Such Is Life (59 page)

Just three weeks, he told me. His name, he added, with an inimitable bow, was Franz von Swammerbrunck, very much at my service. His friend, Schloss, and himself, fellow-students, had left Frankfort only three months before.

“Frankfort-on-the-Main, or Frankfort-on-the-Oder?” I asked, veiling a mild and inoffensive pedantry under the guise of friendly interest.

His courteous reply tailed-off naturally into such a volume of condensed information as re-impressed on my mind a fact which we are, perhaps, too prone to lose sight of—namely, the existence of a civilisation north of Torres Straits. Desiring, of course, to avail myself of some few rays of this boreal light, I tried to steer the conversation in the direction of bainting and boetry (for such subjects go well at camp-fires), but Franz hung so persistently on one rein that I had to give him his head, and he edged back to gold-mining. Turn the discourse whatever way I would, that wearisome topic was adroitly made to occur as if of its own accord.

“But don't let me be keeping you out of bed,” I remarked, at length.

“Tear Mr. Tongcollin, you haf dot impertinence perpetratenefer,” replied my companion earnestly. “Dis schall pe mineperiod mit der sentry-vatch. Dot molestation to youzelluf solitaryvill pe, unt von apology ver despicable iss to me reqvire ass derconseqvence. Bot you magnificent-superb garrulity mos peen to derstrange-alien-isolate in dot platty dilemma mit Schloss unt mine-zelluf, invaluable unt moch velcome. Dot goot-define kevartz reef, by instance, vich you loquacious-delineate, mit der visible golt destitute—by tarn! he schall mine eyes from der skleep fly-away mit der enchantment-glitter! Ach Gott! Nefer py vhite man vitness, you schall say, pefore fife unt seex yare pass-gone, unt by pushmen diminutive nomber unt platty few altogedder. Bot der localisation-topography unt der route you schall py der map mit you gross magnanimity indicate, unt Gott pless! Tousand pig tank you, Mr. Tongcollin! For von trifle-moment, you ver munificent reprieve”—

He entered the tent, and spoke to the sleeper, with suppressed eagerness in his voice. The watch below attired himself and came forth; then followed a formal introduction; and in another couple of hours—such was the clearness and receptivity of these young men's minds—I had made them acquainted with all I knew of the
geology of Upper Riverina. And not less remarkable than their infatuation for non-auriferous reefs was their vivid interest in bushrangers and blackfellows; but whereas they received my crude geological information with the attention which its frankness certainly merited, it was plain that their idea of prospecting the back-blocks with the pick in one hand and the rifle in the other, remained unshaken by my repeated assurances of peace and safety. That was all right. The topography of the wilderness was the thing they wanted; they would manage the peace and safety for themselves. Schloss, in particular, was almost as eager for the inevitable brush with outlaw or savage as he was for the no less inevitable golden reef.

In due time, the stars paled to indistinctness, then to invisibility, and the landscape came into view in the fresh, chilly dawn, showing a strong grey horse feeding with Fancy and Bunyip, two hundred yards away. I was in no hurry to start, but my friends were like greyhounds in the leash. Therefore, whilst I dozed off to sleep, they packed up their elaborate camp, and harnessed their horse in the spring-cart. They would stop for breakfast after a few hours' travelling; meantime, they had a cup of coffee. I roused myself to reiterate the directions I had already given respecting the locality of half a dozen reefs in the back-blocks; then my friends stowed away their maps and diagrams, and shook hands with me so affectionately—so Germanly, in fact—that I called up a certain sardonic expression of face, as the best safeguard against possible kissing. Finally, when they were seated side by side under the tilt of the spring-cart, Swammerbrunck said, whilst his blue eyes twinkled with merriment.

“Vit Mr. Spreenfeldt shall you peen von acquaintance?”

Yes; I was slightly acquainted with Mr. Springfield. He was the landlord of a hotel in Hay.

“Vill you said, mit you proximate-ensuing interview, dot der two Yarman moreprogues schall peen ass pig fools ass efer!”

I promised to deliver the message, whereupon the wise men of the north laughed heartily. Then the three of us raised our hats with aristocratic gravity; and the vehicle moved away toward the land of Disillusionment. As I lay down again, I heard the poor fellows burst into unintelligible song; and, after the spring-cart had jogged a quarter of a mile, one of the adventurers looked past the edge of the tilt toward me, and waved his handkerchief. Not having any similar article on me at the time, I half-rose and returned the farewell with my hat.

As big fools as ever! Between asleep and awake, I pondered on the quantity and quality of Australian-novel lore which had found utterance there. The outlawed bushrangers; the lurking blackfellows; the squatter's lovely Diana-daughter, awaiting the well-bred greenhorn (for even she had cropped-up in conversation)—how these things recalled my reading! And yet they were quite as reasonable as the discovery of the rich reef by the soft-handed, fastidious young gentleman-digger.

I had only wasted time in asseverating that barren reefs are twice as plentiful as half-tucker reefs; ten times as plentiful as wages reefs; and a hundred times as plentiful as pile reefs. Both margraves had listened with polite toleration when I compassionately added that the pile reef is always discovered by an ungrammatical person, named Old Brummy, or Sydney Bob, or Squinty-eyed Pete, or something to the same general effect; and this because few ‘gentlemen' can stoop low enough, and long enough, and doggedly enough, to conquer; whereas Brummy &c., doesn't require to stoop at all—and
his
show is little better than Buckley's.

Also, the barons had derived keen enjoyment from my honest suggestion, that the ‘gentleman's' best show is to discover the discoverer, and prevail upon the latter, per medium of fire-water and blarney, to affix his illegible signature to some expropriating document. And yet those visionaries were highly informed men—at least, as far as schools, lecture-rooms, laboratories, museums, and the whole admirable machinery of modern academic and technical training could take them. This, let me add, is the record of an actual occurrence. It will just show you how much the novelist has to answer for; following, as he does, the devices and desires of his own heart; telling the lies he ought not to have told, and leaving untold the lies that he ought to have told.

I am not forgetting the pipe. Leaving the camp at about ten in the forenoon, I noticed, lying among the tussocks where the spring-cart had stood, something which, at the first glance, I took for the sumptuous holster of an overgrown navy revolver. I need say no more. It may have been the landgraves' pipe-case, or, on the other hand, it may not. At all events, regarding the article as treasure-trove, within the meaning of the Act, I formally took possession under 6 Hen. III., c. 17, sec. 34; holding myself prepared at any time to surrender the property to anyone clever enough to sneak it, and cunning enough to keep it; though a sense of delicacy might prevent me chasing the Kronprinzes round the country, as if they had stolen something. When the pipe had eaten its magnificent
head off in tobacco, then, of course, I sold it to pay expenses, and bought it in myself. So I have it still. And if the censorious reader has detected here and there in these pages a tendency toward the Higher Criticism, or a leaning to State Socialism, or any passage that seemed to indicate a familiarity with cuneiform inscriptions, or with the history and habits of Pre-Adamite Man, he may be assured that, at the time of writing such passage, I had been smoking the mighty pipe—or rather, the mighty pipe had been smoking me—and the unlawful erudition had effervesced per motion of my scholastic ally.

“I can better that yet,” remarked Jack unprintably. “I'll swap you coats. Yours ain't a bad one, but your arms goes a foot too fur through the sleeves, an' she's ridiculous short in the tail. She'll jist about fit my soul-case; an' I got an alpacar one here, made a-purpose for some clipper built (individual) like you. I wouldn't 'a' speculated in her, on'y she was the last the hawker had left. She's never bin bent.” He produced a slate-coloured alpaca coat, which, when I tried it on, extended down to my knuckles and knees, trailing clouds of glory where there was none before. “You'll do a bit o' killin' at the station, in that rig-out,” continued my host, with a lewd reference to some person who shall be nameless.

“By-the-way, what's come of Alf Jones?” I asked, as we resumed our seats.

“Gone to (sheol),” replied his successor tersely. Alf, it appeared, had left the station six or eight weeks before, bound for no one knew where. Jack's opinion was that in so doing he had made a slippery-hitch. I spoke of Alf's singing; and Jack told me how the fellows at the station had persuaded him to give them a couple or three songs before he left.

“Wasn't he something wonderful?” I remarked.

“Well, no,” Jack replied, deferentially but positively; “nothing like what you'd hear in a fo'c'sle.”

In fact, according to Jack's account, he used to be reputed a middling singer himself. And he straightway rendered a mawkishly sentimental song, and a couple of extremely unchaste ones, in a voice which made the tea-embrowned pannikins on the table rattle in sympathy.

I remembered Alf's minstrelsy, and the contrast was painful. Jack noticed a depression creeping over me, and, with the intuition of true hospitality, exerted his conversational powers for my entertainment. His discourse ran exclusively on a topic which, sad to say, furnishes, in all grades of masculine society, the motif of nearly
every joke worth telling. In this line, Jack was a discriminating anthologist, and, moreover, a judicious adapter—all his gestes being related in the first-person-singular. His autobiographical record was a staggerer; but I happened to recognise amongst his
affaires de coeur
several very old acquaintances, and made allowance accordingly. If he had been a truthful man, the floor of the hut would have opened that night and swallowed him alive; but his vain-glorious emulation of St. Paul's chief-of-sinners hyperbole covered as with a mantle his multitude of
bonâ-fide
transgressions, and preserved him for better things.

Yes; better things. For, mind you, beyond this rollicking blackguard there stood a second Jack, a soft-hearted, self-sacrificing other-phase, chivalrous to quixotism, yet provokingly reticent touching any act or sentiment which reflected real credit on himself. Not that every blackguard is a Bayard, any more than every wife-beater is a coward; but almost all moral and immoral qualities are in reality independent of each other. And Jack, for one thing, was eminently religious—as indeed were those greater geniuses and equally hard cases, Dick Steele and Henry Fielding. Says the First Lord (neither of the Admiralty nor the Treasury), ‘The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together; our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues.'

“I always make a bit of a prayer before turnin'-in,” remarked Jack, in appendix to a story which Chaucer or Boccaccio would have rejected with horror; then the poor fellow laid his pipe on the table, and, kneeling by his bedside, repeated in a firm, reverent voice an almost unrecognisable version of the Lord's Prayer, and an unconscious parody on Ken's Evening Hymn:—
Glory to Thee, my God, this night
.

“See, it's this way with me,” he continued, rising from his knees and re-lighting his pipe—“las' time I seen my pore mother—widow-woman, she was, for my ole man he'd shipped bo'sun o' the Raglan, las' time she weighed—‘Jack,' says the old woman to me, an' the tears rollin' down her face—it'll be goin' on five year ago now—‘Jack,' says she; ‘promise me you'll always make a bit of a prayer before turnin'-in; for the Lord says anybody that's ashamed o' Him, He'll be ashamed o' him at the day o' judgment.' Awful—ain't it? Course, I promised; but it went in o' one ear, an' out o' the other, till about two year after, when I got word she was dead. I was on Runnymede then—for I come straight here when I bolted from the ship—an' I begun to bethink myself that she could see
how I was keepin' my promise; so I braced-up, an' laid a bit closer. Lord knows, I gev her worry enough while she was alive, without follerin' her up any furder.” I have taken some trouble in weeding the language of Jack's confession, so as not to destroy its consecutiveness.

And, co-existing in the worthy fellow's mind with this childlike simplicity, was a really fine store of the best kind of knowledge, namely, that acquired from observation and experience. It is surprising how much a landsman, however well-informed, may gather from a sailor when he listens like a three-years' child, and the mariner hath his will. I only wish I was as well posted up in devilfish, stingarees, krakens, and other marine commonplaces, as I am—thanks to Jack's information—in the man-o'-war hawk and the penguin. It came about in this way:

The door was left open for ventilation when we retired to rest, Jack in his bunk, and I on the floor. We were both asleep, when I became aware of an icy touch on my face, accompanied by a breath strongly suggesting to my scientific nose the hydro-car-buretted oxy-chloro-phosphate of dead bullock. Drowsily opening one eye, I saw Pup standing by my side. He had thought I was dead; but, finding his mistake, he walked away through the gloom with an injured and dissatisfied air, and began trying to root the lid off Jack's camp-oven with his pointed nose. One peculiarity of the kangaroo-dog is, that though he has no faculty of scent at the service of his master, he can smell food through half-inch boilerplate; and he rivals Trenck or Monte Cristo in making way through any obstacle which may stand between him and the object of his desires.