Chapter I: MET Raeltoa in Apia one afternoon. He caught hold of my hand and

kissed it, and was full of grief, for poor little Damien, his daughter, was dead. I felt terribly cut up at hearing about it. She had caught influenza. Poor Raeltoa, I did my best to soothe him, and at his intense wish went out with him to the little grave. It was a terribly lonely pathetic spot—a tiny mound under a small coco-palm; the flowers were dying over my little dead friend, and Raeltoa and I stood there side by side and both felt very unhappy. I stayed with Raeltoa that night, and the next night, but did not sleep, for on the wall just by my bed hung the toy fiddle I had made and the bow. The strings were broken and the little warm hands that had held it lay in the grave. We were a sad family, Raeltoa, his wife, the children and I, and when I bade them good-bye they had tears in their eyes, and I also felt sad.

After bidding Raeltoa good-bye I found myself once more on my “beam-ends” and was extremely pleased to fall in with a young trader who hired me for canvassing purposes. He had purchased a quantity of trinkets and gaudy underclothing with the intention of travelling inland to the native villages, and so for some time I was employed in bartering with the Samoan men and youths. I often watched their delight as they attired themselves, as soon as they had purchased our goods, in old shirts of various shades. The dusky maidens danced and whirled with hysterical pleasure as they pulled on the yellow stockings or stood smiling in white shoes, on their arms tin bracelets sparkling with jewels made of coloured glass, while my friend the Cockney trader perspired with delight over his bargains, and the sights that we saw. “Gaud lummy ducks!” and “Ain’t this all right?” he would say as we watched the different youths and maidens doing double shuffles and turning head over heels as we dressed them up. Then we passed on under the tropic palms and mangroves to the forest track that led to the next village.

After I gave up peddling in the South Seas I became acquainted with a young apprentice who had left a ship at Apia, and he and I went off miles away to Tutuela and camped by Pangopango harbour and on the shore side we built a little hut and lived Robinson Crusoe lives. My comrade was a most cheerful companion and came from ’Frisco. We had fine times in that hut under the coco-nut trees, and lived mostly by fishing; the ports and lagoons below were crammed with small and big fish. We had an old catamaran and sailed around dressed in shirt and pants only, and we got so sunburnt that we were very nearly as brown as the natives. I could almost write a book about those times, so varied and delightful they were. Arthur Pink, for that was my comrade’s name, got a berth on the American steamer and went back to ’Frisco. He was a manly fellow, a staunch friend, and I was grieved to lose him. Before he went he got in with a Samoan tatau (tattooer) and had the history of Samoa tattooed on his back and legs, chiefs, women, birds and flowers, etc.; he tried to persuade me to get tattooed but I declined. Tattooing is a great art in the South Seas and the natives go through a deal of pain during the operations. Some of the flesh engravings are exceedingly well done; they perform the operation with an instrument something like a small tooth comb made of bone. The women try to outrival each other in the beauty of the tattooing which is mostly done on the lower part of the back and the thighs and hips, wonderful schemes of tattoo art.

Before closing this chapter I will give a few details about the Samoan and South Sea groups and the people thereon. The chief Isles of Samoa are Upolu, Savaii, Tutuela and Manua. They are all of volcanic origin, are surrounded by coral reefs and palm-shaded lagoons; from the shore side to the mountain slopes inland grow the dark coco-palms, the beautiful bread-fruit trees, mangroves, plantains and other wild tropical bush and fern-trees, wherein sparkle and flit gorgeous-coloured butterflies, green parrots and cooing droves of Samoan doves. In the shades of the forest and thick scrubby vegetation grow scented flowers and over the forest paths as you pass along in the cool evenings the winds from seaward, hovering in the thickets steal out in whiffs to your nostrils, whiffs that smell like honey mixed with the ripe breath of decaying bush flowers; on the slopes grows the beautiful hibiscus.

The mountain peaks, just inland, rise to the height of four thousand and five thousand feet. Dotted with forest they stand in rugged grandeur against the sky, and when the trade winds are blowing thick clouds come sweeping in from seaward, smash against the peaks on their swift flight, twisting and curling into a thousand magical shapes that fade away like monstrous herds of phantom elephants and distorted mammoth things as moonlight steals over the flying mist. Some of the mountains have enormous craters wherein grow baby forests, haunted by singing birds. In the gullies far below and miles beyond are native villages, homesteads that look like sheds, open all round so that the wind blows through and keeps them cool. From the forest up there you can see the heaving Pacific Ocean twinkling in the moonlight.

Apia is the capital of Upolu and has a very mixed population. The white buildings are mostly stores kept by Germans; nearly all the large buildings are missionary halls and churches, German, American and English chapels, wherein they teach the natives hypocrisy and the misery of hell, and they are such adept pupils that they soon outrival their teachers in the great art of artfulness. A good many of the Samoans can read and write English much better than the poorer class of England can. No Samoan would eat or even smell the food that the middle classes of England live on.

The main trade of Samoa is in copra. Copra is dried coco-nut and is exported to Australia and elsewhere. It is picked and cured and packed by the natives under the supervision of the whites, Germans and Americans, who get good profits and often make a fortune. It has never been known or recorded in any book that a Samoan ever made a fortune, which seems remarkable when we consider that it is his own country. There was a Samoan chief in the old days who endeavoured to make money out of his copra plantation, and bought up a lot of territory for coco-nut growing, but the missionaries, acting for the traders, frightened him out of his life, told him he would go to hell for putting his heathen mind into mundane things, and for his sins they fined him heavily and pinched all his copra plantation. He turned out to be a good chief and went into the building line and built many fine houses for the missionaries wherein were many rooms and great comforts. For this work he was given one tin of condensed milk a week and at the completion of the contract a paper-covered hymnbook.

The Samoans, Tongans and Tahitians are a handsome race, the men standing nearly six feet; they are well built and of a sunburnt colour, have dark bright eyes, thick curly hair which they dye to a golden hue, their temperament is cheerful, and they are always singing. The women are very good-looking, with roundish faces and full lips; their noses are inclined to get flat as they get old; they have earnest kind-looking eyes, well-shaped bodies and good limbs whereon the tattoo of ancient pictorial Samoa is beautifully engraved so as to show off the curves of the back and thighs and give them an antique appearance. In fact when they stand quite still under the coco-palms you could almost imagine they were beautifully finished statues if it were not for the flies buzzing round their eyes making them blink.

The native children are wistful, plump little mites; much prettier than European infants and very intelligent. They can swim at three months old; talk, run and sing at a year old, and if a Samoan had a child that sucked a dummy at six years old and wailed drivelling along in its pram at an advanced age, as the children of the wealthy class of England do, they would look upon it as a great curio and smother it for shame on the first starless night.

They are a clean race, and, except for the odour of the scented coco-nut oil which they polish their velvet skins with, do not smell of perspiration as the clothed white do in hot weather. A Samoan could not sleep or rest if a flea found him lying on his bed mat; if a flea is discovered in a Samoan house they know that a new-chum missionary has been hovering near. The native girls and women are naturally modest and they will blush at any coarse words or suggestions from white men; but they are very fond of finery, and so often fall before the lure of the whites, who are generally thousands of miles away when the victim becomes a mother. At heart they are extremely religious and innately feel that some great Power watches over them, but this feeling is gradually dying away under the influence of the missionaries, who look so human to their eyes as they live in luxury and wax fat in the best Samoan houses. The Samoan has seen everything as it is and knows that the white missionaries and traders are human beings like himself, looking for all they can get and enjoying life to the uttermost, and so the glamour is fading in the South Seas as it has faded in the West, where many still believe all they hear and read about the converted heathen who would rather die than sell his honour.

The whites consist chiefly of tourists, traders and missionaries of various sects. Many of the missionaries are honest in their profession, really believing all they teach, have weary eyes and remind one of those bedraggled flies that crawl up the windowpane looking for light. The traders are mostly rough, sunburnt, crooked-nosed men and do their best to do well and work hard at their various trades. Some are a strange mixture of the bushman and pirate. The honest ones toil hard to make money and settle down prosperous in a shanty, furnished with a large spittoon, pipes and cases of the best imported whisky, and a shakedown bed, as close as possible to the ground, so that they can crawl by night on their hands and knees from the nearest Apia bar-room straight into bed. Stolid, square-headed Germans abound and speak as though they helped to create the universe, drink a deal on the sly, are very coarse when drunk, and it does not matter how well a thing is done they are sure to say “But you should see the way they do that in Germany.” Most of the Europeans wear white duck pants and broad-brimmed straw hats, and do a deal of leaning against palm-trees, smoking and spitting, also loafing by Apia saloon-bars, where they stand in huddled groups beneath the coco-palms and watch the Samoans toddling by to the mission-rooms with Bibles under their arms.

As the steamers and schooners call into the harbour, tourists and sailors come ashore; some go on the spree, some get drunk and others go curio-hunting. Sometimes the élite of Australian towns arrive on tour and gaze on everyone with patronising eyes. I saw one lot from Sydney arrive, people of high standing too; they had receding chins and staring eyes like bits of glass rubbed over with fat and spoke with very conventional voices. The natives, scantily clothed, go shuffling through the streets, singing and jabbering. Apia smells of ripe bananas and tropical vegetation. It is the modern Garden of Eden; the ghosts of Adam and Eve roam the forest by night and listen to the laughter and wails of their fallen children as they eat of the forbidden fruit and the ships creep into the bays and again go seaward back to the shadows of the cities.

Sailors and rovers settle down in the South Sea capitals, talk all day of Rio, Shanghai, and Japanese girls that did the Eastern can-can, drunken sprees in ’Frisco, phantom ships and wonderful fifty-day voyages from London to Sydney on the _Cutty’s Ark_; old sea captains, mates with master certificates, disappointed men, wrinkled and sea-beaten Scotch engineers, dreaming of Glasgow, engine-rooms, donkey boilers and sea bilges, and that beautiful young woman at Marseilles who lay in their bunk berth so drunk that they could not wake her when the anchor was going up, so kept her aboard in secret the whole voyage out to Melbourne, where she went ashore and became a lady governess, taught French, eventually married a vicar in the suburbs and became “Visiting lady” and was beloved by all for her purity and winning ways. The ancient old man from the Solomon Isles with sad eyes is to be seen there too, still laughless and grim over the tragedy of that long-ago night when his white wife disappeared, and after exploring the Island forest the cannibalistic natives found him starving, gave him drink and meat, and next day by the strangest coincidence possible he discovered that he had eaten his own wife. The great truth of truth being stranger than fiction is vividly revealed in all you see and hear in the Islands of the far-away Pacific, where the good men brush aside the conventionalities and go the whole hog, and the old sinners of the European cities, seeking a haven of rest from the law, with all their passions withered and asleep, become virtuous and moralise. They are strange old fellows, good company and extremely interesting as they sit by their bungalows and talk at night by South Sea shores. The waves steal over the coral reefs and murmur mysteriously by the lagoons of magic lands, dark with forest branches; midnight stars are reflected in the clear harbour waters as the blue vault of heaven over your head gleams with worlds that are twinkling and flashing and you dream you hear them singing, and see writ on the wonderful canvas of starry space the bright eternal words, expressing the tremendous loneliness of Infinity that swallows up human imagination, leaving us only wonder and hope.

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XXII

I leave the South Sea for Australia—Arrive in Sydney—I get hard up and
take a Partnership in a Flower Seed Business—The Stockman’s Daughter
Ethel—I meet an old-fashioned Australian Bushman—He gives me a
Night’s Lodging—I meet with Queensland Blacks—Alone in the
Bush—Brisbane

WITH regret I now leave the South Seas and once more start off on my wanderings accompanied by my modest and faithful friend who always sang happily or sadly in response to my own feelings—my violin.

Hornecastle was sorry to see me go. He and several comrades saw me off as the anchor went up and I sailed away. I felt sad enough, for I had seen some strange times and a good deal of life in those lovely Isles of the Pacific.

I can still see the outrigged canoes following our ship across the bay out to sea; they were filled with Samoans waving their hands and crying bitterly as their departing relatives, all huddled round me on the deck, sobbed loudly as they too waved their farewells, wiping their eyes with their hands and tail ends of their scanty clothes, old sailor shirts and cast-off European underclothes. It was a sad sight to see them moaning by the ship’s rail and those who saw them off paddling away to keep in sight as long as possible—daughters and sons, fathers and mothers, bobbing about in the sunset water, some with their babies perched on their backs, as the ship’s screw thundered full speed ahead and they faded away.

Those emigrants were innocent Islanders, who I have no doubt had been promised fine rewards to entice them to leave their native Isle for a term of three years, where to go I did not know. Some of the sailors said their destination was New Guinea, others the Queensland sugar plantations; anyhow I am quite sure the best of the bargain was not on their side. One of the women made an attempt to leap over the ship’s side and escape, but her friends held her back, but they all continued to wail and howl like children as they fully realised that they were really off on the big ship bound for other lands! Some of them lay on the deck flat on their bellies, beating it with their hands; the elder men gazed with tears in their eyes across the wake at their home-staying friends, till the following canoes and their native shores died away. I doubt if many of them ever saw their native Isle again. I hope they did. They were stuffed down in the forepeak just by the fo’c’sle all together, women and men.

In a few days they were all themselves again, pattering along the decks singing away, cursing the cook’s life as they took their food to him to cook, bread-fruit, stuff which he baked for them in the galley, also jams which tasted something like dried-up baked turnips. I shall never forget the surprise of those Samoans as we entered Sydney Harbour. As soon as Circular Quay came in sight round the bend they lost control of themselves completely, waving their arms about in their excitement pointing to the big buildings, opening their mouths, showing their white teeth and shining eyes agog, just like little children at their first Lord Mayor’s Show.

Two days after I met them walking down George Street dressed up in robes and sandals, all close together looking at the shops. They stay in Sydney a few days and then they are shipped off to their final destination.

I was glad to be in Sydney again, where I met chief-mate Poppy, who afterwards was an officer on one of the clipper ships whereon I too voyaged. He was a fine fearless sailor, square built, and had merry grey eyes. I spent a lot of time with him for I had a little cash left and took things easy for a few days.[8] I went to the post office and found two letters from home and some cash. I immediately wrote to England asking forgiveness for not writing before and assured them all that I was getting on well. I forget now what I really said in that letter, but I know that I gave myself a leg-up, as they say, and did a bit of blowing on my own account. Anyway whether all I said was true or not it made them happy and I was very pleased also when the reply came telling me how proud they all were at my success in life, and two or three pages of good advice how to keep the success going.

Footnote 8:

Mr Poppy later became captain on a clipper ship, and was lost with all
hands off Cape Horn.

Ah! dear English people, do not believe all the wonderful things you hear from your children abroad. Did you hear the real truth you would not call round on your relatives reading that letter over and over till your voice got husky, but it may be that you would sit on your bed and weep your heart out. I’ve seen your successful sons, have sat by them in the dirty lodging-house attic and watched them write those things that made you happy. I have also been their solitary visitor in the hospital as they died of disease and then I have sent the last letter home and felt too wretched to write home myself. Of course some _do_ get on and do very well, but some of the adventurous boys are weak with their passions, and so go to the wall. I could say a good deal on this subject, but I will leave it for someone else. But while I am on the subject I must say it would be well if fathers took their sons aside and told them of those temptations and the awful results before they sent them across the world alone. I will tell you this much—hundreds of fine young fellows have found themselves stranded in the colonial cities, slept out, got into bad company and yielding to the temptations of despair have never been heard of again for five or even ten years, as most of the Australian gaols are away in the bush many miles up country and the prison notepaper arriving in England would tell the tale. So time goes on and the bright English lad, the pride of the school and the mother’s joy, emerges from the gaol door, embittered by confinement, his only comrades the convicts who were released before him and whom he naturally seeks in sympathy and so becomes that which he never in his wildest dreams dreamed of becoming. But I must not get into the habit of moralising over the downfalls and temptations that meet the emigrant youth who arrives in the colonies as I did, expecting to see a workless world and a life before him of charming adventure. So I will proceed with my own immediate experiences.

I am by nature very lazy while I have got money in my pocket, and this failing impeded my progress in the times I am telling you about. Nevertheless I enjoyed myself, went up George Street and purchased a good rig-out, and then went round sight-seeing and very soon I was on my beam ends again. I was lucky enough to fall in with an English fellow who lodged with me in a side street out at “The Glebe.” He and I became good comrades and as soon as he got to understand my position and dubious future he took me also into his confidence and we eventually became partners in the flower seed business which he carried on from an office in “The Royal Arcade.” It sounds a big address, but it was only a small office. I think the rent was eight shillings a week. In that little office we packed up the flower seeds together and I myself blossomed into a real business youth once again, but it was not half as lonely as that teashop of mine which I have told you about.

Off we would go each morning out into Sydney suburbs, each with a little bag crammed to the brim with choice seeds of English flowers. I at once wrote home a letter pouring over with enthusiasm about my dreams of future wealth, coming from a prosperous business, but the hard work soon began to tell on my temperament, and my resolution to get on in the world by doing work oozed away as I perspired at the doors of the wooden houses out in Burwood and Paramatta, while my chum stood illustrating to the open-mouthed colonial women the height and beauty of the flowers that would glorify their gardens if they bought our seed.

Well, to cut it short, my comrade went off to Melbourne to some relatives and handed me over the whole show. This turn of affairs renewed my old trust in the business, and though I was sorry to lose my friend I bucked up and kept on with the business. Indeed, it was my only hope; my best clothes were in pawn, also my violin. I went next morning to the office and filled up hundreds of bags with seed which I thought corresponded with the flowers illustrated upon them and off I went, taking a book with me full of the names of customers, and very soon I ingratiated myself into their favour and they all promised to deal with me as they had done with my comrade.

How it all happened I don’t know, but I had made a mistake and placed a hundredweight of turnip and cabbage seed into the choice flower packets, and when I went off to Paramatta, my best district, a week or so after, I was met at the doors by irate men and women who swore that I had deliberately played a trick upon them, and when I arrived at the house of a nursery garden manager who had bought a whole year’s stock from me and found that the whole of the specially laid flower beds were producing nothing else but cabbages and turnips, I had to fly for my life. One old woman raced after me down the Paramatta main road swearing that she would do for me; by Jove, I did run as she waddled shouting far behind! And that was the end of the flower seed business. All of those people knew my business address, as it was on the packets in large crimson lettering, so I crept into the office early next morning, packed the scales up, locked the door and bolted off. The scales were the only things in the office that I could raise money on and I sold them for fifteen shillings and that same day I took a berth on a coaster for Brisbane.

I think it took three days to get round. I was delighted to see the old place again. I had taken my violin out of pawn and the day after I arrived I went away up country and got a job on a ranch about fifty miles from Cooktown, and there I blossomed into a real “boundary rider,” as they call them out there. My boss was an Irishman, his wife was English, and a dear creature she was too. There was an old Chinaman working for them and he got fearfully jealous of me as soon as I became a favourite with the girls, for Kelly, that was my boss’s name, had three daughters and one son. I did not like the son, he was a grumpy ignorant chap, and I had as little to do with him as possible.

Ethel, the eldest daughter, and I became good friends and I taught her to play the violin; she was not what the world would call good-looking, but I saw something in her face that put good looks in the shade. She had fine grey eyes, and one evening when we were sitting by the homestead in the bush, and the parrots were settling to roost in the gums and orange-trees around us, I leaned over her to show her how to hold the violin bow in professional style, and she gazed up at me with an earnest look, and before I could help myself I held her closely to me and kissed her. She blushed and we forgot all about the violin practice and many were the nights that she and I went out into the beautiful bushlands together and I made her happy. I knew that she loved me; her mother was in the secret and gave me every encouragement, and though I got to hate the monotony of bush life I put up with it all gladly so as to keep near that simple bush girl. I thank God that I did too, for the first great sorrow of my life came out of my affection for her. Suddenly she became sick; to our horror she developed typhoid fever and I was the last to kiss her dead face. I cannot tell you any more about it even after all these years; a part of my heart is in that lonely bush grave away across the world in Queensland.

I was terribly cut up over that sorrow, and though that homestead of the bush became more lonesome to me than ever, I stayed on for nearly two months for the sake of the stockman’s wife whom I became very fond of as she knew my feelings and I knew hers. I am not ashamed to tell you that when at last I wished her good-bye I broke down and kissed her as a boy would his mother. I often wrote to her afterwards and I have some of her letters now, and beautiful letters they are too.

I did not care much where I went at that time. On an old Australian hack I rode away intending to go to Cooktown so that I could get round to Brisbane, but the spirit of adventure was in my blood and I altered my course and left the track and travelled north-west. I had a good swag of provisions made up for me by the stockman’s wife, and so I felt secure as far as food was concerned as I rode over the scrub-covered rolling hills of that lonely country. That night I made a fire just to keep me company and camping there alone with the birds and trees around me I slept with my heart in that bush grave.

Next morning I rose early and started off again and before sunset I came across a shanty wherein lived an old bushman. He was very kind to me and asked me to stay the night, which I did. I slept on a trestle bed by him in the one dingy small room. He was an old man, and as the moonlight crept through the small window-pane and revealed his sleeping face I noticed that he had lost all his teeth, and every time he breathed his lips would puff out and then go inwards, making a ghostly chanting noise at regular intervals throughout the whole night. I got quite nervous and never slept a wink till daylight crept across the tree-tops outside and a kind of sweet reality stole over the hut-bedroom as I closed my weary eyes and slumbered, but only for about ten minutes, for he had slept well and waking up with the light he started to make a deuce of a row, chopping wood. I left early that morning and from that day to this I have never slept with toothless old men.

He was a real Australian bushman, I could tell that by his conversation, which consisted of about twelve words during my stay, the longest sentence of all was the first at our meeting by his hut door when he looked at me for a minute and then said, “Want some tucker?” meaning food. “Yes, thanks,” I answered, and when I had eaten up ravenously all he put before me he sat and smoked by the door, and after an hour’s silence said, “Turn in?” Again I answered “Yes,” and when I left in the morning he simply said, “Good luck, chum,” and closed the door on me. This sounds a bit far-fetched, but it’s true enough! Through living in the bush they all get taken that way and almost forget their own language and look upon you as a nuisance if you ask more than one question a day.

Once more on my own, as they say out there, I started off. It was sweltering hot. I did my best to keep in the shelter of the tall gum forest that covered the hills for miles around me, and seeing no more signs of houses about the whole day I began to consider it would be best for me to alter my course and make for Cooktown as I originally intended doing. I did so, and camping on the steeps that night I saw a ring of smoke curling up almost opposite to the side of the slope whereon I had camped. Leading my horse I went over the rim of the hill expecting to see a homestead, and as I looked down a swarm of black awful-looking faces huddled around a bush fire looked up at me with startled eyes. I had stumbled across a camp of the roving Queensland blacks! There they sat, black, pot-bellied, nude women and men, some of them holding short clay pipes between their thick protruding lips. I had heard that they were quite harmless, and so I bravely walked down the slopes and introduced myself. The head of the band was a stalwart ferocious-looking fellow and tried to speak to me. “White fella all lone,” he said. I shook my head and said “No,” at the same time pointing behind me over the hills so as to let him think that I was not alone. There is nothing like being too careful with blacks; they are harmless enough, so I had heard, but I did not want to give them a chance to profit over their old instincts. There are even white men in lonely bush lands who would crack you over the head if their exchequer was getting low and the addition of another man’s would make the outlook brighter, and so I was wise in my answer.

I shall never forget the sight of those aboriginals and their startled eyes as, squatting there, some huddled in dirty Government blankets, they watched their meal cooking, which consisted of green frog and fat lizards that bubbled and squeaked in the glowing fire ash. One fat, awful-looking woman asked me in broken English if “white man got baccy.” I felt relieved to think I could do her a good turn, and quickly gave her a small piece of ship’s plug tobacco, which she snatched out of my hand without a word of thanks. They were all nearly naked; there were four women and about a dozen men and they all continued to stare up at me as I stood by them, their bright dark eyes shining through their thick matted hair. The old woman to whom I had given the tobacco quickly tore it up with her long fingers and sat there with her chin on her knees puffing at her short clay pipe, her lips dribbling and smacking together like the flapping wet sails of a becalmed ship as she puffed away.

It was terribly hot, and as the sunset died away behind the gum clump on the skyline I took off my coat and vest and kept only my pants on, tied the legs of my horse so that she would not roam too far off and sat down by those wild bush blacks and taking my violin out of my swag I started to play a jig. Their eyes lit up at once with wonder and I was obliged to let them all carefully examine the instrument. They looked inside of it, turned the pegs and even smelt it, but could not understand where the music came from, and the one baby that clung by its mother looked at me as though it would have a fit each time that I started to play. They had no idea of melody but a good idea of time, and all started to move their bodies to and fro as I extemporised a strain which I thought would suit the occasion. One old fellow with extraordinary thin legs and a big protruding belly started off in one of their native dances. Up went his legs skyward and once or twice he almost turned a somersault, and his shadow in the moonlight mimicked him on the slope side as its head bobbed out of the gum-tree tops that towered just over him. I did not like the idea of sleeping with them, so I packed my violin in my swag and pointed to the hills and intimated to them by nods and signs that I must go and join my comrades, and off I went over the slope, and as soon as I thought I was clear away from them I camped at the bottom of a steep gully and, tired out, I fell asleep.

When I awoke the sun was blazing through the trees at the side of the gully height, and I sat up, and looking round I missed my swag. Running to the top of the slope I looked around; my horse too had vanished. As quickly as I could hurry along I went down to where I had left the blacks. There was the fire ash and round it a circle of naked foot prints, but not a sign of them in sight. They had crept over the hills while I had slept and stolen my swag and horse and left me standing alone in that wild country perfectly helpless with nothing on but a pair of pants!

I gazed like one in a dream on those footprints and the camp fire ash. I was terribly thirsty and at once started off to find water. I was soon successful and on my knees I blew the scum off the creek pool and drank. I don’t know how I got through that day, but I did, and before nightfall I had reached a wooden house on top of a hill. I crawled round to the side door and knocked. A young girl opened it and seeing me in such a state quickly slammed it and the stockman came rushing to the door to see what was the matter, a gun in his hand, and if I hadn’t been quick, as it was nearly dark, I really think I should have been shot. I soon explained matters to him and he proved a kind fellow, gave me an old suit and I stayed there for three weeks and helped him to build an outhouse. He paid me well and I arrived back in Brisbane with nearly five pounds in my pocket.

I had had enough of the Australian bush and made up my mind to get employment in the towns. Before my money had gone again I started to look for work, but only succeeded in getting a job in a restaurant in Queen’s Street. My duty was to wash the dishes and wait on the customers. It was not at all in my line, and I could not get any sleep.

The first night was an unpleasant one; my bed was one of a number in a dirty top room and up till about two in the morning the door would keep opening as those who were partially sober carried in men who were blind drunk and placed them on the beds by me. I sat up in my bed utterly miserable and watched one red-nosed, black-bearded besotted-looking man drivel at the mouth, swear and groan as he made vain attempts to get his boots off, and once or twice he looked round at me with an idiot-like stare and said, “Hello, maish, s-how are you?” and bending towards me affectionately, tumbled on the floor. And another one in the far corner would often stick his head out of the dirty sheets and shout, “Wash’s the time?” So no one will blame me when I tell you that I crept downstairs at daybreak and bolted. About a week after I was covered with a tremendous rash and was the most miserable youth in Australia. I took a motherly woman into my confidence and I soon got rid of them: bugs and fleas are real comrades compared to those terrible things that I took away with me when I left that restaurant bedroom. I can assure you that I never worked in a restaurant again and even now I am nervous in the presence of drunken men whom I do not know well. Hornecastle was bad enough, but there was something about him that inspired confidence as well as disgust.

I always found the motherly women were my best friends when I was in trouble, for though I had not got a cent they generally took me in and waited till I obtained employment. I suppose they saw that I was young and respectable, and in the colonies, in those days, there were hundreds of young fellows on their beam ends who were trying to make a way for themselves, and as they always paid up at the first opportunity these women generally had faith in the derelicts that tramped about the towns of “the land of the golden fleece” looking for work.

I got a job in a furniture warehouse and stayed there for quite three months until business got slack. I being a new hand received the “sack.” My roaming instincts took me down to the wharf and I was in with the seafaring men again, heard once more the wonderful tales of adventure on the seas and in far countries, but I was not quite so interested as I had previously been, for I too had seen a bit of the world and no longer believed all that those sea-beaten old salts told me. Nevertheless I liked their companionship; they were so frank and jovial in their narratives. I came across two or three of the men whom I had known when I was first stranded in Brisbane and several of us got a job painting the side of a large sailing ship that lay alongside. I slept on board with the crew in the fo’c’sle and got in with a young German who had worked his way out at “a shilling a month” and had not got the pluck to leave the ship, and so intended to work his passage back to London. Influenced by me, however, he altered his mind and stayed behind. He was a steady fellow, older than I was, I think about twenty years of age. He had one failing which I well remember: he was always running after the girls and thought of little else.

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XXIII

I stow away—Rescued by Sailors—Emigrant Derelicts—I go up
Country—Memories

THERE was a large tramp steamer alongside of the wharf; she was getting up steam to go away and was bound for London. I thought it was a fine opportunity to try and get a berth together, but it was no go, as they say, so my German friend and I made up our minds to stow away. I had about two shillings in my pocket, so went up into the town and bought two loaves of bread and one pound of cheese, and that night without any trouble we stole aboard and went down the stokehold and hid away in a coal bunker, and being young and optimistic we both slept well. In the morning we sat side by side in the blackness of that ship’s hold and heard the noise overhead as they hammered the main hatch down and the rusty rattle of chains as the tug boat took her in tow.

“Do you think they will lock us down?” my friend said, and I began to feel in a bit of a funk; she was still alongside, and we both crawled out of our hiding-place to see if the bunker lid where we had crawled through was still open. It was shut! I am sure that we both turned white at that moment, but we were feeling desperate and my comrade climbed up and, pushing the bunker lid, to our intense relief it opened and let in the light.

“Let’s get out of it,” I said, and in a moment we both crawled out on to the deck. We were then on the starboard side; the funnel was smoking away and the crew all on the port side drawing in the tackling; otherwise we should have been noticed. Quickly creeping along the deck I saw the forward hatchway open.

“Let’s get down here,” I said, and in a trice I jumped down and falling on a bale of cargo slipped to the lower hold. She was carrying a light cargo and was evidently going to call somewhere else before fastening down for the long voyage across the world. I had fallen with a fearful smash, and looking up to see what had become of my chum I saw his face peep over the hatch-side and then dodge away as the crew overhead lifted up the hatchway covering and down it came with a crash. All was at once dark. I was then alone, a prisoner at the bottom of that ship’s hold.

At first I felt dazed and strangely calm; then I suddenly realised my position and cried out at the top of my voice and scrambled about in the dark over the bales of cargo trying to get up to the hatchway and make myself heard. What happened to my friend I don’t know; he certainly never told the crew about me, and though I hoped he had done so I hoped on in vain and lay there almost breathless with horror as the time went on. Then I felt the motion of the vessel as she moved away and before nightfall I heard the seas beating against the ship’s iron side as I sat imprisoned in the dark below the water line in the worst predicament that I ever was in in my life. To make things worse out came the rats! It seemed to me that there were thousands of them scampering about the cargo as I shouted myself hoarse, praying to God that I should at last be heard, and when everything seemed hopeless I sat for a time and felt pretty bad.

Presently a reaction set in and I started exploring, thinking that if I could get up forward toward the fo’c’sle I could thump on the deck and the sailors in the off watch would hear me. I began to feel terribly sick as the vessel pitched and rolled and the smell of the cargo thickened the already stifling atmosphere till I heard myself breathing heavily.

Crawling slowly along I managed to get to between-decks, and to my intense relief I saw a wisp of light through a chink. You can imagine my delight at that moment as I made towards it. It was the forepeak hatchway. I heard voices; someone was sitting on it! Placing my mouth against that crack I shouted “Hello!” and I heard the voices suddenly cease and someone jump; as quickly as possible I shouted once more through the crack. “It’s all right, I’m a stowaway! Don’t give me away.” “Who are you, matey?” came the answer. All my old courage returned to me when I heard that gruff kindly voice, and I quickly enlightened the questioner, and in ten minutes I was out and snug in the fo’c’sle sitting on a sea-chest, the crew around me. They were English sailors and you can bet they did not give me away. I discovered that we were calling in at Sydney. It was an easy matter to keep me hidden for two days in there among them. The only one I had to keep out of sight from was the bos’n.

We had a fine time that night; one of the men had a banjo and another a fiddle. I borrowed it from them and we had a concert to ourselves. They fed me up too, I can assure you that sailors are the finest men in the world to fall in with when you are down on your luck. It was an easy matter when we arrived in Sydney Harbour for me to get away, and they managed it. As soon as the anchor dropped and we got alongside they gave me the tip, down the gangway I went, and some of them stood grinning on the deck as I stood on the wharf safe and waved my hand back to them.

I had a good wash and brush up and soon looked very different to what I did when those sailors first discovered me, begrimed, smothered in coal dust and perspiration. There I was, once more thrown up on the beach in Sydney.

I will draw a veil over a good many of the days of my life after that time. I fell in with the ne’er-do-wells of the Australian cities, the happy-go-lucky castaways of “better times,” who slept out on the “Domain,” in dustbins and in the cave holes of the rocky shore round by the Botanical Gardens, where you could sleep and hear the waters creeping, singing up the shore by your pillow all night long, as you slept a penniless beggar far from your native land. You could open your eyes in the silent hours of the night and see the outbound sailing ships as the rigging flitted across the moonlight and the crew sang some homebound song as the ship met the outer foams and started on the long, long track home. The awful stench from Woolloomoolloo Bay came on the wind round the bend at intervals, like the hot breath of reality across your dreams.

I read some wonderful poems in those days, sad ones too, poems with weary eyes that told the remorse, the long remembering, but not the tale itself. Dressed in rags I have seen them sleeping on “the rocks” as the white Australian moonlight revealed pinched refined faces; men they were from the cities of the world, who were hiding from their homeland disgrace, and some who had believed the Arabian Night tales from the Land of the Golden Fleece, sold up their all in England to sink to the lowest depths of poverty and humiliation in the country where it is every man for himself and God for the lot.

How well I remember that time and those nights among the Lost Brigade, as they slept huddled around me on the matting of the “Donkey’s Breakfast,” as they call the bunk mattresses which are thrown away and piled up in wharf sheds when emigrant ships arrive. Snoring wrecks, a few with low-bred faces who could not read or write and others with refined-looking faces notwithstanding the scrubby beard that half hid them, many boys also around, too shabby to get work and too wretched to want it. One young fellow, through starvation and homesickness, went off his head. He had an emotional, girlish face and was not more than eighteen years of age. We cheered him up and I’m sure I did my best, but he would keep muttering to himself and swore that spirits were charging him in regiments all night long as he howled and brandished his arms about fighting them. One night he got up and ran off; we heard a splash in the bay. He was buried out at “Rookwood” with the hundreds of others who sleep in nameless graves, forgotten for years, till _Lloyd’s Weekly_ says, “Wanted, the whereabouts of A. B.; left home in the year ——. Mother inquires.”

I have been telling you the seamy side of the life of the seaboard cities. Of course it is not all seamy. Sydney flourishes and is happy, with her big streets, her skirts dipping into the bay, her bright Botanical Gardens, a kind of tropical Hyde Park kissed by curling sea waves, and near those gardens is the wide Domain. What a happy hunting-ground for an Australian Charles Dickens that Domain would have been, and still is! The emigrants still go seaward and are dumped down to scramble to hell or dubious fame and fortune, while the ships go flying homeward to old England full up with the remnants who landed on the preceding voyage out!

* * * * *

After coming ashore from my stowaway trip, I lodged in a small top room in Lower George Street, which was very different to Upper George Street. By my dwelling-house the Chinese lived in their opium dens. Some of them were very well off and had managed to secure white wives. How those white women could stand them I don’t know. At sundown they would stand by their den doors and looked like mummies peeping from their upright coffins with twinkling eyes! Wrinkled yellow faces they had, and you could always tell their presence by the peculiar smell that came in faint whiffs from their shop doors mingled with the odour of orange pekoe, for they mostly sold tea or pretended to, but really played “fan-tan” in those gambling dens, and did other awful things as the innocent old shrivelled spy stood at the door watching, picking his yellow teeth with a long skewer. No one in Australia has ever seen a Chinaman drunk; he takes his opium and nectar in an arm-chair in the stuffy room at the back of his shop, and with his long opium pipe in his mouth goes off back to China in dreams, when his stupefied head no longer hears the traffic outside as the crowds hurry by and the Jack Tars from the men-o’-war boats in the bay go rollicking up the street “half seas over,” singing, arm in arm, and inside that innocent-looking den the white wife goes through the celestial’s pockets as the Australian “bum” stands up at the street corner waiting with greedy hand to receive his half. Five hundred yards up the street stood the splendid post office and all the business shops of the commercial world of Sydney.

After a month’s stay in the town I once more went up country and secured work on a station, staying there nearly nine months. I became quite colonised as I toiled in the pumpkin fields, rode for miles over the slopes behind the flying sheep, and slept in a little outhouse by the stockman’s homestead. I would sit and dream of home as over my head the parrots wheeled away toward the sunset and the station children romped and screamed with laughter. Sometimes as I sat thinking and remembering my mind wandered back to Queensland and Ethel’s grave in the bush. I often lay in that little hut unable to sleep till dawn crept over the gum tops and the lyre-bird’s song chimed the first peeps of sunrise over the hills. Two miles away was another station whereon worked two other young Englishmen. I often rode across the bush at sundown to see them and we would sit and yarn together about England, and all get homesick over our dreams. Dell, the youngest of the two, was thrown from his horse and killed. His friend William and I often went across at evening time and placed flowers on his grave and then walked away with thick throats, unable to speak to each other.

The Australian bush is the most melancholy place in the world to brood over sorrows. The music of most of the bush birds has a prophetic note in it—they wail away as though foretelling dire disaster; after sunset myriads of frogs and locusts start to chant and chirrup mournfully; over the solitude comes at long intervals the wail of the dingo, and often like the phantom of some lost dead child from the gullies a wailful scream from a bird that no one ever sees. I have often lain in my bunk by night and looked through the little window hole and watched the migrating cranes and other birds with long outstretched necks pass under the moon, bound southward; they looked just like skeletons on wings, their bones tinkling together as they passed swiftly across the moonlit sky right overhead. I devoted a good deal of my time to music and violin-playing in those quiet bush nights, and some of the very melodies which are in the strains of my military band solos were composed at that period.

William and I became close friends, linked together by the sorrow over our dead comrade, and eventually we gave notice to our employers and both went off “on the Wallaby” and “humped the bluey,” as they say in the bush.

We followed that life for a long time and became real “sundowners.” The atmosphere of that roving life has never wholly left my mind; the songs of the birds in the gums and the winds moaning and bending the leafy clump tips overhead during the nights, as we slept below, still echo through my memories. He and I were happy together, and I found him a beautiful friend. I can see his sky-blue eyes now, as he wondered and listened to me when I told him of my adventures in the South Sea Islands. Night after night we would sit by our camp fire and stare, side by side, into the glowing embers as overhead sang some sweet night bird, serenading our memories as we dreamed of home. My chum had a quiet earnest voice and would sit there and sing wild sea chanteys as I played an accompaniment on the violin.

And often in the night I hear,
Above the wind and rain,
My old chum singing in the hills
Those wild sea songs again.

He had an old bent-up cornet in his swag, and I took a few lessons from him, and while I practised the scales in the silence of the night the very hills seemed astonished as the echoes answered one another and died away across the solitude, and away the frightened bush animals scampered as though the devil was after them! And sometimes in the daytime as the parrots passed overhead across the blinding sky they would hear those notes and croak dismally and hurry faster on their skyward voyage.

One evening, just as we were camping for the night, we sighted over the slope a genuine old bushman tramping along with his swag on his back. We invited him to stay the night; it took a long time to wake him up, but we succeeded, and his scrubby sunburnt face lit up with delight as my comrade sang and I played the fiddle. I never before or since saw such a dried-up old relic as he was. He had a big broken nose and black teeth through chewing tobacco plug for many years. I never saw him spit; he swallowed the juice. We managed to draw a few remarks out of him, and I remember him saying that he had known Ned Kelly the bushranger in the early days and mumbled a deal about how the times had changed and the meanness of the station bosses, for he seemed to get his living by cadging at the stations as he tramped along from day to day and month by month, looking for work. He seemed very methodical in his habits, for as we sat by the fire talking, and darkness came swiftly across the slopes, he at once carefully took his boots off—he did not wear socks—and, placing them side by side under his dirty blanket swag, put his feet toward the camp fire, laid flat on his back, bit a large bit of black tobacco plug off, and chewing the end fell asleep.

He left us in the morning at daybreak, went across the scrub with his swag on his back and disappeared under the gums and never looked back once.

Some of those old swagsmen are wise old men with venerable grey beards, mouths that seldom speak, and their grey eyes gaze steadily as though they can see through you, for they have wonderful instinct developed through years of practice.

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XXIV

The Deserted Hut—Visiting in the Bush—Stockriders

THERE were a lot of lonely men in those days, tramping the ocean-wide bush lands, real helmless derelicts of humanity, as they staggered on the currents of luck into the stockman’s farm at sunset, wailed their pitiful tales of better days behind, mumbled their thanks over the tea and sugar given by a kindly hand for their billy-can, and tramped away once more into the solitude of gums and scrub. On and on they go that way till they die.

One afternoon, while we were both sitting under the shade of a gum clump out of the stare of the flashing eye of the sun, I noticed some white bones gleaming in the dried-up grass and scrub. It was the skeleton of some bushman; a rotten swag blanket lay under the white skull and the knee bones were drawn up to the chest, showing the way he died out there alone. As the white night mists crept over the hollows and the winds stirred the gums over that relic of loneliness, both sad at heart, we turned away and did not camp till we were miles away from that spot. The impression left after that sight hung on us for a long time.

Once we came across an old bush shanty by a river side. We crept in its little doorless room; through chinks overhead we saw the blue sky and the blossoms of wild vines that clung over the rotting roof. The old chair was still there velveted all over with grey moss, and the hearth was thick with bush flowers. On the wall still hung the photo of a young girl; the face though nearly faded away was a strikingly sweet one; we felt instinctively that some sorrow, some long-ago romance, was connected with that photograph. There was the mouldy bunk-bed wherein the bushman had slept, and outside under an old gum, surrounded by wattle bush in full bloom, was a grave, a small roughly made cross over it, and that told us all as we stood by it while the frogs chanted in the marsh just below. I can tell you that the sight of that tiny ancestral hall, rotting out there in the silence, and the grave hard by, affected me much more than if I had stood among the ruins of Imperial Rome.

A day or so after we arrived at the station, about twenty miles from Arrawatta, and both tired out fell asleep on a bank just below a stockman’s big wooden house and were both suddenly awakened by a loud, gruff, but kindly voice saying, “Hello, youngsters, would you like some tucker?” We sat up quickly and did not require any persuasion as that big bearded fellow astride his horse told us to follow him up the slope. When we arrived inside his wife had the table already laid; they had noticed us both asleep on the slope outside and there is no place in the world that can beat the colonial squatter for helping the bush wanderers who are down on their luck. By Jove! we did have a feed, and as my friend and I told the tall daughter, the squatter and his wife our adventures and all we had seen they seemed to admire our pluck and did all they could to cheer us up and invited us to stay the night, which we did. There was a vineyard on the next slope, and in a shed close by enormous bins full of the new season’s wine. I think we must have drunk about two quarts each; I know that it livened us up, and that night before going to bed we all sang and my comrade and I sang and played to them some homeland songs. They had a visitor over from the next ranch. He was an Irishman with merry blue eyes and a large pug nose. He owned the world’s largest feet; I never saw such feet, and though he got drunk and did step dances and jigs and swayed dangerously about, he never fell, for as soon as he lost his mental balance his feet came to the rescue; on them he swayed often with a terrible port or starboard list, but always just in the nick of time slowly righted himself. Irishmen are like Englishmen out in Australia. When they hear that you are from the “Old Country” out comes their hand and in a firm grip you are sworn friends. The Irishman will give you anything you ask for, will half undress himself and place his clothes on your back, even though you don’t want them; you are liable, however, to be sworn enemies at daybreak when the reaction sets in, but if you know the way to manage them they are soon smoothed over and you will find that you can keep about half of the clothes without further threats.

We were near the border line that separates New South Wales and Queensland then, and when we left next day we came across the drovers marching across the country behind their cattle, bound south I think. I can still see them in my mind as they passed away from us over the sweltering hot plains, sitting astride their horses and cracking their stock whips over their heads as the long ring of dancing flies that wheeled round and round their big-rimmed hats parted in two and then joined itself again, started to dine viciously off the eyes, necks and steam that rose from the stockrider and his steed. It’s not all honey (except for the flies), but nevertheless the bush drovers in their wild life on the plains have happy lives; always on the move, they camp, yarn, smoke and sing across the bushlands, always many miles away from the spot where they camped the night before, and they have supplied the Australian poets with any amount of inspired work in the songs of the bush and of the rollicking men of the plains.

About a week after seeing those drovers pass by we arrived at a place called “Bummer’s Creek” and stayed there for several days, helping Riley the boss to build some outhouses. There seemed a good many loafers hanging about that small township, for the Australian bush climate does not inspire men to work. We were offered two horses at five shillings each and I at once bought them. We sat astride, William and I, and proudly waving our hands bade the men of the township farewell as we started up the slope. I plied the stock whip and in less than half-an-hour we had almost travelled three hundred yards! I was not much of a judge of horse-flesh at that time, and I felt pretty wild at being so sucked in. Two of the bushmen crept up the slope and then suddenly discharged their revolvers close to the ears of those two horses of ours, and that seemed to wake them up and off we went! Before sunset we looked back and were out of sight of the township. I got terribly sore through the protruding backbone of that stubborn beast; sometimes William would dismount and laughing get behind and push it as its big eyes stared like soap bubbles with fright. I felt sorry for it though, especially when its underlip protruded as though through extreme nausea it yearned to be sick and couldn’t. My comrade’s horse was nearly as broken up as mine. We held a consultation together and decided to turn them adrift. Away they went across the bush that night; we saw their delighted tail stumps sticking up as they galloped across a patch of moonlight and disappeared and became wild horses of the boundless plains.

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XXV

Before the Mast—Bound for San Francisco—Man Overboard—I see ’Frisco High
Life—My first Funeral Expenses—Joss Houses—Guest my Friend