Part 9

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—”