"Children," said the master gravely and sadly, "children, this is the first time I ever had to put "D" to the name of one of my scholars. Poor Mary! she was one of my first pupils--came the first morning the school was opened. Children, I want you to be a little quieter to-day during play-hour, out of respect for the name of your dead schoolmate whom it has pleased the Almighty to take in her youth."
"Please, sir," asked the galoot, evidently encouraged by his fancied success, "please, sir, what does "D" stand for?"
"d.a.m.n you for a ha.s.s!" snarled Jim Bullock between his teeth, giving the galoot a vicious dig in the side with his elbow.
THE SHEARING OF THE COOK"S DOG
The dog was a little conservative mongrel poodle, with long dirty white hair all over him--longest and most over his eyes, which glistened through it like black beads. Also he seemed to have a bad liver. He always looked as if he was suffering from a sense of injury, past or to come. It did come. He used to follow the shearers up to the shed after breakfast every morning, but he couldn"t have done this for love--there was none lost between him and the men. He wasn"t an affectionate dog; it wasn"t his style. He would sit close against the shed for an hour or two, and hump himself, and sulk, and look sick, and snarl whenever the "Sheep-Ho" dog pa.s.sed, or a man took notice of him. Then he"d go home.
What he wanted at the shed at all was only known to himself; no one asked him to come. Perhaps he came to collect evidence against us. The cook called him "my darg," and the men called the cook "Curry and Rice,"
with "old" before it mostly.
Rice was a little, dumpy, fat man, with a round, smooth, good-humoured face, a bald head, feet wide apart, and a big blue cotton ap.r.o.n. He had been a ship"s cook. He didn"t look so much out of place in the hut as the hut did round him. To a man with a vivid imagination, if he regarded the cook dreamily for a while, the floor might seem to roll gently like the deck of a ship, and mast, rigging, and cuddy rise mistily in the background. Curry might have dreamed of the cook"s galley at times, but he never mentioned it. He ought to have been at sea, or comfortably dead and stowed away under ground, instead of cooking for a mob of unredeemed rouseabouts in an uncivilized shed in the scrub, six hundred miles from the ocean.
They chyacked the cook occasionally, and grumbled--or pretended to grumble--about their tucker, and then he"d make a roughly pathetic speech, with many references to his age, and the hardness of his work, and the smallness of his wages, and the inconsiderateness of the men.
Then the joker of the shed would sympathize with the cook with his tongue and one side of his face--and joke with the other.
One day in the shed, during smoke-ho the devil whispered to a shearer named Geordie that it would be a lark to shear the cook"s dog--the Evil One having previously arranged that the dog should be there, sitting close to Geordie"s pen, and that the shearer should have a fine lamb comb on his machine. The idea was communicated through Geordie to his mates, and met with entire and general approval; and for five or ten minutes the air was kept alive by shouting and laughter of the men, and the protestations of the dog. When the shearer touched skin, he yelled "Tar!" and when he finished he shouted "Wool away!" at the top of his voice, and his mates echoed him with a will. A picker-up gathered the fleece with a great show of labour and care, and tabled it, to the well-ventilated disgust of old Scotty, the wool-roller. When they let the dog go he struck for home--a clean-shaven poodle, except for a ferocious moustache and a tuft at the end of his tail.
The cook"s a.s.sistant said that he"d have given a five-pound note for a portrait of Curry-and-Rice when that poodle came back from the shed. The cook was naturally very indignant; he was surprised at first--then he got mad. He had the whole afternoon to get worked up in, and at tea-time he went for the men properly.
"Wotter yer growlin" about?" asked one. "Wot"s the matter with yer, anyway?"
"I don"t know nothing about yer dog!" protested a rouseabout; "wotyer gettin" on to me for?"
"Wotter they bin doin" to the cook now?" inquired a ring leader innocently, as he sprawled into his place at the table. "Can"t yer let Curry alone? Wot d"yer want to be chyackin" him for? Give it a rest."
"Well, look here, chaps," observed Geordie, in a determined tone, "I call it a shame, that"s what I call it. Why couldn"t you leave an old man"s dog alone? It was a mean, dirty trick to do, and I suppose you thought it funny. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves, the whole lot of you, for a drafted mob of crawlers. If I"d been there it wouldn"t have been done; and I wouldn"t blame Curry if he was to poison the whole convicted push."
General lowering of faces and pulling of hats down over eyes, and great working of knives and forks; also sounds like men trying not to laugh.
"Why couldn"t you play a trick on another man"s darg?" said Curry.
"It"s no use tellin" me. I can see it all as plain as if I was on the board--all of you runnin" an" shoutin" an" cheerin" an" laughin", and all over shearin" and ill-usin" a poor little darg! Why couldn"t you play a trick on another man"s darg?... It doesn"t matter much--I"m nearly done cookie" here now.... Only that I"ve got a family to think of I wouldn"t "a" stayed so long. I"ve got to be up at five every mornin", an" don"t get to bed till ten at night, cookin" an" bakin" an" cleanin"
for you an" waitin" on you. First one lot in from the wool-wash, an"
then one lot in from the shed, an" another lot in, an" at all hours an" times, an" all wantin" their meals kept hot, an" then they ain"t satisfied. And now you must go an" play a dirty trick on my darg! Why couldn"t you have a lark with some other man"s darg!"
Geordie bowed his head and ate as though he had a cud, like a cow, and could chew at leisure. He seemed ashamed, as indeed we all were--secretly. Poor old Curry"s oft-repeated appeal, "Why couldn"t you play a trick with another man"s dog?" seemed to have something pathetic about it. The men didn"t notice that it lacked philanthropy and logic, and probably the cook didn"t notice it either, else he wouldn"t have harped on it. Geordie lowered his face, and just then, as luck or the devil would have it, he caught sight of the dog. Then he exploded.
The cook usually forgot all about it in an hour, and then, if you asked him what the chaps had been doing, he"d say, "Oh, nothing! nothing! Only their larks!" But this time he didn"t; he was narked for three days, and the chaps marvelled much and were sorry, and treated him with great respect and consideration. They hadn"t thought he"d take it so hard--the dog shearing business--else they wouldn"t have done it. They were a little puzzled too, and getting a trifle angry, and would shortly be prepared to take the place of the injured party, and make things unpleasant for the cook. However, he brightened up towards the end of the week, and then it all came out.
"I wouldn"t "a" minded so much," he said, standing by the table with a dipper in one hand, a bucket in the other, and a smile on his face. "I wouldn"t "a" minded so much only they"ll think me a flash man in Bourke with that theer darg trimmed up like that!"
"DOSSING OUT" AND "CAMPING"
At least two hundred poor beggars were counted sleeping out on the pavements of the main streets of Sydney the other night--grotesque bundles of rags lying under the verandas of the old Fruit Markets and York Street shops, with their heads to the wall and their feet to the gutter. It was raining and cold that night, and the unemployed had been driven in from Hyde Park and the bleak Domain--from dripping trees, damp seats, and drenched gra.s.s--from the rain, and cold, and the wind. Some had sheets of old newspapers to cover them-and some hadn"t. Two were mates, and they divided a _Herald_ between them. One had a sheet of brown paper, and another (lucky man!) had a bag--the only bag there.
They all shrank as far into their rags as possible--and tried to sleep.
The rats seemed to take them for rubbish, too, and only scampered away when one of the outcasts moved uneasily, or coughed, or groaned--or when a policeman came along.
One or two rose occasionally and rooted in the dust-boxes on the pavement outside the shops--but they didn"t seem to get anything. They were feeling "peckish," no doubt, and wanted to see if they could get something to eat before the corporation carts came along. So did the rats.
Some men can"t sleep very well on an empty stomach--at least, not at first; but it mostly comes with practice. They often sleep for ever in London. Not in Sydney as yet--so we say.
Now and then one of our outcasts would stretch his cramped limbs to ease them--but the cold soon made him huddle again. The pavement must have been hard on the men"s "points," too; they couldn"t dig holes nor make soft places for their hips, as you can in camp out back. And then, again, the stones had nasty edges and awkward slopes, for the pavements were very uneven.
The Law came along now and then, and had a careless glance at the unemployed in bed. They didn"t look like sleeping beauties. The Law appeared to regard them as so much rubbish that ought not to have been placed there, and for the presence of which somebody ought to be prosecuted by the Inspector of Nuisances. At least, that was the expression the policeman had on his face.
And so Australian workmen lay at two o"clock in the morning in the streets of Sydney, and tried to get a little sleep before the traffic came along and took their bed.
The idea of sleeping out might be nothing to bushmen--not even an idea; but "dossing out" in the city and "camping" in the bush are two very different things. In the bush you can light a fire, boil your billy, and make some tea--if you have any; also fry a chop (there are no sheep running round in the city). You can have a clean meal, take off your shirt and wash it, and wash yourself--if there"s water enough--and feel fresh and clean. You can whistle and sing by the camp-fire, and make poetry, and breathe fresh air, and watch the everlasting stars that keep the mateless traveller from going mad as he lies in his lonely camp on the plains. Your privacy is even more perfect than if you had a suite of rooms at the Australia; you are at the mercy of no policeman; there"s no one to watch you but G.o.d--and He won"t move you on. G.o.d watches the "dossers-out," too, in the city, but He doesn"t keep them from being moved on or run in.
With the city unemployed the case is entirely different. The city outcast cannot light a fire and boil a billy--even if he has one--he"d be run in at once for attempting to commit arson, or create a riot, or on suspicion of being a person of unsound mind. If he took off his shirt to wash it, or went in for a swim, he"d be had up for indecently exposing his bones--and perhaps he"d get flogged. He cannot whistle or sing on his pavement bed at night, for, if he did, he"d be violently arrested by two great policemen for riotous conduct. He doesn"t see many stars, and he"s generally too hungry to make poetry. He only sleeps on the pavement on sufferance, and when the policeman finds the small hours hang heavily on him, he can root up the unemployed with his big foot and move him on--or arrest him for being around with the intention to commit a felony; and, when the wretched "dosser" rises in the morning, he cannot shoulder his swag and take the track--he must cadge a breakfast at some back gate or restaurant, and then sit in the park or walk round and round, the same old hopeless round, all day. There"s no prison like the city for a poor man.
Nearly every man the traveller meets in the bush is about as dirty and ragged as himself, and just about as hard up; but in the city nearly every man the poor unemployed meets is a dude, or at least, well dressed, and the unemployed _feels_ dirty and mean and degraded by the contrast--and despised.
And he can"t help feeling like a criminal. It may be imagination, but every policeman seems to regard him with suspicion, and this is terrible to a sensitive man.
We once had the key of the street for a night. We don"t know how much tobacco we smoked, how many seats we sat on, or how many miles we walked before morning. But we do know that we felt like a felon, and that every policeman seemed to regard us with a suspicious eye; and at last we began to squint furtively at every trap we met, which, perhaps, made him more suspicious, till finally we felt bad enough to be run in and to get six months" hard.
Three winters ago a man, whose name doesn"t matter, had a small office near Elizabeth Street, Sydney. He was an hotel broker, debt collector, commission agent, canva.s.ser, and so on, in a small way--a very small way--but his heart was big. He had a partner. They batched in the office, and did their cooking over a gas lamp. Now, every day the man-whose-name-doesn"t-matter would carefully collect the sc.r.a.ps of food, add a slice or two of bread and b.u.t.ter, wrap it all up in a piece of newspaper, and, after dark, step out and leave the parcel on a ledge of the stonework outside the building in the street. Every morning it would be gone. A shadow came along in the night and took it.
This went on for many months, till at last one night the man-whose-name-doesn"t-matter forgot to put the parcel out, and didn"t think of it till he was in bed. It worried him, so that at last he had to get up and put the sc.r.a.ps outside. It was midnight. He felt curious to see the shadow, so he waited until it came along. It wasn"t his long-lost brother, but it was an old mate of his.
Let us finish with a sketch:
The scene was Circular Quay, outside the Messageries sheds. The usual number of bundles of misery--covered more or less with dirty sheets of newspaper--lay along the wall under the ghastly glare of the electric light. Time--shortly after midnight. From among the bundles an old man sat up. He cautiously drew off his pants, and then stood close to the wall, in his shirt, tenderly examining the seat of the trousers.
Presently he shook them out, folded them with great care, wrapped them in a sc.r.a.p of newspaper, and laid them down where his head was to be.
He had thin, hairy legs and a long grey beard. From a bundle of rags he extracted another pair of pants, which were all patches and tatters, and into which he engineered his way with great caution. Then he sat down, arranged the paper over his knees, laid his old ragged grey head back on his precious Sunday-go-meetings-and slept.
ACROSS THE STRAITS
We crossed Cook"s Straits from Wellington in one of those rusty little iron tanks that go up and down and across there for twenty or thirty years and never get wrecked--for no other reason, apparently, than that they have every possible excuse to go ash.o.r.e or go down on those stormy coasts. The age, construction, or condition of these boats, and the south-easters, and the construction of the coastline, are all decidedly in favour of their going down; the fares are high and the accommodation is small and dirty. It is always the same where there is no compet.i.tion.
A year or two ago, when a company was running boats between Australia and New Zealand without compet.i.tion, the steerage fare was three pound direct single, and two pound ten shillings between Auckland and Wellington. The potatoes were black and green and soggy, the beef like bits sc.r.a.ped off the inside of a hide which had lain out for a day or so, the cabbage was cabbage leaves, the tea muddy. The whole business took away our appet.i.te regularly three times a day, and there wasn"t enough to go round, even if it had been good--enough tucker, we mean; there was enough appet.i.te to go round three or four times, but it was driven away by disgust until after meals. If we had not, under cover of darkness, broached a deck cargo of oranges, lemons, and pineapples, and thereby run the risk of being run in on arrival, there would have been starvation, disease, and death on that boat before the end--perhaps mutiny.