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On the Track-Part15_Henry Lawson(1867-1922)_English Literature(文学名著)-第2页

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no attempt to create, artificially, a breath of air through the buildings.



Unpainted, sordid -- hideous. Outside, heaps of ashes still hot and smoking.

Close at hand, "butcher's shop" -- a bush and bag breakwind in the dust,



under a couple of sheets of iron, with offal, grease and clotted blood

blackening the surface of the ground about it. Greasy, stinking sheepskins



hanging everywhere with blood-blotched sides out. Grease inches deep

in great black patches about the fireplace ends of the huts,



where wash-up and "boiling" water is thrown.

Inside, a rough table on supports driven into the black, greasy ground floor,



and formed of flooring boards, running on uneven lines

the length of the hut from within about 6ft. of the fire-place.



Lengths of single six-inch boards or slabs on each side,

supported by the projecting ends of short pieces of timber



nailed across the legs of the table to serve as seats.

On each side of the hut runs a rough framework, like the partitions



in a stable; each compartment battened off to about the size of a manger,

and containing four bunks, one above the other, on each side --



their ends, of course, to the table. Scarcely breathing space

anywhere between. Fireplace, the full width of the hut in one end,



where all the cooking and baking for forty or fifty men is done,

and where flour, sugar, etc., are kept in open bags.



Fire, like a very furnace. Buckets of tea and coffee on roasting beds

of coals and ashes on the hearth. Pile of "brownie" on the bare black boards



at the end of the table. Unspeakable aroma of forty or fifty men

who have little inclination and less opportunity to wash their skins,



and who soak some of the grease out of their clothes

-- in buckets of hot water -- on Saturday afternoons or Sundays.



And clinging to all, and over all, the smell of the dried, stale yolk of wool

-- the stink of rams!



. . . . .

"I am a rouseabout of the rouseabouts. I have fallen so far that it is



beneath me to try to climb to the proud position of `ringer' of the shed.

I had that ambition once, when I was the softest of green hands;



but then I thought I could work out my salvation and go home.

I've got used to hell since then. I only get twenty-five shillings a week



(less station store charges) and tucker here. I have been seven years

west of the Darling and never shore a sheep. Why don't I learn to shear,



and so make money? What should I do with more money?

Get out of this and go home? I would never go home



unless I had enough money to keep me for the rest of my life,

and I'll never make that Out Back. Otherwise, what should I do at home?



And how should I account for the seven years, if I were to go home?

Could I describe shed life to them and explain how I lived. They think



shearing only takes a few days of the year -- at the beginning of summer.

They'd want to know how I lived the rest of the year. Could I explain



that I `jabbed trotters' and was a `tea-and-sugar burglar' between sheds.

They'd think I'd been a tramp and a beggar all the time.



Could I explain ANYTHING so that they'd understand?

I'd have to be lying all the time and would soon be tripped up and found out.



For, whatever else I have been I was never much of a liar.

No, I'll never go home.



"I become momentarily conscious about daylight. The flies on the track

got me into that habit, I think; they start at day-break --



when the mosquitoes give over.

"The cook rings a bullock bell.



"The cook is fire-proof. He is as a fiend from the nethermost sheol

and needs to be. No man sees him sleep, for he makes bread



-- or worse, brownie -- at night, and he rings a bullock bell loudly

at half-past five in the morning to rouse us from our animal torpors.



Others, the sheep-ho's or the engine-drivers at the shed or wool-wash,

call him, if he does sleep. They manage it in shifts, somehow,



and sleep somewhere, sometime. We haven't time to know.

The cook rings the bullock bell and yells the time. It was the same time



five minutes ago -- or a year ago. No time to decide which.

I dash water over my head and face and slap handfuls on my eyelids



-- gummed over aching eyes -- still blighted by the yolk o' wool --

grey, greasy-feeling water from a cut-down kerosene tin






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