An Echo from the Old Bark School

It was the first Monday after the holidays. The children had taken their seats in the Old Bark School, and the master called out the roll as usual:⁠—

“Arvie Aspinall.”⁠ ⁠… “ ’Es, sir.”

“David Cooper.”⁠ ⁠… “Yes, sir.”

“John Heegard.”⁠ ⁠… “Yezzer.”

“Joseph Swallow.”⁠ ⁠… “Yesser.”

“James Bullock.”⁠ ⁠… “Present.”

“Frederick Swallow.”⁠ ⁠… “Y’sir.”

“James Nowlett.”⁠ ⁠… (Chorus of “Absent.”)

“William Atkins.”⁠ ⁠… (Chorus of “Absent.”)

“Daniel Lyons.”⁠ ⁠… “Perresent, sor-r-r.”

Dan was a young immigrant, just out from the sod, and rolled his r’s like a cock-dove. His brogue was rich enough to make an Irishman laugh.

Bill was “wagging it.” His own especial chum was of the opinion that Bill was sick. The master’s opinion did not coincide, so he penned a note to William’s parents, to be delivered by the model boy of the school.

“Bertha Lambert.”⁠ ⁠… “Yes, ’air.”

“May Carey.”⁠ ⁠… “Pesin’, sair.”

“Rose Cooper.”⁠ ⁠… “Yes, sir.”

“Janet Wild.”⁠ ⁠… “Y-y-yes, s-sir.”

“Mary Wild.”⁠ ⁠…

A solemn hush fell upon the school, and presently Janet Wild threw her arms out on the desk before her, let her face fall on them, and sobbed heart-brokenly. The master saw his mistake too late; he gave his head a little half-affirmative, half-negative movement, in that pathetic old way of his; rested his head on one hand, gazed sadly at the name, and sighed.

But the galoot of the school spoilt the pathos of it all, for, during the awed silence which followed the calling of the girl’s name, he suddenly brightened up⁠—the first time he was ever observed to do so during school hours⁠—and said, briskly and cheerfully “Dead⁠—sir!”

He hadn’t been able to answer a question correctly for several days.

“Children,” said the master gravely and sadly, “children, this is the first time I ever had to put D to the name of one of my scholars. Poor Mary! she was one of my first pupils⁠—came the first morning the school was opened. Children, I want you to be a little quieter today during play-hour, out of respect for the name of your dead schoolmate whom it has pleased the Almighty to take in her youth.”

“Please, sir,” asked the galoot, evidently encouraged by his fancied success, “please, sir, what does D stand for?”

“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 teatime 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 forever 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 campfire, 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 southeasters, 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 tonight. 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 seasick 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.”

Then we crossed the street to a pub and asked for a roof and they told us to go up to No. 8. We went up, struck a match, lit the candle, put our bag in a corner, cleared the looking-glass, etc., off the toilet table, got some paper and a pencil out of our portmanteau, and sat down and wrote this sketch.

The candle is going out.