Howard R. Garis - "Umboo, the Elephant"

George H.W. Bush - "State of the Union Addresses of George H.W. Bush"

Martin van Buren - "State of the Union Addresses of Martin van Buren"

William Shakespeare - "The Tragedy of Coriolanus"

While the Billy Boils

H >> Henry Lawson >> While the Billy Boils




"Damn you for a hass!" 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 passed, 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 apron. 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 assistant 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 grass--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 God--and He
won't move you on. God 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, canvasser, 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 scraps of food, add a slice or two of bread and butter, 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 scraps 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 scrap 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 ashore 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 competition.

A year or two ago, when a company was running boats between Australia
and New Zealand without competition, 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 scraped 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 appetite 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 appetite 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.

You can go across now for one pound, and get something to eat on the
road; but the travelling public will go on patronizing the latest
reducer of fares until the poorer company gets starved out and fares
go up again--then the travelling public will have to pay three or four
times as much as they do now, and go hungry on the voyage; all of
which ought to go to prove that the travelling public is as big a fool
as the general public.

We can't help thinking that the captains and crews of our primitive
little coastal steamers take the chances so often that they in time
get used to it, and, being used to it, have no longer any misgivings
or anxiety in rough weather concerning a watery grave, but feel as
perfectly safe as if they were in church with their wives or
sisters--only more comfortable--and go on feeling so until the
worn-out machinery breaks down and lets the old tub run ashore, or
knocks a hole in her side, or the side itself rusts through at last
and lets the water in, or the last straw in the shape of an extra ton
of brine tumbles on board, and the _John Smith (Newcastle)_, goes
down with a swoosh before the cook has time to leave off peeling his
potatoes and take to prayer.

These cheerful--and, maybe, unjust--reflections are perhaps in
consequence of our having lost half a sovereign to start with. We
arrived at the booking-office with two minutes to spare, two sticks of
Juno tobacco, a spare wooden pipe--in case we lost the other--a letter
to a friend's friend down south, a pound note (Bank of New Zealand),
and two half-crowns, with which to try our fortunes in the South
Island. We also had a few things in a portmanteau and two blankets in
a three-bushel bag, but they didn't amount to much. The clerk put
down the ticket with the half-sovereign on top of it, and we wrapped
the latter in the former and ran for the wharf. On the way we
snatched the ticket out to see the name of the boat we were going by,
in order to find it, and it was then, we suppose, that the semi-quid
got lost.

Did you ever lose a sovereign or a half-sovereign under similar
circumstances? You think of it casually and feel for it carelessly at
first, to be sure that it's there all right; then, after going through
your pockets three or four times with rapidly growing uneasiness, you
lose your head a little and dredge for that coin hurriedly and with
painful anxiety. Then you force yourself to be calm, and proceed to
search yourself systematically, in a methodical manner. At this
stage, if you have time, it's a good plan to sit down and think out
when and where you last had that half-sovereign, and where you have
been since, and which way you came from there, and what you took out
of your pocket, and where, and whether you might have given it in
mistake for sixpence at that pub where you rushed in to have a
beer--and then you calculate the chances against getting it back
again. The last of these reflections is apt to be painful, and the
painfulness is complicated and increased when there happen to have
been several pubs and a like number of hurried farewell beers in the
recent past.

And for months after that you cannot get rid of the idea that that
half-sov. might be about your clothes somewhere. It haunts you. You
turn your pockets out, and feel the lining of your coat and vest inch
by inch, and examine your letter papers--everything you happen to have
had in your pocket that day--over and over again, and by and by you
peer in envelopes and unfold papers that you didn't have in your
pocket at all, but might have had. And when the novelty of the first
search has worn off, and the fit takes you, you make another search.
Even after many months have passed away, some day--or night--when you
are hard up for tobacco and a drink, you suddenly think of that late
lamented half-sov., and are moved by adverse circumstances to look
through your old clothes in a sort of forlorn hope, or to give good
luck a sort of chance to surprise you--the only chance that you can
give it.

By the way, seven-and-six of that half-quid should have gone to the
landlord of the hotel where we stayed last, and somehow, in spite of
this enlightened age, the loss of it seemed a judgment; and seeing
that the boat was old and primitive, and there was every sign of a
three days' sou'-easter, we sincerely hoped that judgment was
complete--that supreme wrath had been appeased by the fine of ten bob
without adding any Jonah business to it.

This reminds us that we once found a lost half-sovereign in the bowl
of a spare pipe six months after it was lost. We wish it had stayed
there and turned up to-night. But, although when you are in great
danger--say, adrift in an open boat--tales of providential escapes and
rescues may interest and comfort you, you can't get any comfort out of
anecdotes concerning the turning up of lost quids when you have just
lost one yourself. All you want is to find it.

It bothers you even not to be able to account for a bob. You always
like to know that you have had something for your money, if only a
long beer. You would sooner know that you fooled your money away on a
spree, and made yourself sick than lost it out of an extra hole in
your pocket, and kept well.

We left Wellington with a feeling of pained regret, a fellow-wanderer
by our side telling us how he had once lost "fi-pun-note"--and about
two-thirds of the city unemployed on the wharf looking for that
half-sovereign. Well, we hope that some poor devil found it;
although, to tell the truth, we would then have by far preferred to
have found it ourselves.

A sailor said that the _Moa_ was a good sea-boat, and, although
she was small and old, _he_ was never afraid of her. He'd sooner
travel in her than in some of those big cheap ocean liners with more
sand in them than iron or steel--You, know the rest. Further on, in a
conversation concerning the age of these coasters, he said that they'd
last fully thirty years if well painted and looked after. He said
that this one was seldom painted, and never painted properly; and
then, seemingly in direct contradiction to his previously expressed
confidence in the safety and seaworthiness of the _Moa_, he said
that he could poke a stick through her anywhere. We asked him not to
do it.

It came on to splash, and we went below to reflect, and search once
more for that half-sovereign. The cabin was small and close, and
dimly lighted, and evil smelling, and shaped like the butt end of a
coffin. It might not have smelt so bad if we hadn't lost that
half-sovereign. There was a party of those gipsy-like Assyrians--two
families apparently--the women and children lying very sick about the
lower bunks; and a big, good-humoured-looking young Maori propped
between the end of the table and the wall, playing a concertina. The
sick people were too sick, and the concertina seemed too much in
sympathy with them, and the lost half-quid haunted us more than ever
down there; so we started to climb out.

The first thing that struck us was the jagged top edge of that iron
hood-like arrangement over the gangway. The top half only of the
scuttle was open. There was nothing to be seen except a fog of spray
and a Newfoundland dog sea-sick under the lee of something. The next
thing that struck us was a tub of salt water, which came like a cannon
ball and broke against the hood affair, and spattered on deck like a
crockery shop. We climbed down again backwards, and sat on the floor
with emphasis, in consequence of stepping down a last step that wasn't
there, and cracked the back of our heads against the edge of the
table. The Maori helped us up, and we had a drink with him at the
expense of one of the half-casers mentioned in the beginning of this
sketch. Then the Maori shouted, then we, then the Maori again, then
we again; and then we thought, "Dash it, what's a half-sovereign?
We'll fall on our feet all right."

We went up Queen Charlotte's Sound, a long crooked arm of the sea
between big, rugged, black-looking hills. There was a sort of
lighthouse down near the entrance, and they said an old Maori woman
kept it. There were some whitish things on the sides of the hills,
which we at first took for cattle, and then for goats. They were
sheep. Someone said that that country was only fit to carry sheep.
It must have been bad, then, judging from some of the country in
Australia which is only fit to carry sheep. Country that wouldn't
carry goats would carry sheep, we think. Sheep are about the hardiest
animals on the face of this planet--barring crocodiles.

You may rip a sheep open whilst watching for the boss's boots or
yarning to a pen-mate, and then when you have stuffed the works back
into the animal, and put a stitch in the slit, and poked it somewhere
with a tar-stick (it doesn't matter much where) the jumbuck will be
all right and just as lively as ever, and turn up next shearing
without the ghost of a scratch on its skin.

We reached Picton, a small collection of twinkling lights in a dark
pocket, apparently at the top of a sound. We climbed up on to the
wharf, got through between two railway trucks, and asked a policeman
where we were, and where the telegraph office was. There were several
pretty girls in the office, laughing and chyacking the counter clerks,
which jarred upon the feelings of this poor orphan wanderer in strange
lands. We gloomily took a telegram form, and wired to a friend in
North Island, using the following words: "Wire quid; stumped."

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