It Is Never Too Late to Mend — Chapter XXXVIII, part 1
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
GEORGE heard of a farmer who was selling off his sheep about fifty miles off near the coast.
George put money in his purse, rose at three, and walked the fifty miles with Carlo that day.
The next he chaffered with the farmer, but they did not quite agree.
George was vexed, but he knew it would not do to show it, so he strolled away carelessly toward the water.
In this place the sea comes several miles inland, not in one sheet, but in a series of salt-water lakes very pretty.
George stood and admired the water and the native blacks paddling along in boats of bark no bigger than a cocked hat.
These strips of bark are good for carriage and bad for carriage; I mean they are very easily carried on a man's back ashore, but they won't carry a man on the water so well, and sitting in them is like balancing on a straw.
These absurd vehicles have come down to these blockheads from their fathers, so they won't burn them and build according to reason.
They commonly paddle in companies of three; so then whenever one is purled the other two come on each side of him, each takes a hand and with amazing skill and delicacy they reseat him in his cocked hat, which never sinks--only purls.
Several of these triads passed in the middle of the lake, looking to George like inverted capital “T's. ” They went a tremendous pace--with occasional stoppages when a purl occurred.
Presently a single savage appeared nearer the land and George could see his lithe, sinewy form and the grace and rapidity with which he urged his gossamer bark along.
It was like a hawk--half a dozen rapid strokes of his wings and then a smooth glide for ever so far.
“Our savages would sit on the blade of a knife, I do think,” was George's observation.
Now as George looked and admired blackee, it unfortunately happened that a mosquito flew into blackee's nostrils, which were much larger and more inviting--to a gnat--than ours.
The aboriginal sneezed, and over went the ancestral boat.
The next moment he was seen swimming and pushing his boat before him.
He was scarce a hundred yards from the shore when all of a sudden down he went.
George was frightened and took off his coat, and was unlacing his boots--when the black came up again.
“Oh, he was only larking,” thought George.
“But he has left his boat--and why, there he goes down again!
” The savage made a dive and came up ten yards nearer the shore, but he kept his face parallel to it, and he was scarce a moment in sight before he dived again.
Then a horrible suspicion flashed across George--“There is something after him!
” This soon became a fearful certainty.
Just before he dived next time, a dark object was plainly visible on the water close behind him.
George was wild with fear for poor blackee.
He shouted at the monster, he shouted and beckoned to the swimmer; and last, snatching up a stone, he darted up a little bed of rock elevated about a yard above the shore.
The next dive the black came up within thirty yards of this very place, but the shark came at him the next moment.
He dived again, but before the fish followed him George threw a stone with great precision and force at him.
It struck the water close by him as he turned to follow his prey; George jumped down and got several more stones, and held one foot advanced and his arm high in air.
Up came the savage panting for breath.
The fish made a dart, George threw a stone; it struck him with such fury on the shoulders that it span off into the air and fell into the sea forty yards off.
Down went the man, and the fish after him.
The next time they came up, to George's dismay, the sea-tiger showed no signs of being hurt and the man was greatly distressed.
The moment he was above water George heard him sob, and saw the whites of his eyes, as he rolled them despairingly; and he could not dive again for want of breath.
Seeing this, the shark turned on his back, and came at him with his white belly visible and his treble row of teeth glistening in a mouth like a red grave.
Rage as well as fear seized George Fielding, the muscles started on his brawny arm as he held it aloft with a heavy stone in it.
The black was so hard pressed the last time, and so dead beat, that he could make but a short duck under the fish's back and come out at his tail.
The shark did not follow him this time, but cunning as well as ferocious slipped a yard or two inshore, and waited to grab him; not seeing him, he gave a slap with his tail-fin, and reared his huge head out of water a moment to look forth.
Then George Fielding, grinding his teeth with fury, flung his heavy stone with tremendous force at the creature's cruel eye.
The heavy stone missed the eye by an inch or two, but it struck the fish on the nose and teeth with a force that would have felled a bullock.
“Creesh!
” went the sea-tiger's flesh and teeth, and the blood squirted in a circle.
Down went the shark like a lump of lead, literally felled by the crashing stroke.
“I've hit him!
I've hit him!
” roared George, seizing another stone.
“Come here, quick!
quick!
before he gets the better of it.
” The black swam like a mad thing to George.
George splashed into the water up to his knee, and taking blackee under the arm-pits, tore him out of the water and set him down high and dry.
“Give us your hand over it, old fellow,” cried George, panting and trembling.
“Oh dear, my heart is in my mouth, it is!
” The black's eye seemed to kindle a little at George's fire, but all the rest of him was as cool as a cucumber.
He let George shake his hand and said quietly, “Thank you, sar!
Jacky thank you a good deal!
” he added in the same breath; “suppose you lend me a knife, then we eat a good deal.
” George lent him his knife, and to his surprise the savage slipped into the water again.
His object was soon revealed; the shark had come up to the surface and was floating motionless.
It was with no small trepidation George saw this cool hand swim gently behind him and suddenly disappear; in a moment, however, the water was red all round, and the shark turned round on his belly.
Jacky swam behind, and pushed him ashore.
It proved to be a young fish about six feet long; but it was as much as the men could do to lift it.
The creature's nose was battered, and Jacky showed this to George, and let him know that a blow on that part was deadly to them.
“You make him dead for a little while,” said he, “so then I make him dead enough to eat;” and he showed where he had driven the knife into him in three places.
Jacky's next proceeding was to get some dry sticks and wood, and prepare a fire, which to George's astonishment he lighted thus.
He got a block of wood, in the middle of which he made a little hole; then he cut and pointed a long stick, and inserting the point into the block, worked it round between his palms for some time and with increasing rapidity.
Presently there came a smell of burning wood, and soon after it burst into a flame at the point of contact.
Jacky cut slices of shark and toasted them.
“Black fellow stupid fellow--eat 'em raw; but I eat 'em burn't, like white man.
” He then told George he had often been at Sydney, and could “speak the white man's language a good deal,” and must on no account be confounded with common black fellows.
He illustrated his civilization by eating the shark as it cooked; that is to say, as soon as the surface was brown he gnawed it off, and put the rest down to brown again, and so ate a series of laminae instead of a steak; that it would be cooked to the center if he let it alone was a fact this gentleman had never discovered; probably had never had the patience to discover.
George, finding the shark's flesh detestable, declined it, and watched the other.
Presently he vented his reflections.
“Well you are a cool one!
half an hour ago I didn't expect to see you eating him--quite the contrary.
” Jacky grinned good-humoredly in reply.
When George returned to the farmer, the latter, who had begun to fear the loss of a customer, came at once to terms with him.
The next day he started for home with three hundred sheep.
Jacky announced that he should accompany him, and help him a good deal.
George's consent was not given, simply because it was not asked.
However, having saved the man's life, he was not sorry to see a little more of him.
It is usual in works of this kind to give minute descriptions of people's dress.
I fear I have often violated this rule.
However I will not in this case.
Jacky's dress consisted of, in front, a sort of purse made of rat-skin;
behind, a bran new tomahawk and two spears.
George fancied this costume might be improved upon; he therefore bought from the farmer a second-hand coat and trousers and his new friend donned them with grinning satisfaction.
The farmer's wife pitied George living by himself out there, and she gave him several little luxuries; a bacon-ham, some tea, and some orange-marmalade, and a little lump-sugar and some potatoes.
He gave the potatoes to Jacky to carry.
They weighed but a few pounds.
George himself carried about a quarter of a hundredweight.
For all that the potatoes worried Jacky more than George's burden him.
At last he loitered behind so long that George sat down and lighted his pipe.
Presently up comes Niger with the sleeves of his coat hanging on each side of his neck and the potatoes in them.
My lord had taken his tomahawk and chopped off the sleeves at the arm-pit; then he had sewed up their bottoms and made bags of them, uniting them at the other end by a string which rested on the back of his neck like a milkmaid's balance.
Being asked what he had done with the rest of the coat, he told George he had thrown it away because it was a good deal hot.
“But it won't be hot at night, and then you will wish you hadn't been such a fool,” said George, irate.
No, he couldn't make Jacky see this; being hot at the time Jacky could not feel the cold to come.
Jacky became a hanger-on of George, and if he did little he cost little; and if a beast strayed he was invaluable, he could follow the creature for miles by a chain of physical evidence no single link of which a civilized man would have seen.
A quantity of rain having fallen and filled all the pools, George thought he would close with an offer that had been made him and swap one hundred and fifty sheep for cows and bullocks.
He mentioned this intention to McLaughlan one Sunday evening.
McLaughlan warmly approved his intention.
George then went on to name the customer who was disposed to make the exchange in question.
At this the worthy McLaughlan showed some little uneasiness and told George he might do better than deal with that person.
George said he should be glad to do better, but did not see how.
“Humph!
” said McLaughlan, and fidgeted.
McLaughlan then invited George to a glass of grog, and while they were sipping he gave an order to his man.
McLaughlan inquired when the proposed negotiation was likely to take place.
“To-morrow morning,” said George.
“He asked me to go over about it this afternoon, but I remembered the lesson you gave me about making bargains on this day, and I said 'To-morrow, farmer.'
” “Y're a guid lad,” said the Scot demurely; “y're just as decent a body as ever I forgathered wi'--and I'm thinking it's a sin to let ye gang twa miles for mairchandeeze whan ye can hae it a hantle cheaper at your ain door.
” “Can I?
I don't know what you mean.
” “Ye dinna ken what I mean?
Maybe no. ” Mr. McLaughlan fell into thought a while, and the grog being finished he proposed a stroll.
He took George out into the yard, and there the first thing they saw was a score and a half of bullocks that had just been driven into a circle and were maintained there by two men and two dogs.
George's eye brightened at the sight and his host watched it.
“Aweel,” said he, “has Tamson a bonnier lot than yon to gie ye?
” “I don't know,” said George dryly.
“I have not seen his.
” “But I hae--and he hasna a lot to even wi' them.
” “I shall know to-morrow,” said George.
But he eyed McLaughlan's cattle with an expression there was no mistaking.
“Aweel,” said the worthy Scot, “ye're a neebor and a decent lad ye are, sae I'll just speer ye ane question.
Noo, mon,” continued he in a most mellifluous tone and pausing at every word, “gien it were Monday--as it is the Sabba day--hoo mony sheep wud ye gie for yon bonnie beasties?
” George, finding his friend in this mind, pretended to hang back and to consider himself bound to treat with Thomson first.
The result of all which was that McLaughlan came over to him at daybreak and George made a very profitable exchange with him.
At the end of six months more George found himself twice as rich in substance as at first starting; but instead of one hundred pounds cash he had but eighty.
Still if sold up he would have fetched five hundred pounds.
But more than a year was gone since he began on his own account.
“Well,” said George, “I must be patient and still keep doubling on, and if I do as well next year as last I shall be worth eight hundred pounds.
” A month's dry hot weather came and George had arduous work to take water to his bullocks and to drive them in from long distances to his homestead, where, by digging enormous tanks, he had secured a constant supply.
No man ever worked for a master as this rustic Hercules worked for Susan Merton.
Prudent George sold twenty bullocks and cows to the first bidder.
“I can buy again at a better time,” argued he.
He had now one hundred and twenty-five pounds in hand.
The drought continued and he wished he had sold more.
One morning Abner came hastily in and told him that nearly all the beasts and cows were missing.
George flung himself on his horse and galloped to the end of his run.
No signs of them--returning disconsolate he took Jacky on his crupper and went over the ground with him.
Jacky's eyes were playing and sparkling all the time in search of signs.
Nothing clear was discovered.
Then at Jacky's request they rode off George's feeding-ground altogether and made for a little wood about two miles distant.
“Suppose you stop here, I go in the bush,” said Jacky.
George sat down and waited.
In about two hours Jacky came back.
“I've found 'em,” said Jacky coolly.
George rose in great excitement and followed Jacky through the stiff bush, often scratching his hands and face.
At last Jacky stopped and pointed to the ground, “There!
” “There?
ye foolish creature,” cried George; “that's ashes where somebody has lighted a fire; that and a bone or two is all I see.
” “Beef bone,” replied Jacky coolly.
George started with horror.
“Black fellow burn beef here and eat him.
Black fellow a great thief.
Black fellow take all your beef.
Now we catch black fellow and shoot him suppose he not tell us where the other beef gone.
” “But how am I to catch him?
How am I even to find him?
” “You wait till the sun so; then black fellow burn more beef.
Then I see the smoke; then I catch him.
You go fetch the make-thunder with two mouths.
When he see him that make him honest a good deal.
” Off galloped George and returned with his double-barreled gun in about an hour and a half.
He found Jacky where he had left him at the foot of a gumtree tall and smooth as an admiral's main-mast.
Jacky, who was coiled up in happy repose like a dog in warm weather, rose and with a slight yawn said, “Now I go up and look.
” He made two sharp cuts on the tree with his tomahawk, and putting his great toe in the nick, rose on it, made another nick higher up, and holding the smooth stem put his other great toe in it, and so on till in an incredibly short time he had reached the top and left a staircase of his own making behind him.
He had hardly reached the top when he slid down to the bottom again and announced that he had discovered what they were in search of.
George haltered the pony to the tree and followed Jacky, who struck farther into the wood.
After a most disagreeable scramble at the other side of the wood Jacky stopped and put his finger to his lips.
They both went cautiously out of the wood, and mounting a bank that lay under its shelter they came plump upon a little party of blacks, four male and three female.
The women were seated round a fire burning beef and gnawing the outside laminae, then putting it down to the fire again.
The men, who always serve themselves first, were lying gorged--but at sight of George and Jacky they were on their feet in a moment and their spears poised in their hands.
Jacky walked down the bank and poured a volley of abuse into them.
Between two of his native sentences he uttered a quiet aside to George, “Suppose black fellow lift spear you shoot him dead,” and then abused them like pickpockets again and pointed to the make-thunder with two mouths in George's hand.
After a severe cackle on both sides the voices began to calm down like water going off the boil, and presently soft low gutturals passed in pleasant modulation.
Then the eldest male savage made a courteous signal to Jacky that he should sit down and gnaw.
Jacky on this administered three kicks among the gins and sent them flying, then down he sat and had a gnaw at their beef--George's beef, I mean.
The rage of hunger appeased, he rose, and with the male savages took the open country.
On the way he let George know that these black fellows were of his tribe, that they had driven off the cattle and that he had insisted on restitution--which was about to be made; and sure enough, before they had gone a mile they saw some beasts grazing in a narrow valley.
George gave a shout of joy, but counting them he found fifteen short.
When Jacky inquired after the others the blacks shrugged their shoulders.
They knew nothing more than this, that wanting a dinner they had driven off forty bullocks; but finding they could only eat one that day they had killed one and left the others, of whom some were in the place they had left them; the rest were somewhere, they didn't know where--far less care.
They had dined, that was enough for them.
When this characteristic answer reached George he clinched his teeth and for a moment felt an impulse to make a little thunder on their slippery black carcasses, but he groaned instead and said, “They were never taught any better.
” Then Jacky and he set to work to drive the cattle together.
With infinite difficulty they got them all home by about eleven o'clock at night.
The next day up with the sun to find the rest.
Two o'clock--and only one had they fallen in with, and the sun broiled so that lazy Jacky gave in and crept in under the beast for shade, and George was fain to sit on his shady side with moody brow and sorrowful heart.
Presently Jacky got up.
“I find one,” said he.
“Where?
where?
” cried George, looking all round.
Jacky pointed to a rising ground at least six miles off.
George groaned, “Are you making a fool of me?
I can see nothing but a barren hill with a few great bushes here and there.
You are never taking those bushes for beasts?
” Jacky smiled with utter scorn.
“White fellow stupid fellow; he see nothing.
” “Well and what does black fellow see?
” snapped George.
“Black fellow see a crow coming from the sun, and when he came over there he turned and went down and not get up again a good while.
Then black fellow say, 'I tink.'
Presently come flying one more crow from that other side where the sun is not.
Black fellow watch him, and when he come over there he turn round and go down, too, and not get up a good while.
Then black fellow say, 'I know.'
” “Oh, come along!
” cried George.
They hurried on; but when they came to the rising ground and bushes Jacky put his finger to his lips.
“Suppose we catch the black fellows that have got wings; you make thunder for them?
” He read the answer in George's eye.
Then he took George round the back of the hill and they mounted the crest from the reverse side.
They came over it and there at their very feet lay one of George's best bullocks, with tongue protruded, breathing his last gasp.
A crow of the country was perched on his ribs, digging his thick beak into a hole he had made in his ribs, and another was picking out one of his eyes.
The birds rose heavily, clogged and swelling with gore.
George's eyes flashed, his gun went up to his shoulder, and Jacky saw the brown barrel rise slowly for a moment as it followed the nearest bird wobbling off with broad back invitingly displayed to the marksman.
Bang!
the whole charge shivered the ill-omened glutton, who instantly dropped riddled with shot like a sieve, while a cloud of dusky feathers rose from him into the air.
The other, hearing the earthly thunder and Jacky's exulting whoop, gave a sudden whirl with his long wing and shot up into the air at an angle and made off with great velocity; but the second barrel followed him as he turned and followed him as he flew down the wind.
Bang!
out flew two handfuls of dusky feathers, and glutton No. 2 died in the air, and its carcass and expanded wings went whirling like a sheet of paper and fell on the top of a bush at the foot of the hill.
All this delighted the devil-may-care Jacky, but it may be supposed it was small consolation to George.
He went up to the poor beast, who died even as he looked down on him.
“Drought, Jacky!
drought!
” said he--“it is Moses, the best of the herd.
Oh, Moses, why couldn't you stay beside me?
I'm sure I never let you want for water, and never would--you left me to find worse friends!
” and so the poor simple fellow moaned over the unfortunate creature, and gently reproached him for his want of confidence in him that it was pitiful.
Then suddenly turning on Jacky he said gravely, “Moses won't be the only one, I doubt.
” The words were hardly out of his mouth before a loud moo proclaimed the vicinity of cattle.
They ran toward the sound, and in a rocky hollow they found nine bullocks; and alas!
at some little distance another lay dead.
Those that were alive were panting with lolling tongues in the broiling sun.
How to save them; how to get them home a distance of eight miles.
“Oh!
for a drop of water.
” The poor fools had strayed into the most arid region for miles round.
Instinct makes blunders as well as reason.
--Bestiale est errare.
“We must drive them from this, Jacky, though half of them die by the way.
”
