' I said. I thought I smelt jealousy and detected a sneer.
`I'm sure of it. It's very seldom HE takes to any one.'
I said nothing.
Then after a while Andy said suddenly --
`Look here, Jack, I'm glad of it. I'd like to see him make a chum
of some one, if only for one trip. And don't you make any mistake
about the Boss. He's a white man. There's precious few that know him --
precious few now; but I do, and it'll do him a lot of good
to have some one to yarn with.' And Andy said no more on the subject
for that trip.
The long, hot, dusty miles dragged by across the blazing plains
-- big clearings rather -- and through the sweltering hot scrubs,
and we reached Bathurst at last; and then the hot dusty days and weeks
and months that we'd left behind us to the Great North-West seemed as nothing,
-- as I suppose life will seem when we come to the end of it.
The bullocks were going by rail from Bathurst to Sydney.
We were all one long afternoon getting them into the trucks,
and when we'd finished the boss said to me --
`Look here, Jack, you're going on to Sydney, aren't you?'
`Yes; I'm going down to have a fly round.'
`Well, why not wait and go down with Andy in the morning? He's going down
in charge of the cattle. The cattle-train starts about daylight.
It won't be so comfortable as the passenger; but you'll save your fare,
and you can give Andy a hand with the cattle. You've only got
to have a look at 'em every other station, and poke up any that fall down
in the trucks. You and Andy are mates, aren't you?'
I said it would just suit me. Somehow I fancied that the Boss seemed anxious
to have my company for one more evening, and, to tell the truth,
I felt really sorry to part with him. I'd had to work as hard
as any of the other chaps; but I liked him, and I believed he liked me.
He'd struck me as a man who'd been quietened down by some heavy trouble,
and I felt sorry for him without knowing what the trouble was.
`Come and have a drink, Boss,' I said. The agent had paid us off
during the day.
He turned into a hotel with me.
`I don't drink, Jack,' he said; `but I'll take a glass with you.'
`I didn't know you were a teetotaller, Boss,' I said.
I had not been surprised at his keeping so strictly from the drink
on the trip; but now that it was over it was a different thing.
`I'm not a teetotaller, Jack,' he said. `I can take a glass or leave it.'
And he called for a long beer, and we drank `Here's luck!' to each other.
`Well,' I said, `I wish I could take a glass or leave it.' And I meant it.
Then the Boss spoke as I'd never heard him speak before. I thought
- liquor [´likə]
n.酒类；(溶)液 (初中英语单词) - presently [´prezəntli] ad.不久；目前 (初中英语单词)
- coarse [kɔ:s] a.粗(糙)的；粗鲁的 (初中英语单词)
- mechanical [mi´kænikəl] a.机械的；力学的 (初中英语单词)
- selfish [´selfiʃ] a.自私的，利己的 (初中英语单词)
- haunted [´hɔ:tid] a.常出现鬼的，闹鬼的 (初中英语单词)
- harness [´hɑ:nis] vt.上马具 n.马具 (初中英语单词)
- western [´westən] a.西的；西方的 (初中英语单词)
- silently [´sailəntli] ad.寂静地；沉默地 (初中英语单词)
- restless [´restləs] a.没有休息的 (初中英语单词)
- sympathy [´simpəθi] n.同情，怜悯 (初中英语单词)
- explanation [,eksplə´neiʃən] n.解释；说明；辩解 (初中英语单词)
- sentence [´sentəns] n.判决 vt.宣判；处刑 (初中英语单词)
- freely [´fri:li] ad.自由地；慷慨地 (初中英语单词)
- statue [´stætʃu:] n.塑像，雕像 (初中英语单词)
- pistol [´pistl] n.手枪 vt.用手枪射击 (初中英语单词)
- glimpse [glimps] n.&v.瞥见 (初中英语单词)
- mostly [´məustli] ad.主要地；多半；通常 (初中英语单词)
- wealth [welθ] n.财富，财产 (初中英语单词)
- poetry [´pəuitri] n.诗；诗意 (初中英语单词)
- abruptly [ə´brʌptli] ad.突然地；粗鲁地 (初中英语单词)
- connection [kə´nekʃən] n.联系；关系；联运 (初中英语单词)
- charge [tʃɑ:dʒ] v.收费；冲锋 n.费用 (初中英语单词)
- weakness [´wi:knis] n.虚弱；弱点，缺点 (初中英语单词)
- innocent [´inəsənt] a.无罪的；单纯的 (初中英语单词)
- knowing [´nəuiŋ] a.会意的，心照不宣的 (初中英语单词)
- half-way [´hɑ:fwei] ad.半途；几乎 (高中英语单词)
- specimen [´spesimən] n.标本，样品；抽样 (高中英语单词)
- pillar [´pilə] n.支柱 vt.用柱支持 (高中英语单词)
- straighten [´streitn] v.弄直；矫正；整理 (高中英语单词)
- crooked [´krukid] a.弯曲的；畸形的 (高中英语单词)
- rugged [´rʌgid] a.不平的；粗犷的 (高中英语单词)
- repeated [ri´pi:tid] a.反复的；重复的 (高中英语单词)
- sleepy [´sli:pi] a.困的，想睡的 (高中英语单词)
- decent [´di:sənt] a.体面的，正派的 (高中英语单词)
- jealousy [´dʒeləsi] n.妒忌；猜忌 (高中英语单词)
- strictly [´striktli] ad.严格地 (高中英语单词)
- starry [´stɑ:ri] a.星光照耀的，闪亮的 (英语四级单词)
- haggard [´hægəd] a.憔悴的 (英语四级单词)
- shroud [ʃraud] n.尸衣；覆盖物；罩 (英语四级单词)
- luminous [´lu:minəs] a.发光的；明晰的 (英语四级单词)
- well-to-do [,weltə´du:] a.小康的，富裕的 (英语四级单词)
- drought [draut] n.旱灾；干旱 (英语四级单词)
- fisher [´fiʃə] n.捕鱼人(船)；鱼貂 (英语四级单词)
- good-natured [´gud-´neitʃəd] a.脾气好的，温厚的 (英语四级单词)
- irishman [´aiəriʃmən] n.爱尔兰人 (英语六级单词)
- cynical [´sinikəl] a.讥诮的；冷嘲的 (英语六级单词)
- overland [´əuvə,lænd, ,əuvə´lænd] a.陆上的 ad.陆上 (英语六级单词)
- sydney [´sidni] n.悉尼 (英语六级单词)
- languid [´læŋgwid] a.精神不振的 (英语六级单词)
- speaking [´spi:kiŋ] n.说话 a.发言的 (英语六级单词)
文章标签:名著
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