Chapter IV: Part 4

The boy next him began to moan, and in spite of the shrieking wind and the howling sea Harper made out that his hands were aching, that he was perished with cold and could not hold on any longer.

“Nonsense, lad, nonsense!” and he took off his strong leather belt and buckled it round the shroud and round the boy’s body, “there, that ‘ll give you a helping hand. Hold on now.” Then as the boy thanked him, he saw by a stray and watery moonbeam it was young Angus Mackie.

“It’s right on your own coast, Angus, we ‘ve come to grief.”

“I ‘m thinking,” said the lad, “it’s right on our own place. I ‘m thinkin’ yon light--not the fire, the one we saw first--is our ain kitchen fire. Mony ‘s the time I ‘ve been seein’ it an’ me out fishin’ here.”

“But the fireplace doesn’t face the door,” wondering to himself why it was he discussed such things now.

“Naw, but there ‘s a bit mirror agin the wall, it reflects things. Oh, mony’s the time I’ve seen it. Mither, she wanted it in the parlour; but Susy, she was saying we were living in the kitchen, and it made things brighter like. Dad, he was for sayin’ it was a snare o’ the Evil One; but Susy, she had her way.”

So after all it was his sweetheart’s natural girlish longing after pretty bright things that had lured them to destruction. Should he die to-night it was her innocent hand that had dealt the blow. The boy beside him was thinking the same thing, and presently he said, “When she comes to know, what’ll she say?”

Harper said nothing. If it had been possible he would have prayed the boy to keep the knowledge from her; but he knew it was not possible. If any man escaped from this wreck, he would surely tell of the light they had mistaken for the new leading mark, and if they all perished--well--then there would be no need to plead for silence. The sea keeps her own secrets.

“Susy is gone on ye, sir,” said the boy again, “why wouldn’t ye have her?”

It hardly seemed strange to him now, the question he would have resented fiercely at any other time.

“Have her!” he repeated, and looking down, he noted that the last wave had left behind it a great crack in the deck, and he heard the skipper moaning, “Oh, the poor barkie, the poor barkie!” and knew that he too had seen it. “Have her? She wouldn’t have me.”

“But--but--she--”

“She didn’t think I was good enough,” explained Harper hastily.

“She told ye that!--oh, Lord! They ‘ve been at her about that pious psalm-singer Clement Scott. Ye try again when we get ashore. She’s goin’ to stop a bit wi’ Aunt Barnes, at South Yarra, this Christmas. T’ auld girl hates t’ psalm-singer, an’ she ‘ll do the job for ye. Oh, Lord! oh, Lord! I ‘m starved wi’ the cold.”

“It ‘s not so long now,” said Harper, and suddenly he felt as if the night were stretching itself into interminable years. The bar that Susy had thought so hopeless, so insurmountable, was it really but a thing of straw? Was there really a chance for him yet? Was there really anything in the lad’s careless words? And hope awoke again in his breast, and with the hope a raging bitterness against the fate that was putting a barrier once more between him and the attainment of those hopes. She loved him, she had acknowledged that she loved him, and now to be free to win her! The eagerness for life awoke in him again. Who said the world was dreary? Who said life was not worth living? A bright, fair world stretched enticingly before him, and he was dying. Yes, dying--they were all dying, the old ship was breaking up fast, and if succour did not come quickly--He drew a long breath and looked down through the rain, that was falling in torrents now, at the decks below. One moment all was hidden by the raging seas, the next by the faint moonlight he saw the cracks widening--widening--then came another great sea, and he felt the ship bump heavily on the rocks. No, it was the poorest chance that she should last till morning, they--these men hanging to the rigging--had no chance whatever of living in the sea that boiled around them. Wider and wider grew the cracks on deck, the water was pouring into the hold, and the cargo was being washed out of her. One bale of wool--two--three--rose up on the next wave. A bale of wool! What is a bale against a man’s life? And yet the skipper was moaning pitifully over their loss.

“My great Scott! eighteen hundred bales of wool gone! What will the owners say? The poor old barkie! The poor old barkie! How shall I face the owners?”

So! so! and his chances of facing those owners seemed so pitifully small, and yet the old man’s thoughts were full of it. Sometimes he moaned over the wife and children in faraway England, but not as one who gives up all hopes of seeing them again, only as one who maybe had brought them to bitter poverty and pain by his mischance, for would the owners give him another ship, now he had lost the old _Vanity?_ “Hardly likely,” he muttered to himself. “Hardly likely.” And so the bitter night wore on. There was nothing to mark the hours as they passed. Now a man moaned a little, now another cried aloud that he could hold on no longer, that he must fall and die before morning. Always there was the sea, sweeping over the decks and halfway up the mast towards them, with wearisome monotony. Great squalls of rain came up every now and then, blotting out all else and making all round inky-black; then they passed, and the pale and watery moon showed them the shore quite close, and the raging waters between. The tongue of the ship’s bell had broken loose somehow, and the wash of the sea made it toll with mournful cadence. It rose clear and loud, even above the shrieking of the gale, and Harper fitted its notes to his own words. “Never more,” it seemed to say; and then, as a heavier sea than usual swept over the wreck, shaking her down to her very keel, “Never, never more.”

And yet on shore the fire leaped and danced. Kindly anxious hands were feeding it, and it was impossible not to think that the men who would stay out on such a bitter night, were not doing all they knew for the help and succour of these helpless men. There were rocket apparatus stationed along the coast, and if the ship would only hold together long enough, why should they not all be saved? If she only would. Ben Harper was feverish in his desire for life now. He must live; he must see Susy once again, he must--he must! And eagerly he watched for the dawn.

So long the night, so long, so long. Is it a truth that our hours of gladness and our hours of pain are all of a length? Surely not. The night wore on, and it seemed to those waiting men that the longed-for morning would never come. But gradually the moon sank behind the dark mass of the land to leeward, and in the east came the first faint streaks of dawn.

A shout rose up from the weary waiting men, a shout Harper fancied he heard echoed faintly from the shore. Then the day was born, stormy and cold, and the light only showed them a handful of men clinging to a wreck, which each sea threatened to break into a thousand pieces.

“Merciful God!” cried the skipper, as the daylight showed him the full extent of his peril, “my poor wee wife!”

But if the daylight showed them their danger it showed them too that those on shore had not been unmindful of them. The ugly cliffs, steep and inaccessible, were not very high, and on the nearest point to the wreck, not indeed one hundred yards away, a little knot of men were getting ready the rocket apparatus. There were women there too, with shawls thrown over their heads, and Harpers heart beat as he thought of seeing his love again. Surely now--now that he came to her from the very jaws of death--cast up out of the cruel sea--she would not reject him. Would she not rather take it as a sign from her God that she was to wed this man? Surely she would. In another few minutes he would be by her side--a little longer and he might hold her in his arms again. How long--how long? O God! if they would only make haste. Could they not see that every moment was precious, that the old ship was breaking up fast?

He began to count the men in the rigging, nineteen of them, men and boys, and the skipper was helpless with a broken leg. It would take them some time to get off. And yet not so long though--once they had the rope aboard.

They got the apparatus fixed at last, and then “swish.” They could not see anything, for it was broad daylight now, but they heard the sigh of the rocket as it passed and knew it had missed. A despairing cry went up from the perishing men, for they, like the second mate, were counting their chances and reckoning them poor indeed. It almost seemed a matter of minutes now.

Again the men on shore tried, and this time the shout that went up was one of triumph. The thin line lodged beautifully over the mast, and the men in their awkward position hauled it in, and it seemed as if they had home and happiness within their grasp when the block came along.

Very carefully they made the thick rope fast round the mizzen lower masthead, the bo’sun still brisk and cheerful after the terrible night which he had spent in the rigging, his only covering a pair of torn dungaree trousers.

“None of your darned men-o’-war slippery hitches about this,” said he; and Harper, as he saw the breeches-buoy come along the stout cable, could have shouted as the men were doing. Here was happiness and safety--here was the woman he loved--nay, should he not say rather the woman who loved him--waiting on shore for him, and would she deny him now he had come through so much? His little girl, his darling! One by one he watched the men go, he watched the breeches-buoy swallowed up in the raging waters, he watched them received on shore as men risen from the dead, and he counted eagerly the moments till his turn should come. They knew now on shore the name of the ship. Was that woman on shore looking seaward, his Susy? She had a red shawl, he remembered, as we do remember trifles in the supreme moments of our life. That must be Susy, and she was thinking of him. Only six now. And now only five. For one brief moment he felt as if he were tasting the bliss of perfect happiness. Could he have doubted that a merciful God ruled this world of ours? Ah, little girl, you shall learn a newer, purer, more pitiful faith, and Ben Harper will be your teacher, and then--and then---- All the exultation went out of his heart, for his eye fell on the tail of the block and he saw that it was stranded. It had lain there--that thick rope--in its house, carefully kept against the day of need, day after day, week after week, year after year, and the long waiting had told on the stout rope, slowly it had rotted, slowly--and no man knew it. And now in the day of need when a good man’s life depended on it, it was failing. Was it though? Only three more men. And now only two--only the old skipper and himself. No one had noticed the rope, and where was the good of speaking of it. He watched the breeches-buoy, coming back to them, and clearly, clearly he read as in letters of fire that one of those two must die. Twelve hours ago he would have given his life for the skipper’s, gladly, willingly; but now--now it was different. It was his right to live, he’ told himself fiercely--his right, just as it was the right of the skipper to be the last to leave the ship. He was an old man, what was his life to him?--loyal enough to his owners--a rough old sea-dog, hard and even cruel at times--he was old, he had lived his life, he must be the one to stay. Even for the wife and children’s sake--the owners were not hard men--they would see they did not starve. And he must see Susy again--just hold her in his arms once again. Sweetheart, sweetheart, who so dear in all the world? It was his right to go, he told himself again. Then he cut the lashings with which they had bound the skipper to the mast, the breeches-buoy was so close now and it was easier for him to do it. The old man might find a difficulty by himself, and he would want to be all clear when next the buoy came back. When next the buoy came back! He looked at the stranded rope and knew that the buoy would never come back. Hardly would it reach the shore. Certain it was it would never come back, and the wreck was breaking up fast. It was his right to go, and no one would know. And even if they did, he was only taking his rights. How could he give his life, with all its fair possibilities, all its high hopes, for this worn-out old shellback? And the buoy was here!

“You go, sir. It’ll only make a few minutes’ difference, and I can help you. You’re hurt, and you’ll find it hard to manage by yourself.”

The old man demurred a moment--staunch old sailor, he would have stuck to the ship to the last, but the mate said again, “It only makes the difference of a minute or two, sir. That’s nothing.”

He could not send a message--not one. Why should he? They would never understand. The fair-haired girl would never know how he had longed for her this night.

Down, down went the buoy, and the waters swallowed it up. A great wave--another--he had done with life, for the rotten rope had parted at last!

But on shore there was great rejoicing, for they hauled the skipper up out of the sea, bruised and hurt and half drowned, but still alive; and the cry went round that he was the last man left aboard the Vanity.

Then the bo’sun put up his hands and squinted through them seaward.

“Jimini! there’s the mizzen mast gone! Poor old girl!”

“An’,” said another voice, the voice of the man who had left before the skipper, “there was two men aboard when I left, an’ one of ‘em was the second mate. Where is he?”

“Gone to ----,” but a woman’s bitter cry cut short the bo’sun’s speech.

DICK STANESBY’S HUTKEEPER

“Hallo! Dick. You here! Why, I thought you were away up tea-planting in Assam.”

“And I thought you were comfortably settled down on the ancestral acres by this time.”

“No such luck. The ancient cousin is still very much to the fore. Has taken to himself a new wife in fact, and a new lease of life along with her. She has presented her doting husband with a very fine heir; and, well, of course, after that little Willie was nowhere, and departed for pastures new.”

“Make your fortune, eh! Made it?”

“Of course. Money-making game riding tracks on Jinfalla! Made yours?”

“Money-making game riding tracks on Nilpe Nilpe.”

The two men looked at each other, and laughed. In truth, neither looked particularly representative of the rank and aristocracy of their native land. The back blocks are very effectual levellers, and each saw in the other a very ordinary bushman, riding a horse so poor, the wonder was he was deemed worth mounting at all. Both were dusty and dirty, for the drought held the land in iron grip, and the fierce north wind, driving the dust in little whirls and columns before it, blew over plains bare of grass and other vegetation as a beaten road.

Around them was the plain, hot and bare of any living creature, nothing in sight save a low ridge bounding the eastern horizon, a ridge which on closer inspection took the form of bluffs, in most places almost inaccessible. Overhead was the deep blue sky, so blue it was almost purple in its intensity, with not a cloud to break the monotony. Sky and desert, that was all, and these two Englishmen meeting, and the shadows cast by themselves and their horses, were the only spots of shade for miles.

“Sweet place!” said Guy Turner, looking round. “Warmish too. Wonder what it is in the shade?”

“In the shade, man. There ain’t any shade, unless you count the shadows of our poor old mokes, and mine’s so poor, I ‘ll bet the sun can find his way through his ribs. I ‘ve been in the sun since daybreak, and I reckon it is somewhere about boiling point.”

“I suppose it must be over 1600. What the dickens did you come out for?”

“Well, seeing it’s been like this for the last three months, and is likely to go on for three more, as far as I can see; it ain’t much good stopping in for the weather; besides there’s this valuable estate to be looked after. But to-day I rode over for the mails.”

“What, to the head-station?”

“Lord, no! The track to Roebourne passes along about twenty miles off over there, and I get the boss to leave my mail in a hollow tree as he passes.”

“Trusting, certainly. There ‘s some good about this God-forsaken country.”

Dick Stanesby, or, to give him his full name, Richard Hugh De Courcy Stanesby, shrugged his shoulders scornfully.

“Evidently, Dick, that mail wasn’t satisfactory. Has she clean forgot you, Dick, the little white mouse of a cousin, with the pretty blue eyes? She was mighty sweet on you, and------”

But there was a frown on Dick’s usually good-tempered face. He was in no mind to take his old chum’s pleasantry kindly, and the other saw it, and drew his own conclusions therefrom.

“Chucked him over, poor beggar, I suppose. Hang it all! Women are all alike; once a man’s down, he’s forgotten,” but he did not speak his thoughts aloud. He looked away across the sweltering plain, and said casually,

“Where do you hang out, old man?”

Stanesby pointed east in a vague sort of manner, that might indicate South Australia, or far distant New South Wales.

“Got a shanty on the creek there,” he said laconically.

“Creek, is there a creek? The place looks as if it hadn’t seen water since the beginning of the world.”

“Oh, there’s a creek right enough. I believe it’s a big one when it rains, but it hasn’t rained since I ‘ve been here, and there ain’t much water in it. Just a little in the hole opposite the hut. The niggers say its permanent. Springs, or something of that sort.”

“Niggers! That’s what I ‘ve come over about. They’ve worried the life out of us on Jinfalla. Taken to spearing the cattle, and the men too if they get a chance. Old Anderson thinks we ought to have some ‘concerted action,’ and settle the matter once for all.”

“H’m. Wipe ‘em out, I suppose he means?”

“It’s what a squatter generally means, isn’t it, when he talks about the blacks? Sounds brutal, but hang it all, man, what the devil is a fellow to do? They ‘re only beasts, and as beasts you must treat ‘em. Look here, there was a young fellow on our run, as nice a boy as you ‘d wish to see--his people were something decent at home, I believe, but the lad had got into some scrape and cleared out, and drifted along into the heart of Western Australia here. He was riding tracks for old Anderson about two hundred miles to the west there. He didn’t come in last week for his tucker, so they sent word for me to look him up.”

“Well?” for Turner paused, and drew a long breath.

“Well--same old nip, of course. His hut was burnt, and he and his hutkeeper--I tell you, Dick, it won’t bear talking about--he was a lad of twenty, and the hutkeeper was an old lag, might have been seventy to look at him, but when I found their bodies down by the creek, I couldn’t tell which was which.”

“It’s bad,” said Stanesby, “very bad. What did you do?”

“Buried ‘em, of course, my mate and I, and shot the first buck we came across skulking in the bush. What would you have us do?”

“It’s all bad together,” said the other man, with an oath. “The blacks about here are tame enough if you let ‘em alone, but these young fellows get meddling with their women, and--well----”

“That ‘s all very well, but you didn’t find a mate too ghastly a corpse to look at, or you wouldn’t take the matter so coolly. You ‘d have done just as I did. Something must be done, old man, or the country won’t be habitable.”

They had been riding along slowly, side by side, one man eager, anxious, interested, the other evidently with his thoughts far away. The mail he had got that morning was stuffed into his saddlebags, and the news it brought him made him think longingly of a home in far-away England, a creeper-covered house, and a cosy room with a bright fire, and the rain beating pleasantly on the windows. Rain--he had not seen rain for three long years. Always the hard blue sky and the bright sunshine, always the dreary plain, broken here and there by patches of prickly bush and still more thorny spinifex, always the red bluffs marking the horizon, clean cut against the cloudless sky.

Habitable? Such a country as this habitable? It had given him bread for the last three years, but--but--he felt burning in his pocket the letter summoning him home--telling of the death, the unexpected death, of his young cousin, that made him master of that pleasant home, that filled his empty pockets. What did anyone ever dream of living in such a country for--driving the unlucky niggers back and back? What need for it? What need? Far better leave it to the niggers, and clear out altogether.

Had Gladys forgotten? He wondered. The little white mouse of a cousin, as Turner called her, who had cried so bitterly when he left, and even now answered his letters so regularly, those letters that had come to be written at longer and longer intervals as home ties weakened, and the prospect of seeing her again slowly died away. Had she forgotten--had she? She looked like the sort of woman that would be faithful--faithful--well, as faithful as any one in this world could be expected to be, as faithful as women always are to their lovers in distant lands. Turner had been sweet there once too, curious he should meet him just now; he had forgotten her surely, or he would never have referred to her so casually. Yes, Turner had forgotten, and yet he had been very bad too--strange how completely a thing like that passes out of a man’s life. Could he take up the broken threads just where he left off--could he? So sweet and tender as she was, so quiet and restful. There was that other one, who loved him after her fashion too, but--pah, it was an insult to Gladys to name her in the same breath--she--she--The country was not habitable--a doghole unfit for a European; what was Turner making such a song over the niggers for?

“Old man,” said Turner, he had been telling to unlistening ears the tale of how the blacks had speared, in wanton mischief, a mob of two hundred cattle on Jinfalla, not fifteen miles from the home station, “old man, you see it would be just ruination to let this go on. Either they or we must clear out. We can’t both live here, that’s certain.”

“Always the same old yarn wherever the Englishman goes, always the same old yarn. Poor niggers!”

“Well, what’d you have?” said the other warmly; “something’s got to be done.”

“I ‘m going to cut it all.”

“What?” Turner stopped his horse and looked his companion full in the face. “Cut it all?”

“My cousin ‘s dead.”

“John Stanesby?”

“John Stanesby.”

“And Heyington ‘s yours?”

“And Eastwood too.”

“Good Lord!”

There was silence for a moment. Then Turner said again:

“You can marry Gladys Rowan now.”

“Yes.”

Then he added, as if as an afterthought, “If she ‘ll have me.”

“No fear of that,” said Turner with a sigh. Then he turned to his old chum, and stretching over laid a kindly hand on his arm, “I congratulate you, old chap.”

“Thank you.” And they rode on in silence, the one man thinking bitterly that if ever he had cherished a spark of hope of winning the woman he had loved he must give it up at last, the other trying to realise the good fortune that had come to him.

And an hour ago he had been as this man beside him--only one little hour ago!

“How far do you reckon it to the head-station? Fifty miles?”

“Fifty? Nearer eighty I should say.”

“Then I guess I ‘ll put up at your place. How far’s that?”

“About ten miles.”

“All right. Lead on, master of Heyington.”

To refuse a man hospitality in the bush--such a thing was never heard of, and, though Stanesby said no welcoming word, it never occurred to Turner to doubt that he was more than welcome.

“It’s right out of your way.”

Turner stared.

“Good Lord! What’s ten miles, and we haven’t met for years. I must say, old chap, you don’t seem particularly pleased to see an old chum.”

“I--they ain’t so plentiful I can afford to do that. No, I was thinking of going in to the station with you.”

“Right you are, old man, do you? Only we’ll put up at your place for the night--my horse’s pretty well done--and go on in the morning.”

Stanesby said nothing, only turned his horse’s head slightly to the left. Save the red bluffs away to the east there was nothing to mark the change of direction. There was no reason apparently for his choosing one direction rather than another.

They rode in silence, these two who had been college chums and had not met for years. Possibly it was the one man’s good fortune that raised a barrier between them. It was not easy for Turner to talk of present difficulties and troubles when, as Stanesby said, he was going to “cut it all”; it was not easy for him to speak of bygone times when the other man was going back to them, and he would be left here without a prospect of a change. And Stanesby said nothing, he could only think of the great difference between them; and yesterday there was nothing he would have liked better than this meeting with his old friend, which to-day fell flat. No, he had nothing to say. Already their paths lay wide apart.

An hour’s slow riding brought them to the creek Stanesby had spoken of. There was no gentle slope down to the river, the plain simply seemed to open at their feet, and show them the river bed some twenty feet below. Only a river bed about twenty yards wide, but there was no water to be seen, only signs, marked signs in that thirsty land, that water had been there. Down where the last moisture had lingered the grass grew green and fresh, and leafy shrubs and small trees and even tangled creepers made this dip in the plain a pleasant resting-place for the eye wearied with the monotony of the world above it.

“By Jove!” cried Turner, surprised.

“Told you so,” said his companion, “but it ain’t much after all. Fancy calling that wiry stuff grass in England, and admiring those straggly creepers and shrubs. Why we wouldn’t give ‘em house-room in the dullest, deadest corner of the wilderness at home.”

“Lucky beggar!” sighed the other man. “But you see they ‘re all I ‘m likely to have for many a long year to come. Hang it all, man, I bet you ‘d put that shrub there, that chap with the bright red flower, into your hot-house and look after him with the greatest care, or your gardener would for you.”

“It’d require a d----d hot house,” said Stanesby laconically, wiping his hot face.

They did not descend into the bed of the creek, the ground was better adapted for riding up above, and a mile further along they came upon a large blackfellows’ camp stretched all along the edge of a water-hole.

“The brutes,” said Turner; “bagging the water of course.”

“They ‘d die if they didn’t, I suppose. This, and the hole by my place is the only water I know of for forty miles round. After all they were here first, and if I had my way they’d be left to it.”

“All very well for you to talk,” grumbled Turner. “Do they look worth anything?”

Certainly they did not. The camp was a mere collection of breakwinds made of bark and branches, more like badly-stacked woodheaps than anything else, and the children of the soil lay basking in the sun, among the dogs and filth and refuse of the camp, or crouched over small fires as if it were bitter cold. The dogs started up yelping, for a blackfellow’s dog doesn’t know how to bark properly, as the white men passed, but their masters took no notice. A stark naked gin, with a fillet of greasy skin bound round her head, and a baby slung in a net on her back, came whining to Turner with outstretched hands. She had mixed with the stockkeepers before, and knew a few words of English.

“Give it terbacker along a black Mary. Budgery{1} fellow you,” but he pushed her away with the butt end of his whip.

“My place’s not above a mile away now,” said Stanesby, as they left the precincts of the camp behind them.

“I wouldn’t have those beggars so close, if I were you. Some fine morning you’ll find yourself--”

“Pooh! They’re quite tame and harmless. I ‘ve got a boy from them about the place, and he’s very good as boys go. Besides, I ‘m off as soon as possible.”

1 Means “good.”

“Well, I bet you the man who takes your place thinks differently.”

“Very likely.”

“Got a decent hutkeeper?”

“What? Oh yes. Pretty fair.”

Clearly Stanesby was not in the mood for conversation, and Turner gave it up as a bad job. It was about two o’clock now, the very hottest hour of the day, and all nature seemed to feel it. Not a sound broke the stillness, not the cry of bird or beast, nothing save the sound of their horses’ hoofs on the hard ground was to be heard.

“By Jove!” said Turner, “this is getting unbearable. I vote we get down and shelter for a spell under the lee of the bank.”

For all answer, Stanesby raised his whip and pointed ahead.

“There ‘s the hut,” he said. “Better get on.”

It was hardly distinguishable from the surrounding plain, the little hut built of rough logs, and roofed with sheets of bark stripped from the trees which grew in the river-bed. Down in the creek there was a waterhole, a waterhole surrounded by tall reeds and other aquatic vegetation which gave it a look of permanence, of freshness and greenness in this burnt-up land. But that was down in the creek, round the hut was the plain, barren here as elsewhere; no effort had been made to cultivate it or improve it, and the desert came up to the very doors. The only sign of human life was the refuse from the small household--an empty tin or two, fragments of broken bottles, and scraps of rag and paper, only that and the hut itself, and a small yard for horses and cattle, that was all--not a tree, not a green thing. The bed of the creek was their garden, but it was not visible from the house; its inmates could only see the desolate plain, nothing but that for miles and miles, far as the eye could see. So monotonous, so dreary an outlook, it was hardly possible to believe there was anything else in the world, anything but this lonely little hut, with, for all its paradise, the waterhole in the creek below.

Turner said nothing. It was exactly what he expected; he lived in a similar place, a place without a creek close handy, where the only water came from a well, and undiluted, was decidedly unpleasant to the taste. No, in his eyes Stanesby had nothing to grumble at.

The owner of this palatial residence coo-eed shrilly.

“Jimmy; I say, Jimmy!”

A long, lank black boy, clad in a Crimean shirt and a pair of old riding breeches, a world too big for him, rose lazily up from beside the house, where he had been basking in the sun, and came towards them.

Stanesby dismounted and flung him his reins, Turner following suit.

“All gone sleep,” said Jimmy, nodding his head in the direction of the hut, a grin showing up the white of his regular teeth against his black face.

“Come on in, Turner.”

The door was open and the two men walked straight into the small hut.

It was very dark at first coming in out of the brilliant sunshine, but as Turner’s eyes grew accustomed to the light, he saw that the interior was just exactly what he should have expected it to be. The floor was hard earth, the walls were unlined, the meagre household goods were scattered about in a way that did not say much for his friend’s hutkeeper, a shelf with a few old books and papers on it, was the only sign of culture, and a rough curtain of sacking dividing the place in two, was the only thing that was not common to every hut in all that part of Western Australia.

“Howling swell, you are, old chap! Go in for two rooms I see.”

The curtain was thrust aside, and to Turners astonishment, a girl’s face peered round it. A beautiful girl’s face too, the like of which he had not seen for many a year, if indeed, he had ever seen one like it before; a face with oval, liquid dark eyes in whose depths a light lay hidden, with full red pouting lips, and a broad low brow half hidden by heavy masses of dark, untidy hair, which fell in picturesque confusion over it. A beautiful face in shape and form, and rich dark colouring, and Turner started back too astonished to speak. Such a face! Never in all his life had he seen such a face, and the look turned on his companion was easy enough to read.

“Come here, Kitty,” said Stanesby in an unconcerned voice. “I want some dinner for this gentleman.”

Then she stepped out, and the illusion vanished. For she was only a half-caste, beautiful as a dream, or he who had not seen a woman for many a long day--he never counted the black gins women--thought so, but only a despised half-caste, outcast both from father’s and mother’s race.

Not that she looked unhappy. On the contrary, she came forward and smiled on him a slow, lazy smile, the smile of one who is utterly contented with her lot in life.

“Whew! So that ‘s our hutkeeper, is it?”

“Dinner, Kitty.”

The girl took a tin dish from the shelf and went outside. She walked well and gracefully, and Turner followed her with his eyes.

“By Jove!” he said, “talk about good looks. Why, Dick, you--”

“Hang it all, man,” said Stanesby. “I know well enough what you ‘re thinking. The girl _is_ good-looking, I suppose, for a half-caste. The boss’s sister, old Miss Howard, found her among the tribe, a wild little wretch, and took her in and did her best to civilise her; but it wasn’t easy work, and the old lady died before it was done.”

“And you ‘re completing the job?”

Stanesby shrugged his shoulders.

“I saw her, of course, when I went in to the head-station, which wasn’t very often, and I suppose I told her she was a good-looking girl. She mayn’t understand much, but she understood _that_ right enough, trust a woman for that. Good Lord! I never gave her a second thought, till I found her at my door one night. The little beggar had had a row with ‘em up at the house and came right off to me. It wasn’t any use protesting. She might have done worse, and here she ‘s been ever since. But she’s got the temper of a fiend, I can tell you, and it ain’t all skittles and beer.”

The girl entered the room and Stanesby began turning over his mail letters, making his companion feel that the subject had better be dropped between them. He had explained the girl’s presence, he wanted no comments from his old friend.

He filled his pipe and sat down on the only three-legged stool the hut contained, watching his friend seated on a box opposite and the girl passing in and out getting ready the rough meal. She was graceful, she was beautiful, as some wild thing is beautiful, there was no doubt whatever of that. Her dress was of Turkey red; old Miss Howard had had a fancy for dressing all her dark _protegées_ in bright colours, and they had followed in her footsteps up at the station, and Turner mentally appraising the girl before him, quite approved her taste. The dress was old and somewhat faded, but its severe simplicity and its dull tints just set off the girl’s dusky beauty. Shoes and stockings she had none, but what matter? any touch of civilisation would have spoiled the picture.

Stanesby apparently took no notice of her, but began to read extracts from his letters and papers for his companion’s benefit. He was hardly at his ease, and Turner made only a pretence of listening. He could not take his eyes from the girl who was roughly setting out the table for their meal. “The temper of a fiend,” truly he thought it not unlikely, judging by the glances she threw at him whenever she took her eyes from Stanesby. She could hardly have understood what he read, but she listened intently and cast angry glances every now and then on Turner. He and these letters, she seemed to feel, were not of her world, they were taking this man away from her. Yes, he could well believe she had the temper of a fiend. But she said nothing. Her mother had come of a race which from time immemorial had held its women in bondage, and she spoke no word, probably she had no words in which to express her feelings.

The table was laid at last, and a piece of smoking salt beef and a great round damper brought in from outside and put on it.

“Dinner,” said the girl sullenly, but Stanesby went on reading, and paid no attention, and Turner felt himself watching to see what would happen next. He caught only snatches of the letter, just enough to know it was a description of a hunt in England, of a damp, cold, cloudy day, of an invigorating run--the contrast struck him forcibly--the stifling, hot little hut, and the jealous, half-savage woman standing there, her eyes aflame with anger at the slight she fancied was put upon her.

She stole over and touched Stanesby lightly on the arm, but he shook her off as he would a fly and went on reading calmly.

The other man watched the storm gather on her face. She stood for one moment looking, not at Stanesby but at him; it was very evident whom she blamed for her lover’s indifference; then she stretched across to the table and caught up a knife. Her breath was coming thick and fast and Turner never took his eyes off her, in between her gasping breath he heard his friend’s voice, slow and deliberate as ever, still telling the tale of the English hunting day, still reading the letter which put such a world between him and the girl standing beside him. Then there was a flash of steel, Turner felt rather than saw that it was directed at him, and, before he even had time to think, Stanesby had sprung to his feet and grasped her by the arm.

“Would you now? Would you?” He might have been speaking to a fractious horse. Then as Turner too sprang to his feet and snatched the knife from her hand, he flung her off with an oath.

“You little devil!” He sat down again with an uneasy laugh, and the girl with an inarticulate cry flung herself out of the open door. In all the half hour that had elapsed, she had spoken no word except when she called them to their dinner; but in that inarticulate moan the other man seemed to read the whole bitterness of her story.

“I told you,” said Stanesby, he seemed to feel some explanation or apology were necessary; “I told you she had the temper of a fiend. I hope she didn’t hurt you, old man?”

“No, no. She meant business, though, only you were too quick for her. But I say, old man, it isn’t well to have a good-looking young woman fix her affections on you in that ardent manner. There’ll be the devil to pay, some day.”

The other laughed, and then sighed.

“I tell you it was no fault of mine,” he said.

“Come on and get something to eat. There’s whisky in that bottle.”

Virtually he had dismissed the subject; with the disappearance of the girl he would have let the matter drop, but he was not at his ease, and his old chum was less so. It was all very well to talk of old times, of college days, of mutual friends, each was thinking, and each was uncomfortably conscious that the other, too, was thinking, of that dark-eyed, straight-limbed young savage who had forced her personality upon them both, and was so far, so very far, removed from the world of which they spoke. There was another thing too, a fair-haired, blue-eyed girl, as different--as different as the North Pole from the Equator--each had loved her, to each she had been the embodiment of all earthly virtues, and each thought of her as well, too--the one man bitterly. Why should this man, this whilom friend of his, have everything? And the other man read his thoughts, and unreasoning anger grew up in his heart against his old chum. It has nothing whatever to do with Dick Stanesby’s hutkeeper, of course, nothing whatever; but it is nevertheless a fact, that these two old friends spent what should have been a pleasant afternoon, devoted to reminiscences of old times and a renewal of early friendship, in uncomfortable silence. The monthly mail, which Stanesby had brought in, contained many papers, and after their meal they lighted their pipes and read diligently, first one paper and then another. At first they made efforts at conversation, read out incidents and scraps of news and commented thereon, but as the afternoon wore on, the silence grew till it became difficult to break it. The sunlight outside crept in and in through the open doorway. There were no shadows because there was nothing to cast shadows, save the banks of the creek down below the level of the plain and the red bluffs, thirty miles to the eastward. But the sun stole in and crossed the hard earthen floor, and stole up the wall on the other side, crept up slowly, emphasising the dull blankness of the place. So did the sun every day of the year, pretty nearly; so did he in every stockkeeper’s hut on the plains of Western Australia; but to-day he seemed to Turner to be mocking his misery, pointing it out and emphasising it. Such his life had been for the last three or four years; such it was now; such it would be to the end. He could see no prospect of change, no prospect of better things: always the bare walls and the earthen floors for him; unloved, uncared for he had lived, unloved and uncared for he would die. And this man beside him--bah! it would not bear thinking of. He pushed back the stool he had been sitting on, and strolling to the door looked out. Nothing in sight but the black boy, who wasn’t a boy at all, but a man apparently over thirty years of age, lolling up against the verandah post, like one who had plenty of time on his hands.

Stanesby got up and joined him. The hot wind that had blown fiercely all day had died down, and now there hardly seemed a breath of air stirring. It was stupid to comment on the weather in a place where the weather was always the same, but Turner felt the need of something to say, so he seized on the well-worn topic.

“It’s getting a little cooler, I think.”

“Confound it, no.”

Stanesby looked round discontentedly. The untidy, uninviting remains of their midday meal were still on the table, pushed aside to make room for the papers they had been reading; it gave the place a dishevelled, comfortless air, which made its dull blank-ness ten times worse.

Turner noticed it, but he did not feel on sufficiently good terms to rail at his friend’s hutkeeper, as he would have done in the morning. He only shrugged his shoulders meaningly when Stanesby called out,

“Boy! I say, Jimmy, where’s the girl?”

Jimmy turned lazily and showed his white teeth.

“Sit down along a creek, you bet.”

“Go and fetch her.”

Jimmy showed his white teeth again, and grinned largely, but he did not stir.

“My word! Baal{1} this blackfellow go.”

“Much as his life is worth, I guess,” said

1 Means “not, no.”

Turner grimly, “judging by the specimen of her temper the young lady gave us this afternoon.”

Stanesby muttered something that was hardly a blessing under his breath, then he caught up his hat and went down the bank to the waterhole. The other man felt more comfortable in his absence. He sat down, lighted his pipe, and taking up the paper again, began to read with fresh interest.

Half an hour passed. The sun sank below the horizon, gorgeous in red and gold, and Turner watched the last rosy flush die out of the western sky. Darkness fell, and he sat on smoking and thinking sadly, till his comrade loomed up out of the gloom.

“Is that you, Stanesby?” he called out.

“Who the devil should it be?” Then remembering his hospitality, “Why you Ye all in the dark! Why didn’t you light a candle!”

The girl did not make her appearance, and Turner did not comment on her absence. Stanesby said nothing. He lighted a candle, and calling Jimmy to his assistance, began clearing the table and washing up the dirty plates and pannikins. Turner offered to help, but was told ungraciously that two were enough, and so went on smoking and watched in silence. He did not feel on intimate enough terms to comment; but he knew well enough Stanesby had gone out to find the girl, and either failed to find her, or at any rate failed to bring her back. It was no business of his any way, and he sat smoking till he was called to the evening meal, which was a repetition of the mid-day one, with milkless tea instead of whisky for a beverage.

Stanesby apologised.

“I ‘m clean out of whisky, I ‘m sorry to say.”

“It’s all right, old man. I don’t often manage to get it at all on Jinfalla.”

They discussed station matters then, discussed them all the evening, though Turner could not but feel that his host’s thoughts were far away. Still they lasted, they interested the man who was bound to live on here, till at length Stanesby got up with a mighty yawn and suggested they should turn in.

There was a bunk fixed against the wall, and he threw his comrade’s blankets into it.

“It’s all I can do for you to-night, old man. Come to Heyington next year, and I ‘ll treat you better.”

“Thanks,” said Turner. “No such luck for me.” Then he spoke the thought that had been in his mind all the evening.

“I say, that girl hasn’t come in.”

“She’s all right, she can sleep out then. I can’t say it’ll cool her temper, for it’s as hot as blazes still. Good night, old chap.”

Turner lay awake long after the light was out, staring up at the unceiled roof, at the faint light that marked the open doorway and the window, thinking, thinking, wondering at his own discontent, thinking of the fair-haired, blue-eyed girl he had loved so well and so long. It was all over between them now, all over; there had never been anything except on his side, never anything at all, and now it was not much good his even thinking of her. She would marry Dick Stanesby and never know, never dream----

His thoughts wandered to that other girl, it was no business of his, but it worried him nevertheless, as things that are no concern of ours do worry us when we lie wakeful on our beds, and the _girl’s_ beautiful, angry face haunted him. He thought of her there down by the creek, alone in her dumb pain, so young, so ignorant, so beautiful. There was something wrong in the scheme of creation somewhere, something wrong, or why were such as she born but to suffer. His life was hard, cruelly hard, he had known better things; but she--she--hers had been hard all along. Had she known any happiness? he wondered. He supposed she had if she cared for Dick Stanesby. When first she came, unasked and unsought, he had been good to her; he knew his friend, he had known him from a boy, easy-going, good-natured, with no thought for the future for himself, how could he expect him to think for another? He had been good to her--oh, yes, he knew Dick Stanesby--very good to her, but he had taken no thought for her future any more than he would for his own. He would go into the head-station with him to-morrow morning, he very much doubted if he would come back. He would intend to at first, but it would be very much easier to stay, and he would stay, and the girl--what would become of her? He found himself saying it over and over again to himself, what would become of her? What could become of her? till he fell into an uneasy doze and dreamed that he was master of Heyington and had married Gladys Rowan, who was no other than Dick Stanesby’s hutkeeper, and crouched in the corner with a long, shining knife in her hand. Then he awakened suddenly and heard the sound of voices, a woman’s voice and Dick’s, Dick’s soft and tender. He could not hear the words, but the tones were enough. It was the same old Dick. He did not want her, he would rather be without her: but since she was there, he must needs be good to her. So she had come back after all! He might have known she was sure to come back. Why couldn’t she stop away? Why couldn’t she join her relatives down by the creek? Alas! and alas! The barrier between her and them was as great as it was between her and the white man. Greater, if possible. Poor child! poor child! How was it to end?

He tossed and turned and the voices went on softly murmuring. He thought of Gladys and grew angry, and finally, when he had given up all hope, he fell fast asleep.

Next morning he found that peace reigned. The girl came in and quietly cleared away the remnants of last night’s meal and began making preparations for breakfast. Her mind was at ease evidently. She had no doubts about the permanency of her heaven; and when she saw him she smiled upon him the same slow, lazy, contented smile with which she had first greeted him, apparently forgetting and expecting him to forget all disagreeable episodes of the day before. How long would this peace last? asked Guy Turner of himself.