J Fenimore Cooper - "The Prairie"

Ellis Wynne - "The Visions of the Sleeping Bard"

William Shakespeare - "The First Part of King Henry the Sixth"

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - "The Sorrows of Young Werther"

Seven Little Australians

E >> Ethel Turner >> Seven Little Australians




Just for the first moment or two Pip felt a little disinclined to
quit the stronghold of his horse's back. The thunder of hoofs and
horns, the wild charges made by the desperate animals against the
fence, made him expect to see it come crashing down every minute.

But everybody else had gone to "cockatoo"--to sit on the top rail
of the enclosure and look down at the maddened creatures, so at length
he fastened his bridle to a tree and proceeded gingerly to follow
their example.

At a sudden signal from Mr. Hassal the men dropped down inside,
half along, one side and half the other. The object was to get a
hundred or two of the cattle into the forcing-yard adjoining, the gate
to which was wide open. Pip marvelled at the courage of the men;
for a moment his heart had leaped to his mouth as bullock after
bullock essayed to charge them, but the air resounded with cracks from
the mighty stock whips and drafting-sticks, and beast after beast
retreated towards the centre with its face dripping with blood.

Then one huge black creature, with a bellow that seemed to shake
the plain, made a wild rush to the gate, the whole herd at his heels.
Like lightning, the men made a line behind, shouting, yelling,
cracking their whips to drive them onward. Pip stood up and halloed,
absolutely beside himself with excitement. Then he held his breath
again.

Mr. Hassal and one of the black boys were creeping cautiously up
near the gateway through which the tumultuous stream of horns and
backs was pouring. Half a dozen mighty blows from the men, and
the last leader fell back for an instant, driving the multitude baek
behind him.

In that second the two had slipped up the rails and the herd was in
two divisions.

Two lines of stockmen again, whip-crackings, bellows, blood, horns,
hide and heels in the air, and some forty or fifty were secure in a
third yard, a long narrow place with a gate at the end leading into
the final division.

Pip learnt from Mr. Gillet the object of these divisions: some of
the beasts were almost worthless things, and had been assigned to a
buyer for a couple of pounds a head, just for the horns, hides, and
what might be got for the flesh. Others were prime, fat creatures,
ready for the butcher and Sydney market. And others again were
splendid animals, of great value for prize and breeding purposes,
and were to be made into a separate draft.

The man at the last gateway was doing the all important work of
selecting. He was armed with a short thick stick, and, as the other
men drove the animals down towards him, decided with lightning speed
to which class they belonged. A heavy blow on the nose, a sharp,
rapid series of them between the eyes, and the most violent brute
plunged blindly whither the driver sent him. All the day work went on,
and just as the great hot purple shadows began to fall across the
plain they secured the last rail, the battle was over, and the animals
in approved divisions.

Pip ate enough salt beef and damper to half kill him, drank more tea
than he had ever disposed of at one sitting in all his fourteen years,
swung himself into his saddle in close imitation of the oldest
stockman, and thought if he only could have a black, evil-looking
pipe like Tettawonga and the rest of the men his happiness would be
complete and his manhood attained.

He reached home as tired as "a dozen dogs and a dingo," and
entertained his sisters and Bunty with a graphic account of the
day's proceedings, dwelling lengthily on his own prowess and the
manifold perils he had escaped.

The next day both Esther and Judy rode with the others to the yards
to see the departures.

The best of the contingent, which Mr. Hassal had only wanted to
separate, not to sell, were driven out through the gate and away
to their old fields and pastures stale.

The "wasters," some hundred and fifty of them, with half a dozen
stockmen mounted on the best horses of the place told off for
them, were released from their enclosure in a state of frenzied
desperation, and, with much cracking of whips and yells, mustered
into a herd and driven across the plain in the direction of the road.
And some hour or two later the best "beef" lot were driven forth,
and quiet reigned at Yarrahappini once more. During the two days
of excitement the children all decided upon their future professions,
which were all to be of a pastoral nature.

Pip was going to be a stockman, and brand and draft cattle all the
days of his life. Judy was going to be his "aide-de-camp", provided
he let her stay in the saddle, and provided her with a whip just as
long as his own. Meg thought she should like to marry the richest
squatter in Australia, and have the Governor and the Premier come up
for shooting and "things," and give balls to which all the people
within a hundred miles would come. Nell decided the would make soap
and candles, coloured as well as plain, when she arrived at years
of discretion; said Baby inclined to keeping paddocks full of pet
lambs that never grew into sheep.

Bunty did, not wax enthusiastic over any of the ideas.

"I'd rather be like Mr. Gillet," he said, and his eyes looked dreamy.

Pooh! no books and figures far me; give me a run of Salt Bush country,
and a few thousand sheep," said Pip.

"Hear! hear!" chimed in Judy.

"Stoopids!" said Bunty, in a voice of great scorn. Doesn't Mr.
Gillet keep the store keys--just think those currants and figs."



CHAPTER XVIII The Picnic at Krangi-Bahtoo


Esther had gone to a ball, not in a dress of delicate colour with
great puffed sleeves, and a dazzling neck bare and beautiful under its
wraps, not through the darkness to a blaze of lights and swinging
music.

She had gone, in the broad light of the morning, in a holland suit
with a blue Henley shirt, a sailor hat, and a gossamer.

Under the front buggy seat where Mr. Hassal sat was a box containing
a beautiful gown, all daffodil silk and delicate wavelets of chiffon.
And there were daffodil shoes and stockings, a plume fan in a hat-box
on her knee, and a lovely trained white underskirt with billowy
frills of torchon, the very sight of which made Meg wild to
be grown up.

But none of these things were to be donned for many an hour yet.

The ball was a neat little matter of fifty-five miles away, across
country, so she had to start tolerably early, of course, in order to
have comfortable time to "titivate," as Pip expressed it.

The children, as compensation for having no part in this pleasure,
were to have a very, out-of-the-way kind of picnic all to themselves.

In the first place, the picnic ground was fourteen miles away;
in the second, the journey was to be made, not in everyday buggies,
or on commonplace horses, but on a dray drawn by a team of twelve
yoked bullocks.

A boundary-rider had reported that a magnificent blue gum that
they had long called King Koree had been blown down during a violent
gale, and Mr. Hassal immediately declared that, whatever the
trouble, it must be brought for the foundation of a kind of dam
across the creek at Krangi-Bahtoo, the picnic spot. The fallen
bush monarch lay twenty miles away from the station, and six beyond
the place chosen for the picnic; so it was arranged the trolly
should carry the party for the fourteen miles, leave them to
picnic, go forward for the tree, bring it back, and deposit it near
the creek ready for future operations, and bring the children
back in the cool of the evening.

But for escorting his daughter to the ball, Mr. Hassal would have
gone himself to the place and seen about it in person. As it was, he
placed the great trolly in the charge of four men, with instructions
to pick up a couple of men from distant huts to help in the task.

Krangi-Bahtoo--or Duck Water, as, less prettily, we should call
it--was the name given to the head of the creek, which had scooped
out the earth till it made itself a beautiful ravine just there,
with precipitous rocks and boulders that the kangaroos skipped across
and played hide-and-seek behind with hunters, and great towering
blue gums and red gums, that seemed to lose themselves in the blue,
blue sky-canopy above.

Tettawonga told of a Bunyip that dwelt where the trickling water
had made a pool, deep and beautiful, and delicate ferns had crept
tenderly to fringe its edge, and blackwood, and ti-trees grown up
thick and strong for a girdle. The water-hen made a home there,
the black swan built among the grass-like reeds, the wild duck
made frequent dark zigzag lines against the sky. From the trees
the bell-bird, the coach-whip, the tewinga, the laughing-jackass,
the rifle-bird and regent, filled the air with sound, if not with
music. And the black snake, the brown snake, the whip, the diamond,
and the death adder glided gently among the fallen leaves and
grasses, and held themselves in cheerful readiness for intruders.
That was why a condition was attached to the freely granted picnic.

Everyone might go, and go on the bullock-dray, but the picnic was
to take place above the ravine, and no one was to venture down, on
pain of being instantly packed back to Sydney.

They all promised faithfully. Mrs. Hassal, tiny as she was, had a
way of commanding implicit obedience.

Then an incredible number of hampers, brimming over with good things,
was packed.

Mr. Gillet went, to give an appearance of steadiness to the party,
and to see no one got sunstroke.

He had a Heine in one pocket against the long, unusual day, a bulging
Tennyson in the other, and a sheaf of English papers under his arm
as he climbed on the trolly, where the whole seven were already seated.

The SEVEN? Even so, Judy had refused to stir without the General,
and had promised "on her life" not to allow any harm to come near him.

Mr. Gillet gave a glance almost of dismay when he found the whole
number was to be present, without the subtraction of the mischievously
disposed ones, or the addition of anyone but himself weighted with
authority. For a moment he distrusted his own powers in such a
situation.

Judy caught the doubting look.

"You're quoting poetry to yourself, Mr. Gillet," she said.

"I?" he said, and looked astonished. "Indeed, no. What makes you
think so, Miss Judy?"

"I can hear it distinctly," she said. "Your eyes are saying it,
and your left ear, not to mention the ends of your moustache."

Judy!" reproved Meg, whom something had made strangely quiet.

He pretended to be alarmed--shut his eyes, held his left ear,
covered his moustache.

"What can they be saying?" he said.

"'Oh that I was where I would be!
Then I would be where I am not:
But where I am I still must be,
And where I would be I cannot.'

Meg, I WISH you would stop treading on my toes."

So after that even Mr. Gillet grew gay and talkaive, to show he
was enjoying himself, and the bullocks caught the infection of the
brimming spirits behind them, and moved a LEETLE bit faster than
snails. When they had crept along over about ten miles, however,
the slow motion and the heat that beat down sobered them a little.

"Miss Meg, that silver-grey gum before you, guileless of leaves,
indicates Duck Water."

How glad they were to unfold themselves and stretch out their arms
and legs on the ground at last. No one had dreamt riding behind a
bullock team could have been so "flat, stale, and unprofitable," as
it was after the first mile or two.

Then the trolly continued its course.

"I doubt if they will be back before the sun goes down, if they
don't go a little quicker," Mr. Gillet said; "it is lunch-time
now."

They were in a great grassed paddock that at one end fell abruptly
down to the ravine and swamp lands known as "Duck Water."

A belt of great trees made a shade at one side, and along the other
was the barbed-wire fence that showed they had not got away from the
Yarrahappini estate even yet: higher up was the lonely bark hut of
one of the stockmen.

They went up in a body to speak to him before he joined the bullock
team, and to view his solitary dwelling.

Just a small room it was, with a wide fireplace and chimney, where
hung a frying-pan, a billy, a cup, and a spoon. There was a bunk in
one corner, with a couple of blue blankets on it, a deal table and one
chair in the middle of the room. Over the fire-place hung a rough
cupboard, made out of a soap-box, and used to hold rations. From a
nail in the low ceiling a mosquito-net bag was suspended, and the
buzzing flies around proclaimed that it held meat. The walls were
papered with many a copy of "The Illustrated Sydney News", and
"The Town and Country Journal"; there was a month-old "Daily Telegraph"
lying on the chair, where the owner had laid it down.

A study in brown the stockman was, brown, dull eyes; brown ,
dusty-looking hair; brown skin, sundried and shrivelled; brown,
unkempt beard; brown trousers of corduroy, and brown coat.

His pipe was black, however--a clay, that looked as if it had
been smoked for twenty years.

"Wouldn't you like to be nearer the homestead?" Meg asked. "Isn't
it lonely?"

"Not ter mention," the brown man said to his pipe or his beard.

"What do you do with yourself when you're, not outside?" asked
Pip.

"Smoke," said the man.

"But on Sundays, and all through the evenings?"

"Smoke," he said.

"On Cwismas day," Baby said, pressing to see this strange man;
"zen what does you do?"

"Smoke" he said.

Judy wanted to know how long he'd lived in the little place, and
everyone was stricken dumb to hear he had been there most of the time
for seven years.

"Don't you ever forget how to talk?" she said, in an awestruck
voice.

But he answered laconically to his beard that there was the cat.

Baby had found it already under the kerosene tin that did duty
for a bucket, and it had scratched her in three places: brown,
like its master, it was evil-eyed, fiercely whiskered, thin
as a rail; still, there was the affection of years between the two.

Mr. Gillet told him of the squatter's wish that he should go with the
other men and help with the tree. He pulled a brown hat over his brow
and moved away towards the bullock-dray, which had crept up the
winding road by now, to the hill-top.

"Water in tub, nearer than creek," he muttered to his pipe before he
went, and they found his tub-tank and gladly filled the billy ready
for lunch.

Mrs. Hassal's roast fowls and duck tasted well; even though they
frizzled on the plates as if the sun were trying to finish their
cooking. And the apple tarts and apricot turnovers vanished speedily;
and of the fruit salad that came forth from two screw-top
bottles, not a teaspoonful remained to tell a tale.

Mr. Gillet had brought materials for a damper, by special request,
and after lunch prepared to make it, so they might have it for
afternoon tea.

"Pheough!" said Judy. "ls THAT how you make it? You need not give
ME any."

It certainly was manufactured with surprising celerity.

Mr. Gillet merely tossed some flour from a bag out upon a plate,
added a pinch of salt and some water; then he shaped it into a cake
of dough, and laid it on the ashes of the fire, covering it all over
with the hot, silver ash.

"HOW dirty!" said Nell, elevating her pretty little nose.

But when it was cooked, and Mr. Gillet lifted it up and dusted the
ash away--lo! it was high and light and beautifully white.

So they ate it, and took mental marginal notes to make it in the
paddocks at Misrule for each and *very picnic to come:

They piled up two plates of good things and put in the brown man's
cupboard, and Mr. Gillet laid is unread English papers on the chair
near the cat.

That "Telegraph" is a month old," he said deprecatingly seeing Meg
smile upon him her first smile that day.


Chapter XIX A Pale-Blue Hair Ribbon


She in her virginal beauty
As pure as a pictured saint,
How should this sinning and sorrow
Have for her danger or taint?


The reason our sweet pale margaret had been reluctant of her smiles
was on account of the very man who alone missed them.

Quite a warm friendship had sprung up during the month between the
little fair-faced girl, who looked with such serene blue eyes to a
future she felt must be beautiful, and the world-worn man, who looked
back to a past all blackened and unlovely by his own acts.

He rode with the two girls every-day, because Mrs. Hassal did not
like them going long distances alone; and, seeing Judy seldom walked
her horse, and Meg's steed had not a canter in it, it fell out that
he kept beside the slow and timid rider all the time.

"You remind me of a little sister I had who died," he said slowly to
Meg once, after a long talk. "Perhaps if she were alive now I should
not be quite so contemptible."

Meg's face flushed scarlet, and a shamed look had come into her eyes.
It seemed altogether terrible to her that he should know she knew of
his failing.

"Perhaps it makes her sorry now," she said in a whisper he scarcely
heard, and then she grew pale at her boldness, and rode on a little
way to hide her distressed looks.

On the way home the pale-blue ribbon, that tied the strands of her
sunny plait together, blew off. He dismounted and picked it up.
Meg stretched out her hand for it, but he untied the bow and folded
it slowly round his big hand.

"May I keep it?" he said in a low voice. "For my blue ribbon?
I know the conditions that attach."

"If you would--oh, if you would1" Meg breathed rather than said.
Then Judy galloped up and they rode home three abreast. It was
such happiness to her all the hot, long days that followed; to a
girl just entering life there can be no purer, deeper feeling of
pleasure than that brought by the knowledge that she is influencing
for good some man or woman older than herself, more sin-worn and
earth-wearied. Poor little Meg!. Her tender rose dreams had
plca.tred her big _protege_ a man among men again, holding up his
head once more, taking his place in the world, going back to the
old country, and claiming the noble lady her fertile imagination
had pictured ;waiting so patiently for him; and all this because
she, Meg Woolcot, had stepped into his life and pointed the way
he should go.

And then she went to swing in a hammock on the back veranda,
and all her castles came tumbling about her ears, dealing her sharp,
bitter blows. There was a thick creeper of passion-fruit vines
behind her, and through it she could hear Tettawonga talking to
the cook.

"Marse Gillet on the burst agen," he said, and chuckled through
the side of his lips where his pipe did not rest.

Meg sat up in horror. Since she had been at Yarrahappini she had
heard the phrase applied to too many of the station hands: not to
know that it meant a reckless drinking bout.

Lor'! I'M not surprised," the woman said, "he's been too sober late
days to keep it up; s'pose he's been trying to last the visitors out,
but found it too much. Who's got the keys?"

"Mis' Hassal," he said, "you to helpin' her--ba`al good for
stores to-day, Marse Gillet--he, he, ha, ha!"

So that was what had happened to him all these three days she had
not seen him! She had heard he had ridden over to the next station on
business for Mr. Hassal, but had not dreamed such 'a thing had
overtaken him. The fifth day she had seen him in the distance, once
coming out of the storeroom and looking exactly like himself, only
his shoulders stooped a little more, and once smoking outside his own
door.

The sixth day was the picnic.

Just as light-hearted and merry as the others she could not feel,
with this disappointment at her heart, this shaken trust in human
nature.

How weak he was, she thought, how ignoble!

All her pity was swept away in a young, large indignation.

She had hardly shaken hands when they had met in the morning,
and all the long drive she was persistently cold towards him.

After lunch the party became scattered. Judy took the General and
went over to the belt of trees; Pip and Bunty occupied themselves
with catching locusts; Baby and Nell gathered wild flowers. Meg
knelt down to collect the spoons and forks: and put the untouched
food back into the baskets away from the ants.

"I will do this--you look hot, Miss Meg; sit down quietly," Mr.
Gillet said.

"Thank you, but I prefer to do it myself," Miss Meg said, with
freezing dignity.

She did not look at him, but there was a certain tightness about
her lips that made him know the light in her clear young, eyes was
a scornful one.

He did not offer again, but sat and watched her pack up the things
with an untranslatable look on his face. When she had almost
finished he took something out of his pocket.

"I have to give you this again," he said, and handed her the blue
length of ribbon, folded smoothly, but showing the crease where it
had been tied.

She took it without lifting her eyes, crushed it up in her hand, and
slipped it into her pocket.

"I had almost hoped you would say I might keep it, in spite of
everything," he said, "just as a talisman against the future, but
your lips are too severe, Miss for me to cherish the hope longer."

"It would be as useless as it has been," she said stiffly. Her
hands moved nervously, however, and she wrapped up the remains of
a duck and a jam tart together.

"Then I am not to have another chance?" he said.

"It would be no use," Meg repeated, gathering up bananas and oranges
with a heightened colour."

He does not realize how wicked he has been, he thinks he ought to be
forgiven at once was her thought.

He emptied the billy slowly on the ground, he put on its blackened lid
and tied the newspaper around it. Then he looked at her again,
and the way her soft hair fell on her forehead made him think
of his young dead sister.

"I BEG you to give it, to me again, little Miss Meg," he said.

Meg's heart and head had a rapid battle; the former was tender
and charitable, and bade her take the little ribbon and give it to
him instantly; the latter said he had sinned greatly, and she must
show him her disapproval by her manner, even if she yielded what he
asked her in the end. The head won.

"My influence is evidently useless--that bit of ribbon would make
no difference in the future," she said very coldly.

He leaned back against the tree and yawned, as if the subject had no
more interest for him.

"Ah well," he said, "I dare say you are right." Meg felt a little
taken down.

Of course, if you really want the ribbon you can have it," she said
loftily. She took it from her pocket and tendered it to him.

But he made no effort to take it.

Keep it to tie your hair again, little girl," he said; "after all,
I don't suppose it would be any use."

Meg continued her packing with burning cheeks, and he filled up his
pipe and smoked it, watching her idly the while.

"It's an odd thing," he said, more as if making an observation
than addressing her, "but the gentlest-looking women are nearly
always the hardest."

Meg opened her mouth to speak, but found nothing to say, so closed it
again and began to count Mrs. Hassal's forks for the fourth time.

"I wonder would vou mind if I gave you a little advice, Miss Meg, in
return for all you have given me," he said, taking his pipe from
his mouth and looking at it as if he were trying to find out the
lettering on its nickel plate.

"Certainly not."

She laid down the bundle and looked at him with calm, surprised
eyes. "Say whatever you please, I do not mind in the very least."

He sat up and played with the handle of a strap while he spoke.

"You have brothers," he said; "some day they will go a little
astray--for it is only women like you, Miss Meg, and angels who
can keep to the path always. Don't be too hard on them. Don't
make an effort to show them the difference between your whiteness
and their blackness. They will see it right enough, but they
won't like you to draw their attention to it. Try and look gentle
and forgiving--they'll feel quite as miserable as you could wish
them to feel. The world has a beautiful frown of its own, and an
endless vocabulary of cold words--wouldn't it do if the little
sisters left it the monopoly of them?"

"Oh-h-h!" said Meg. Her cheeks were crimson, and all the dignity
had oozed out of her voice.

He buckled the strap round nothing with infinite care, and went on
again in a low tone:

"Suppose Pip did something very wrong some day, and the world flung
stones at him till he was bruised all over. And suppose feeling
very wretched, he came home to his sisters. And Meg, because
wickedness was abhorrent to her, threw a few more little stones,
so that the pain might teach him a lesson he could not forget.
And Judy, because he was her brother and in trouble, flung her arms
round him and encouraged him, and helped him to fight the world again,
and gave him never a hard word or look, thinking he had had plenty.
Which sister's influence would be greater, Miss Meg?"

Meg's little soft mouth, was quivering, her eyes were on the ground,
because the tears would have splashed out if she had lifted them.

"Oh-h-h!" she said again. "Oh, how very horrid I have been--oh-h-h!"

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