Boyhood--Australia

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_ I

It has often occurred to me to wonder why my recollections of our arrival and first days in Sydney should be so blurred and unsatisfactorily vague. One would have thought such episodes should stand out very clearly in retrospect. As a fact, they are far less clear to me than many an incident of my earlier childhood.

What I do clearly recall is lying awake in my makeshift bunk for some time before daylight on the morning we reached Sydney, and, finally, just before the sun rose, going on deck and sitting on the teak-wood grating beside the wheel. There, on our port side, was the coast of Australia, the land toward which we had been working through gale and calm, storm and sunshine, for more than ninety days. Botany Bay, said the chart. I thought of the grim record I had read of early settlement here. And then came the pilot's cutter, sweeping like a sea-bird under our lee. The early sunshine was bright and gladsome enough; but my recollection is that I felt somehow chilled, and half frightened. That sandy shore conveyed no kindly sense of welcome to me.

The harbour--oh, yes, the harbour was, and is, beautiful, and I can remember thrilling with natural excitement as we opened up cove after cove, while the Ariadne--stately as ever, but curiously quiescent now, with her trimly furled and lifeless sails--was towed slowly to her anchorage. The different bays--Watson's, Mossman's, Neutral, and the rest--had not so many villas then as now. Manly was there, in little; but surf-bathing, like some other less healthful 'notions' from America, was still to come. From the North Shore landing-stage one strolled up the hill, and, very speedily, into the bush.

Yes, the place was naturally beautiful enough; but the Ariadne was home; her every deck plank was familiar to me; I knew each cleat about her fife-rails, every belaying-pin along her sides, every friendly projection from her deck that had a sheltering lee. The shining brass-bound, teak-wood buckets ranged along the break of her poop--the crew's lime-juice was served in one of these, and they all were painted white inside--I see them now. Ay di mi! as the Spanish ladies say; I am not so sure that any place was ever more distinctly home to me. Over the rail, across the dancing waters of the harbour, where the buildings clustered about Circular Quay; as yet, of course, there could be nothing homely for me about all that. And, as to me, it never did become very homely; perhaps that is why my recollections of our first doings there are so vague.

How often, in later years, my heart swelled with vague aspiring yearnings toward what lay beyond, while my eyes ranged over that same smiling scene, from the Domain, Lady Macquarie's Chair, and the purlieus of Circular Quay! (There were no trams there then.) Here one saw the ships that carried folk to and from--what? To and from Home, was always my thought; though what home I fancied that distant island in her grey northern sea had for me, heaven knows! Here one rubbed shoulders, perchance, with some ruddy-faced, careless fellow in dark blue clothes, who, but a short couple of months ago, walked London's streets, and would be there again in the incredibly brief space of six weeks or so. Dyspepsia itself knows no more fell and spirit-racking anguish than nostalgia brings; and at times I have fancied the very air--bland, warm, and kindly seeming--that circulates about the famous quay must be pervaded and possessed by germs of this curious and deadly malady. At least, that soft air is breathed each day by many a victim to the disease; old and young, and of both sexes.

No doubt we must have spent some days in Sydney, my father and myself; but from the Ariadne, and the parting with Nelly Fane and my other companions, memory carries me direct to the deck of a little intercolonial steamer, bound north from Sydney, for Brisbane and other Queensland ports. I see myself in jersey and flannel knickers sitting beside my father on the edge of a deck skylight, and gazing out across dazzlingly sunlit waters to the near-by northern coast of New South Wales. Suddenly, my father laid aside the book which had been resting on his knee, and raised to his eyes the binoculars he used at sea.

'How extraordinary,' he murmured. And, my gaze naturally following his, I made out clearly enough, without glasses, a vessel lying high and dry on the white sand of a fair-sized bay.

My father's keen interest in that derelict ship always seemed to me to spring into being, as it were, full-grown. There was in it no period of gradual development. From the moment his eyes first lighted upon the tapered spars of the Livorno, where she lay basking in her sandy bed, his interest in her was absorbing. Everything else was forgotten. In a few minutes he was in eager conversation about the derelict with the chief officer of our steamer. I remember the exact words and intonation of the man's answer to my father's first question:

'Well, I couldn't say for that, Mr. Freydon' (In Australia no one ever forgets your name, or omits to use it in addressing you), 'but I can tell you the day I first saw her. She was lying there exactly as she is to-day. I was third mate of the Toowoomba then; my first trip in her, and that was seven years ago come Queen's Birthday. Seen her every trip since--just the same. No, she never seems to alter any. She's high and dry, you see; bedded there on an even keel, same's if she was afloat. Yes, it is a wonder, as you say, Mr. Freydon; but it's a lonely place, you see; nothing nearer than--what is it? Werrina, I think they call it; fifteen mile away; and that's a day's march from anywhere, too. Oh yes, there might be an odd sundowner camp aboard of her once in a month o' Sundays; but I doubt it. She isn't in the track to anywhere, as ye might say. No, I guess it would only be bandicoots, an' the like o' that you'd find about her; an' birds, maybe. Only thing I wonder about her is, how she landed there without ever losing her top-hamper, and why nobody's thought it worth while to pick her bones a bit cleaner. Must be good stuff in her stays an' that, to have stood so long, with never a touch o' the tar-brush.'

There was more in the same vein, but this much comes back to me as though it were yesterday that I heard the words. I see the mate's hard blue eye, and crisply curling beard; I see the upward tilt of the same beard as he spat over the rail, and my father's little retreating movement at his gesture. (My father never lost his sensitiveness about such things, though I doubt if he ever allowed it to appear to eyes less familiar with his every movement than my own.) It seems to me that my father talked of the derelict--we did not know her name then, and spoke of her simply as 'the ship'--for the rest of the day, and for days afterwards; and the key to his thoughts was given in one of his earliest remarks:

'What a home a man might make of that ship--all ready to his hand for the asking! The sea, trees--there were plenty of trees--sunshine, solitude, and space. Think of the peacefulness of that sun-washed bay. Nothing nearer than fifteen miles away, and that a mere hamlet, probably. Werrina--not a bad name, Nick--Werrina. Aboriginal origin, I imagine. And all that for the mere taking; open to the poorest--even to us. You liked the Ariadne, Nick. What would you think of a ship of our own?'

Assuredly, we were the strangest pair of emigrants....

II

Naturally, my father's suggestion, thrown out as it were in jest, whimsically, fired my fancy instantly. 'How glorious!' I said. 'But can we, really, father?'

It was less than a week later that we walked out of Werrina's one street into the bush to the westward of that township, accompanied by Ted Reilly and a heavily-laden pack-horse--Jerry. Ted was one of Werrina's oddities, and, in many respects, our salvation. The Werrina storekeeper shook his grizzled head over Ted, and vowed there wasn't an honest day's work in the man.

'What's the matter with Ted is he's got no Systum; never had since he was a babby.' (My thoughts reverted at once to a highly coloured anatomical diagram which hung in the cabin of the Ariadne's captain: the flayed figure of a man whose face wore the incredibly complacent look one sees on the waxen features of tailors' dummies, though the poor fellow's heart, liver, kidneys, and other internal paraphernalia were shamelessly exposed to the public gaze. The storekeeper's tone convinced me for the time that poor Ted had been born lacking some one or other of the important-looking purple organs which the diagram had shown me as belonging to the human system.) 'He's a here-to-day-and-gone-to-morrow, come-day-go-day-God-send-Sunday sort of a customer, is Ted--my oath! Wanter Systum. That's what I'm always telling 'em in this place. It's wanter Systum that's the curse uv Australia; an' Ted's got it worsen most. Don't I know it? I gave him a chanst here in my store. Might ha' made a Persition frimself. But, no; no Systum at all. He was off in a fortnight, trappin' dingoes in the bush, or some such nonsense. He's for no more use than--than a bumble bee, isn't Ted Reilly; nor never will be.'

Well, he was of a good deal of practical use to us, the storekeeper notwithstanding; but I admit that there was a notable absence of 'Systum' about the man. He was singularly unmethodical and haphazard, even as his kind go in the remoter parts of Australia. He made our acquaintance very casually by asking my father for a match, almost before we had descended from the coach outside the Royal Hotel, Werrina. (There was nothing royal, or even comfortable, about this weatherboard and iron inn, except its name.) And, oddly enough, my father fell into conversation with him, and seemed rather to take to the man forthwith.

I know it was by his advice, as kindly meant, I am sure, as it was shrewd, that my father said nothing to any one else in the township of his fantastic ideas regarding what we now knew to be the derelict Italian barque, Livorno, of Genoa. It was given out that we were going camping, between Werrina and the coast; and, no doubt my father was credited by the local wiseacres with the possession of some crafty prospecting scheme or another. Most of the folk thereabouts had been always wont to look to the bush (chiefly for timber) as a source of livelihood, but their attention was usually turned inland rather than seaward; for the bulk of the country between Werrina and the sea is poor and swampy, or sandy. The belt of timber we had seen behind our derelict's bay was not extensive.

It was Ted who bought Jerry for us for the modest price of L3, 15s.; and I make no doubt that serviceable beast would have cost my father L7 if he had had 'the haggling of it.' Pack-saddle and tent, with a number of other oddments, had come with us from across the Queensland border; first, by rail, and thence by numerous devious coach routes to Werrina. The only thing about our expedition which I think Ted really mistrusted and disliked was the fact that we set forth on foot. He told my father of horses he could buy, if not for three a penny, certainly at the rate of two for a five-pound note. (Animals no better, or very little better, are selling for L20 apiece in the same country to-day.) But my father spoke of the cost of saddlery and the like. He had been brought up in a land where horse-keeping means considerable expense, and the need for husbanding his slender resources was strongly foremost in his mind just now. But Ted had all his life long thought of horses as a natural and necessary adjunct to man's locomotion. I have seen him devote considerable time and energy to the task of catching Jerry in order to ride across a couple of hundred yards of sand to his favourite wood-cutting spot. To be poor, that is, short of money, was a natural and customary thing enough in Ted's eyes; but to go ajourneying as a footman suggested a truly pitiable kind of destitution, and did, I am convinced, throw a shadow over what otherwise had been the outset of a jaunt entirely after his own heart.

As the morning wore on, however, and we left behind us all likelihood of chance encounters with more fortunately placed and therefore critical people, bestriding pigskin, Ted's spirits rose again to their normal easy altitude, and mounted beyond that to the level of boyish jollity. Myself, I incline to think that walking along a bush track, with a long stick in his hand and a pack-horse to drive before him, was really an ideal situation for Ted, despite his preference for riding. Afoot, he could so readily step aside to start a 'goanner' up a tree, or pluck an out-of-the-way growth to show me.

There never was such a fellow for 'noticing' things, as they say of children. Print he never read, so far as I know, and perhaps this helped to make him so amazingly keen a reader of Nature. Not the littlest comma on that page ever eluded him.

'Hullo!' he would say when Werrina was miles away behind us. 'Who'd've thought o' that baldy-faced steer o' Murdoch's bein' out here?' One gazed about to locate the beast. But, no. No living thing was in sight. In passing, quite casually, Ted's roving eye had spied a hoof mark, perhaps a day old or more, in the soft bottom of a tiny billabong; a print I could hardly make out, leave alone identify as having been made by this beast or the other, even under the guidance of Ted's pointing finger. Yet for Ted that casual glance--no stooping, no close scrutiny--supplied an accurate and complete picture: the particular beast, its gait, occupation, and way of heading, and the period at which it had passed that way. Withal, it was true enough, as the storekeeper said, poor Ted had no 'Systum'; or none, at all events, of the kind cultivated in shops and offices.

III

However much at fault I may be in recollection of our arrival at Sydney, my memories of our first night at Livorno Bay (so my father christened the derelict's resting-place) could hardly be more vivid and distinct. That night marks for me the beginning of a definite epoch in my life.

I passed the spot in a large inter-state steamer last year. There was no sign of any ship there then, so far, at all events, as I could make out with a borrowed pair of glasses; and the place looked very much the same as any other part of the Australian coast. There are thousands of such indentations around the shores of the island continent, with low headlands of jagged rock by way of horns, and terraces of shell-strewn sand dotted over with ti-tree scrub, which merges into a low-lying bush of swamp oak and suchlike growths, among which, as like as not, you shall find, as we found, a more or less extensive salt-water lagoon, over the sandy bar of which big, tossing breakers will roll in from the Pacific in stormy weather. Yes, I would say now that there is nothing very peculiar or distinctive about Livorno Bay for the observer who is familiar with other parts of Australia's coast.

But in my youthful eyes, seen on the evening of our arrival, after a fifteen miles' walk, and, seen, too, in the glow of a singularly angry-looking evening sky, Livorno Bay, with its derelict barque to focus one's gaze, presented a spectacle almost terrifying in its desolation. Years must have passed since anything edible could have been found on board the Livorno. Yet I hardly think I should exaggerate if I said that two thousand birds rose circling from various points of vantage about the derelict as we approached her sides. That this winged and highly vocal congregation resented our intrusion was not to be doubted for a moment. Short of actually attacking us with beak and claw, the creatures could hardly have given more practical expression to their sentiments. The circumstance was trivial, of course, but I think it somewhat dashed my father's ardour, and I know it struck into my very vitals.

'Begone, you interlopers, or we will rend you! This is no place for humans. Here is only death and desolation for the likes of you. This place belongs of immemorial right to us, and to our masters, the devouring elements. Begone!'

So it seemed we were screamed at from thousands of hoarse throats.

For my part I was well pleased when my father agreed to Ted's suggestion that we should postpone till morning our inspection of the ship, and, in the meantime, concentrate upon the more immediate necessity of pitching camp for the night in the shelter of the timber belt and outside the domain of the screaming sea-birds. Our tent was fortunately not one of the cumbersome sort I had seen on Wimbledon Common at home, but a light Australian contrivance of cotton, enclosing a space ten feet by eight, and protected by a good large fly. Thanks mainly to Ted and his axe we had the necessary stakes cut, and the tent pitched before dark. Meanwhile, the little fire Ted had lighted against a blackened tree-stump had grown into the sort of fiery furnace that was associated in my mind with certain passages in the Old Testament; and, suspended by a piece of fencing wire from a cross stake on two forked sticks, our billy was boiling vigorously.

In all such bush-craft as this Ted was facile princeps, and he asked no better employment. Jerry was turned out to graze, belled and hobbled (for safety in a strange place), and just as actual darkness closed in upon us--no moon was visible that night--we sat down at the mouth of the tent to sup upon corned beef, bread and cheese and jam; the latter in small tins with highly coloured paper wrappers.

By this time my sense of chill and depression had pretty well evaporated. The details of our domesticity were most attractive to me. But I am not sure that my father quite regained his spirits that evening. We each had a canvas camp-stretcher of the collapsible sort. In ten minutes Ted had made himself a hammock bed of two sacks, two saplings, and four forked stakes, which for comfort was quite equal to any camp cot I have yet seen. Sleep came quickly to me, at all events, and whenever I woke during the night, as I did some three or four times, there was booming in my ears that rude music which remained the constant accompaniment of all our lives and doings in Livorno Bay: the dull roar of Pacific breakers on the sand below us, varied by a long sibilant intaking of breath, as it seemed, caused by the back-wash of every wave's subsidence.

Very gently, to avoid disturbing my father--I can see his face on the flimsy cot pillow now, looking sadly fragile and worn--I crept out from our tent in time to see the upper edge of the sun's disc (like a golden dagger of the Moorish shape) flash out its assurance across the sea, and gild with sudden bravery the trucks and spars and frayed rigging of the barque Livorno. Life has no other reassurance to offer which is quite so emphatic as that of the new risen sun; and it is youth, rather than culture, which yields the finest appreciation of this. In its glad light I ran and laughed, half naked, where a few hours earlier, in the murk of coming night, the sense of my own helpless insignificance in all that solitude had descended upon me in the shape of physical fear. Sea and sand laughed with me now, where before they had smitten me with lonely foreboding, almost with terror. I had my first bathe from a Pacific beach that morning; and, given just a shade more of venturesomeness in the outsetting, it had been like to be my last. In Livorno Bay the breakers were big, and the back-wash of their surf very insistent.

The fire of his enthusiasm was once more alight in my father when I got back to our camp that morning; and one might have supposed it nourished him, if one had judged from the cursory manner in which his share of our simple breakfast was dispatched. Then, carrying with him a tomahawk, I remember, he led us down across the sand to where the ship lay, so deeply bedded that one stepped over her rail as it might have been the coaming of a hatch. Her deck, and indeed every uncovered part of the Livorno, was encrusted in the droppings of multitudinous sea-fowl. For almost as many years as I had lived, probably, these creatures had made a home of the derelict. To be sure, they had as good a right to it as we had; yet I remember how keenly we resented their claims, in the broad light of day; even as they, on the previous evening, had resented us. Ted promised them a warm time of it, and congratulated himself on having brought his old gun.

'I'll show 'em whose ship it is,' he said, 'to-night.' And the boy in me rose in sympathetic response. I suppose I looked forward to the prospect of those birds being given a taste of the fear they had helped to inspire in me.

The Livorno had a long, low poop, no more than three feet high, and extending forward to the mainmast. She had none of the Ariadne's bright-work, as the polished teak was always called on that ship. Her rails and deck-houses had been painted in green and white, and I made out the remains of stencilled ornamentation in the corners of panels. No doubt my father had his preconceptions regarding the derelict of which he had thought so much in the past week. In any case he did not linger by the way, but walked direct to the cuddy or saloon, which we entered by a deeply encrusted, sun-cracked scuttle, just forward of the mizzen-mast. So here we were, at length, at the heart of our quest.

Personally, I was for the moment disappointed. My father, being wiser and knowing better what to expect, was pleased, I think. My anticipations had doubtless taken their colour from recent experience of the trim, well-ordered smartness of the Ariadne's saloon. Here, on board the derelict, nothing was left standing which could easily be carried away. The cabins opening into the little saloon had no doors, save in the case of one--the captain's room--that had been split down the centre, apparently with an axe, and its remains hung drunkenly now upon one hinge, which, at a touch from Ted's hand, parted company with its bulkhead, leaving the door to fall clattering to the deck. But, curiously enough, the good hardwood bunks were all intact, except in the case of one, which had, apparently, been wantonly smashed, perhaps by the same insensate hand that smashed the door.

The saloon table had gone, of course, and the chairs; but the brass cleats which had held them to their places in the deck were there still to show us where our predecessors here had sat and taken their meals. Here they had done their gossiping, no doubt, over the remains of savoury macaroni, with, perchance, an occasional flagon of Chianti or Barolo. There was a sort of buffet built into the forward bulkhead; and by a most surprising chance this was unhurt, save for a great star in the mirror behind it. Even its brass rail was intact. Some idle boor must have observed this solid little piece of man's handiwork, and then, I suppose, struck at the mirror with his axe--a savage and blackguardly act. But here, at all events, was our little store cupboard.

'Sideboard's all right then,' was Ted's grinning comment. 'And a man could still see to shave in the glass.'

The saloon skylight had been removed bodily, perhaps to serve some cockatoo bush farmer for a cucumber frame! And the result of this, more than any other circumstance, had been to give the saloon its desolate look; for, beneath the yawning aperture where once the skylight had stood, there was now an unsavoury mound of bird's droppings, near three feet high at its apex. This was now dust-dry; but the autumnal rains of bygone seasons had streamed upon it no doubt, with the result that all the rest of the saloon was several inches deep in the same sort of covering. There were naturally no stores in the pitch-black lazareet which one reached through a trap-door in the saloon deck; but among the lumber there we found an old bucket, a number of empty tins, packing-cases, and the like, a coal shovel with a broken handle, and two tanks in which ship's biscuits had been kept. How these latter commodities came to have been spared by marauding visitors it would be hard to say; for, in the bush, every one, without exception, requires tanks for the storage of rain-water.

From the saloon we made our way right forward to the forecastle, in which practically no damage had been done; for the reason, I suppose, that little was there which easily could be damaged or removed. No anchors or cables were to be seen, but the seamen's bunks remained much as I imagine they had left them; and, on the side of one, some sundowner had contrived to scrawl, apparently with a heated wire, this somewhat fatuous legend:

'Occewpide by me Captin Ned Kelli Bushranger. Chrismas day 1868. Not too bad.'

In many other parts of the ship we found, when we came to do our cleaning, initials, dates, and occasional names, rudely carved. But the only attempt at a written tribute to the derelict's quality as a camping-place was the pretended bushranger's 'Not too bad'; a thoroughly Australian commentary, and probably endorsed in speech at the time of writing by the exclamation: 'My word!'

Internally, the Livorno had been very thoroughly gutted, even to the removal of many of her deck joists and 'tween-decks' stanchions. But in her galley, which, having remained closed, was in quite good order, we found the cooking range, though rusty, intact. It had been built into the deck-house, and, being partly of tiles, would hardly have lent itself to easy transport or use in another place. Ted had a fire burning in it that very day, and water boiling on it in tins. Hidden under much mouldering rubbish in the boatswain's locker were found two deck scrapers, which proved most useful.

Ted strongly advised the adoption, as living-room, of the forecastle; and he may have been in the right of it. The place was weather-proof, its tiny skylight being intact. But sentiment, I think, attracted my father to the quarter-deck. 'The weather side of the poop's my only promenade,' he said gaily. 'And those square stern ports, with the carving under them--it would be a sin to leave them to the birds. Oh, the saloon is clearly our place, and we must rig a shelter over the skylight by and by.'

In the end we accomplished little or nothing beyond inspection that day. Towards evening Ted laid in a stock of firewood beside our camp, while my father wrote a letter to the Werrina storekeeper, which Ted was to take in next day with a cheque. I say we accomplished nothing, because I can remember no useful work done. Yet I do vividly remember falling asleep over my supper, and feeling more physically weary than I had ever been before. We were on our feet all day, of course. We were gleaning new impressions at a great rate. The day was, I suppose, a pretty full one; and assuredly one of us slept well after it.

IV

When my eyes opened next morning, dawn, though near at hand, had not yet come. His pale-robed heralds were busy, however, diffusing that sort of nacreous haze which in coastal Australia lights the way for each day's coming. Looking out over the pillow of my cot I saw Ted among the trees, girthing the pack-saddle on Jerry. In a very few moments I was beside him, and in five minutes he had started on his journey.

'I'll be in Warrina for breakfast,' he said.

I walked a few hundred yards beside him, and the last glimpse I caught of him, at a bend over which the track rose a little, showed Ted seated sideways on the horse's hindquarters, one hand resting on the pack-saddle, the other waving overhead to me. A precarious perch I thought it, but as it saved him from the final degradation of walking, I have no doubt it suited Ted well enough.

The sun was still some little way below the horizon when Ted disappeared, and I was perhaps a quarter of a mile from camp. Inland, I had very likely been bushed. Here, vague though the track was, the sea's incessant call was an unfailing guide. But it was in those few minutes, spent in walking back towards our tent, that I was given my first taste of solitude in the Australian bush; and, boy that I was, it impressed me greatly. It was a permanent addition to my narrow store of impressions, and it is with me yet.

At such times the Australian bush has qualities which distinguish it from any other parts of the world known to me. I have known other places and times far more eerie. To go no farther there are parts of the bush in which thousands of trees, being ring-barked, have died and become ghosts of trees. Seen in the light of a half moon, when the sky is broken by wind-riven cloud, these spectral inhabitants of the bush, with their tattered winding sheets of corpse-white bark, are distinctly more eerie than anything the dawn had to show me beside Livorno Bay.

Withal, the half-hour before sunrise has a peculiar quality of its own, in the bush, which I found very moving and somewhat awe-inspiring upon first acquaintance. There was a hush which one could feel and hear; a silence which exercised one's hearing more than any sound. And yet it was not a silence at all; for the sea never was still there. It was as though the bush and all that dwelt therein held its breath, waiting, waiting for a portent; and, meantime, watching me. In a few moments I found myself also waiting, conscious of each breath I drew. It was not so much eerie as solemn. Yes, I think it was the solemnity of that bush which so impressed me, and for the time so humbled me.

A few moments later and the kindly brightness of the new-risen sun was glinting between tree-trunks, the bush began to breathe naturally, and I was off at a trot for my morning dabble in the surf.

My father and I made but a poor show as housekeepers that day. I suppose we neither of us had ever washed a plate, or even boiled a kettle. In all such matters of what may be called outdoor domesticity (as in the use of such primitive and all-round serviceable tools as the axe), the Colonial-born man has a great advantage over his Home-born kinsman, in that he acquires proficiency in these matters almost as soon and quite as naturally as he learns to walk and talk. And not otherwise can the sane easy mastery of things be acquired.

My father had some admirably sound theories about cooking. He had knowledge enough most heartily to despise the Frenchified menus which, I believe, were coming into vogue in London when we left it, and warmly to appreciate the sterling virtue of good English cookery and food. The basic aim in genuine English cookery is the conservation of the natural flavours and essences of the food cooked. And, since sound English meats and vegetables are by long odds the finest in the world, there could be no better purpose in cooking than this. Subtle methods and provocative sauces, which give their own distinctive flavour to the dishes in which they are used, are well enough for less favoured lands than England, and a much-needed boon, no doubt. They are a wasteful mistake in England, or were, at all events, so long as unadulterated English food was available.

My father taught me these truths long ago, and I am an implicit believer in them to-day. All his theories about such matters were sound; and it may be that, in a properly appointed kitchen, he could have turned out an excellent good meal--given the right mood for the task. But I will admit that in Livorno Bay, both on this our first day alone there, and ever afterwards, my father's only attempts at domestic work were of the most sketchy and least satisfactory description; his grip of our housekeeping was of the feeblest, and in a very short time the matter fell entirely into my hands when Ted was not with us. Ted was my exemplar; from him such knowledge and ability as I acquired were derived. But to his shrewd practicality I was able to add something, in the shape of theory evolved from my father's conversation; and thus presently I obtained a quite respectable grasp of bush domesticity.

This day of Ted's absence in Werrina we devoted to a more or less systematic exploration of our territory. My father was in a cheery vein, and entertained me by bestowing names upon the more salient features of our domain. The two horns of Livorno Bay, I remember, were Gog and Magog; the lagoon remained always just The Lagoon; the timber belt was Arden; our camp, Zoar; and so forth. We found an eminently satisfactory little spring, not quite so near at hand as the water-hole from which Ted had drawn our supplies till now, but yielding brighter, fresher water. And we botanised with the aid of a really charming little manuscript book, bound in kangaroo-skin, and given to my father by the widow of a Queensland squatter whom we had met on the coasting steamer. That little volume is among my few treasured possessions to-day. Some of its watercolour sketches look a little worn and pallid, after all these years, but it is a most instructive book; and from it came all my first knowledge of the various wattles, the different mahoganies, the innumerable gums, the ferns, creepers, and wild flowers of the bush.

It was almost dark when Ted returned--in a cart. We were greatly surprised to see Jerry between the shafts of this ancient vehicle, and my father found it hard to credit that any cart could be driven over the bush track by which we had travelled, with its stumps and holes and sudden dips to watercourses. However, there the cart was, its harness plentifully patched with pieces of cord and wire; and it seemed well laden, too.

'Who lent it you?' asked my father. And Ted explained how the cart had been offered to him for L3, and how, at length, he had bought it for L2, 5s. and a drink. It seemed a sin to miss such a chance, but if my father really did not want it, well, he, Ted, would pay for it out of his earnings. Of course my father accepted responsibility for the purchase, and very useful the crazy old thing proved as time went on; for, though its collapse, like that of other more important institutions, seemed always imminent, it never did actually dissolve in our time, and only occasionally did it shed any vital portion of its fabric. Even after such minor catastrophes, it always bore up nobly under the rude first (and last) aid we could give with cord, or green-hide and axed wood.

To my inexperience it seemed that Ted had brought with him a wide assortment of most of the commodities known to civilisation. The unloading of the cart was to me as the enjoyment of a monstrous bran-pie; an entertainment I had heard of, but never seen. And when I heard there was certainly one more load, and probably two, to come, I felt that we really were rich beyond the dreams of most folk. I recalled the precise manner in which Fred (the Ariadne rival and fellow-passenger, whose surname I never knew) had wilted when he heard that my father and I had intended travelling steerage, and from my heart I wished he could see this cart-load of assorted goods. 'Goods' was the correct word, I thought, for such wholesale profusion; and 'cart-load' had the right spaciousness to indicate a measure of our abundance.

There were several large sheets of galvanised iron, appearing exactly as one in the cart, but covering a notable expanse of ground when spread out singly. These were for a roof in the place of the saloon skylight. My father had pished and tushed and pressed for a bark roof; but Ted, in his bush wisdom, had insisted on the prosaic 'tin,' as a catchment area for rain-water to be stored in the two ship's tanks. There were brooms, scrubbing-brushes, kettles, pots, pans, crockery, fishing-lines, ammunition for Ted's highly lethal old gun, and there were stores. I marvelled that stores so numerous and varied could have come out of Werrina. My imagination was particularly fired by the contemplation of a package said to contain a gross of boxes of matches. Reckoning on fifty to the box, I struggled for some time with a computation of the total number of our matches, giving it up finally when I had reached figures which might have thrilled a Rothschild. Our sugar was not in blue paper packages of a pound weight, but in a sack, as it might be for the sweetening of an army corps' porridge. And our tea! Like the true Australian he was, Ted had actually brought us a twenty-six pound case of tea. It was a wondrous collection, and I drew a long breath when I remembered that there was more, much more, to come. Here were nails, not in spiral twists of paper, but in solid seven-pound packages, and quite a number of them.

Had I been a shopkeeper's son, I suppose these trifles from Werrina would have been esteemed by me at something like their real value. So I rejoice that I was not a shopkeeper's son, for I still cherish a lively recollection of the glad feeling of security and comfortable well-being which filled my breast as I paced round and about our cart and all it had brought us. Long before sun-up next morning, Ted was off again to Werrina; but, seeing our incapacity on the domestic side, the good fellow gave an hour or two before starting to washing up and cooking work; and I pretended to work with him, out there in the star-light, conversing the while in whispers to avoid disturbing my father.

Two more journeys Ted made, and returned fully laden both times, the old cart fairly groaning under the weight of goods it held. And then the services of a bullock-driver and his team and dray had subsequently to be requisitioned to bring out our English boxes and baggage, including the cases of my father's books. Those books, how they tempt one to musing digressions.... But of that in its place.

By the time the carrier's work was done we had established something of a routine of life, though this was subject to a good deal of variation and disorder, as I remember, so long as the tent was in use. Ted had arranged with butcher and storekeeper both to meet one of us once a week at a point distant some six miles from Livorno Bay, where our track crossed a road. Our bread, of course, we baked for ourselves; and excellent bread it was, while Ted made it. I believe that even when the task of making it fell into my hands, it was more palatable than baker's bread; certainly my father thought so, and that was enough for me.

Our hardest work, by far, was the cleaning of the Livorno. There was a spring cleaning with a vengeance! We used a mixture of soft soap and soda and sand, which made our hands all mottled: huge brown freckles over an unwholesome-looking, indurated, fish-belly grey. The stuff made one's finger-ends smart horridly, I remember. For days on end it seemed we lived in this mess; our feet and legs and arms all bare, and perspiration trickling down our noses, while soapy water and sand crept up our arms and all over our bodies. My father insisted on doing his share, though frequently driven by mere exhaustion to pause and lie down at full length upon the nearest dry spot. I have always regretted his persistence at this task, for which at that time he was totally unfit.

However, the scraping and sanding and scrubbing were ended at last, and I will say that I believe we made a very creditable job of it. We could not give back to our barque the soundness of her youth, her sea-going prime, but I think we made her scrupulously clean and sweet; and I shall not forget the jubilant sense of achievement which spurred us on all through the scorching hot day upon which we really installed ourselves.

Ted had rigged an excellent table between the saloon stanchions, and three packing-cases with blankets over them looked quite sumptuous and ottoman-like, as seats. Our bedding was arranged in the solid hardwood bunks which had accommodated the captain and mates of the Livorno what time she made her first exit from the harbour of Genoa. Our stores were neatly stowed in various lockers, and in Ted's famous 'sideboard'; our kitchen things found their appointed places in the galley; our incongruous skylight roof, with its guttering and adjacent tanks, awaited their baptism of rain; my father's books were arranged on shelves of Ted's construction; our various English belongings, looking inexpressibly choice, intimate, and valuable in their new environment, were disposed with a view to convenience, and, be it said, to appearances; and--here was our home.

We were all very tired that night, but we were gay over our supper, and it was most unusually late before I slept. Late as that was, however, I could see by its reflected light on the deck beams that my father's candle was burning still. And when I chanced to wake, long afterwards, I could hear, until I fell asleep again, the slight sound he made in walking softly up and down the poop deck--a lonely man who had not found rest as yet; who, despite bright flashes of gaiety, was far from happy, a fact better understood and more deeply regretted by his small son than he knew.

V

My first serious preoccupation regarding ways and means--the money question--began, I think, in the neighbourhood of my eleventh birthday, and has remained a more or less constant companion and bedfellow ever since.

Now, as I write, I am perhaps freer than ever before from this sordid preoccupation; not by reason of fortunate investments and a plethoric bank balance, but because my needs now are singularly few and inexpensive, and the future--that Damoclean sword of civilised life--no longer stretches out before me, a long and arid expanse demanding provision. This preoccupation began for me in the week of my eleventh birthday, when my father asked me one evening if I thought we could manage now without Ted's services.

'It's not that I pay him much,' said my father, stroking his chin between thumb and forefinger, as his manner was when pondering such a point; 'but the fact is we can by no manner of juggling pretend to be able to afford even that little. Then, again, you see, the poor chap must eat. The fish he brings us are a real help, and no wage-earner I ever met could take pot-luck more cheerfully than Ted. What's more, I like him, you like him, and he is, I know, a most useful fellow to have about. But, take it any way one can, he must represent fifty pounds a year in our rate of expenditure, and-- Well, you see, Nick, we simply haven't got it to spend.'

It was on the tip of my tongue, I remember, to ask my father why he did not send to the bank and ask for more money; and by that may be gauged the crudely unsophisticated stage of my development. But I must remember, too, that I bit back the question, and, ignorant of all detail though I was, felt intuitively sure, first, that the whole subject was a sore and difficult one for my father, and, secondly, that I must never ask for or expect anything calling for monetary expenditure. My vague feeling was that the World had somehow wronged my father by not providing him with more money. I felt instinctively that It never would give him any more; and that It had given him whatever he had, only as the result of personal sacrifices which should never have been demanded of him. I resented keenly what seemed to me the World's callous and unreasonable discourtesy to such a man as my father, whom, I thought, It should have delighted to honour.

As illustrating the World's coarse and brutal injustice, I thought, there was the case of a man like Nelly Fane's father, or, again, the storekeeper in Werrina. (Mr. Fane would hardly have thanked me for the conjunction.) Neither, it was clear, possessed a tithe of the brains, the distinction, the culture, or the charm of my father; yet it was equally obvious (in different ways) that both were a good deal more liberally endowed with this world's gear than we were. I felt that the whole matter ought to be properly explained and made clear to those powers, whoever they were, who controlled and ordered It. I distinctly remember the thought taking shape in my mind that Mr. Disraeli ought to know about it! Meantime, my concern was, as far as might be, to relieve my father of anxiety, and so minimise as much as possible the effects of a palpable miscarriage of justice.

The thing has a rather absurd and pompous effect as I set it down on paper; but I have stated it truly, none the less, however awkwardly.

The fact that I had known no mother, combined with the progressive weakening of my father's health and peace of mind during the previous year or so, may probably have influenced my attitude in all such matters, may have given a partly feminine quality to my affection for my father. I know it seemed to me unfitting that he should ever take any part in our domestic work on the Livorno, and very natural that I should attend to all such matters. Also I had felt, ever since the day in Richmond Park when, to some extent, he gave me his confidence regarding the severance of his connection with the London newspaper office, that my father needed 'looking after,' that it was desirable for him to be taken care of and spared as much as possible; and that, obviously, I was the person to see to it. Our departure from England had been rather a pleasure than otherwise for me, because it had seemed to place my father more completely in my hands. Such an attitude may or may not have been natural and desirable in so young a boy; I only know that it was mine at that time.

It follows therefore that I told my father we could perfectly well manage without Ted, though, as a fact, I viewed the prospect, not with misgiving so much as with very real regret. I had grown to like Ted very well in the few months he had spent with us, and to this day I am gratefully conscious of the practical use and value of many lessons learned from this simple teacher, who was so notably wanting, by the Werrina storekeeper's way of it, in 'Systum.' A more uniformly kindly fellow I do not think I have ever met. The world would probably pronounce him an idler, and it is certain he would never have accumulated money; but he was not really idle. On the contrary, he was full of activity, and of simple, kindly enthusiasms. Rut his chosen forms of activity rarely led him to the production of what is marketable, and he very quickly wearied of any set routine.

'Spare me days!' Ted cried, when my father, with some circumlocutionary hesitancy and great delicacy, conveyed his decision to our factotum. 'Don't let the bit o' money worry ye, Mr. Freydon. It's little I do, anyway. Give me an odd shilling or two for me 'baccy an' that, when I go into Werrina, an' I'll want no wages. What's the use o' wages to the likes o' me, anyhow?'

I could see that this put my father in something of a quandary. A certain delicacy made it difficult for him to mention the matter of Ted's food--the good fellow had a royal appetite--and he did not want to appear unfriendly to a man who simply was not cognisant of any such things as social distinctions or obligations. Finally, and with less than his customary ease, my father did manage to make it plain that his decision, however much he might regret being forced to it, was final; and that he could not possibly permit Ted's proposed gratuitous sacrifice of his time and abilities.

'There's the future to be thought of, you know, Ted,' he added. (For how many years has that word 'future' stood for anxiety, gloom, depression, and worry?) 'Such a capable fellow as you are should be earning good pay, and, if you don't need it now, banking it against the day when you will want it.' (My father was on firmer ground now, and a characteristic smile began to lighten his eyes and voice, besides showing upon his expressive mouth. I am not sure that I ever heard him laugh outright; but his chuckle was a choice incentive to merriment, and he had a smile of exceptional sweetness.) 'There'll be a Mrs. Ted presently, you know, and how should I ever win her friendship, as I hope to, if she knew I had helped to prevent her lord and master from getting together the price of a home? No, no, Ted; we can't let you do that. But if anything I can say or write will help you to a place worth having, I'm very much at your service; and if you will come and pay us a visit whenever you feel like sparing a Sunday or holiday, we shall both take it kindly in you, and Nick here will bless you for it, won't you, Nick?'

I agreed in all sincerity, and so the matter was decided. But Ted positively insisted on being allowed to stay one further week with us, without pay, in order, he said, 'to finish my mate's eddication as a bushman.' 'My mate,' of course, was myself. In the Old World such freedom of speech would perhaps indicate disrespect, and would almost certainly be resented as such. But we had learned something of Australian ways by this time; and if my father's eyebrows may have risen ever so slightly at that word 'mate,' I was frankly pleased and flattered by it. Then, as now, I could appreciate as a compliment the inclination of such a good fellow to give me so friendly a title; and yet I fear me no genuine democrat would admit that I had any claim to be regarded as a disciple of his cult!

His mind deliberately bent on conveying instruction, Ted proved rather a poor teacher. In that role he was the least thing tiresome, and given to enlargement upon unessentials, while overlooking the things that matter. Unconsciously he had taught me much; in his teaching week he rather fretted me. But, all the same, I was sorry when the end of it arrived. We had arranged for him to drive with me to the point at which our track crossed a main road, where we should meet the storekeeper's cart. There would be stores for me to bring back, and Ted would finish his journey with the storekeeper's man. Ted insisted on making me a present of his own special axe, which he treated and regarded as some men will treat a pet razor. He had taught me to use and keep it fairly well. I gave him my big horn-handled knife, which was quite a tool-kit in itself; and my father gave him a hunting-crop to which he had taken a desperate fancy.

The storekeeper's man witnessed our parting, and that kept me on my dignity; but when the pair of them were out of sight, I felt I had lost a friend, and had many cares upon my shoulders. Driving back alone through the bush with our stores, I made some fine resolutions. I was now in my twelfth year, and very nearly a man, I told myself. It would be my business to keep our home in order, to take particularly good care of my father, and to see that he was as comfortable as I could make him. Certainly, I was a very serious-minded youngster; and it did not make me less serious to find when I got back to the Livorno that my father was lying in his bunk in some pain, and, as I knew at first glance, very much depressed. He had strained or hurt himself in some way in cutting firewood.

'You oughtn't to have done it, you know, father,' I remember saying, very much as a nurse or parent might have said it. 'We've plenty stacked in the main hatch, and you know the wood's my job.'

He smiled sadly. 'I'm not quite sure that there's any work here that doesn't seem to be your "job," old fellow,' he said. 'At least, if any of it's mine, it must be a kind that's sadly neglected.'

'Well, but, father, you have more important things; you have your writing. The little outside jobs are mine, of course. I've learned it all from Ted. You really must trust me for that, father.'

'Ah, well, you're a good lad, Nick; and we must see if I cannot set to seriously in the matter of doing some of this writing you talk of. It's high time; and it may be easier now we are alone. No, I don't think I'll get up to supper this evening, Nick. I'm not very well, to tell the truth, and a quiet night's rest here will be best for me.'

We had a few fowls then in a little bush run, and I presently had a new-laid egg beaten up for my patient. This he took to oblige me; but his 'quiet night's rest' did not amount to much, for each time I waked through the night I knew, either by the light burning beside him, or by some slight movement he made, that my father was awake.

VI

In this completely solitary way we lived for some eight months after Ted left us. There were times when my father seemed cheery and in much better health. In such periods he would concern himself a good deal in the matter of my education.

'It may never be so valuable to you as Ted's "eddication,"' he said; 'but a gentleman should have some acquaintance with the classics, Nick, both in our tongue (the nobility of which is not near so well understood as it might be) and in the tongues of the ancients.'

Once he said: 'We have lived our own Odyssey, old fellow, without writing it; but I'd like you to be able to read Homer's.'

As a fact, I never have got so far as to read it with any comfort in the original; and I suppose a practical educationalist would say that such fitful, desultory instruction as I did receive from my father in our cuddy living-room on board the Livorno was quite valueless. But I fancy the expert would be wrong in this, as experts sometimes are. In the schoolman's sense I learned little or nothing. But natheless I believe these hours spent with my father among his books, and yet more, it may be, other hours spent with him when he had no thought of teaching me, had their very real value in the process of my mental development. If they did not give me much of actual knowledge, they helped to give me a mind of sorts, an inclination or bent toward those directions in which intellectual culture is obtainable. Else, surely, I had remained all my days a hewer of wood and a drawer of water--with more of health in mind and body and means, perhaps, than are mine to-day! Well, yes; and that, too, is likely enough. At all events I choose to thank my father for the fact that at no period of my life have I cared to waste time over mere vapid trash, whether spoken or printed.

Outside his own personal feelings and mental processes, the which he never discussed with me, there was no set of subjects, I think, that my father excluded from the range of our conversations. Indeed, I think that in those last months of our life on the Livorno, he talked pretty much as freely with me, and as variously, as he would have talked with any friend of his own age. In the periods when we were not together, he would be sitting at the saloon table, with paper and pens before him, or pacing the seaward side of the poop, or lying resting in his bunk, or on the deck. Frequent rest became increasingly necessary for him. His strength seemed to fade out from him with the mere effluxion of time. He often spoke to me of the curious effects upon men's minds of the illusions we call nostalgia. But he allowed no personal bearing to his remarks, and never hinted that he regretted leaving England, or wished to return there.

Physically speaking, I doubt if any life could be much healthier than ours was on the Livorno. Dress, for each of us alike, consisted of two garments only, shirt and trousers. Unless when going inland for some reason, we went always barefoot. Of what use could shoes be on the Livorno's decks--washed down with salt water every day--or the white sands of the bay. Our dietary, though somewhat monotonous, was quite wholesome. We lacked other vegetables, but grew potatoes, pumpkins, and melons in plenty. Fresh fish we ate most days, and butcher's meat perhaps twice or thrice a week. Purer air than that we breathed and lived in no sanatorium could furnish, and the hours we kept were those of the nursery; though, unfortunately, bed-time by no means always meant sleeping-time for my father.

Withal, even my inexperience did not prevent my realisation of the sinking, fading process at work in my father. Its end I did not foresee. It would have gone hard with me indeed to have been consciously facing that. But I was sadly enough conscious of the process; and a competent housewife would have found humorous pathos, no doubt, in my efforts, by culinary means, to counteract this. My father's appetite was capricious, and never vigorous. There was a considerable period in which I am sure quite half my waking hours (not to mention dream fancies and half waking meditations in bed) were devoted to thinking out and preparing special little dishes from the limited range of food-stuffs at my command.

'A s'prise for you this morning, father,' I would say, as I led the way, proudly, to our dining-table, or, in one of his bad times, arrived at his bunk-side, carrying the carefully pared sheet of stringy bark which served us for a tray. There would be elaborate uncoverings on my side, and sniffs of pretended eagerness from my father; and, thanks to the unvarying kindliness and courtesy of his nature, I dare say my poor efforts really were of some value, because full many a time I am sure they led to his eating when, but for consideration of my feelings, he had gone unnourished, and so aggravated his growing weakness.

'God bless my soul, Nick,' he would say, after a taste of my latest concoction; 'what would they not give to have you at the Langham, or Simpson's? I believe you are going to be a second Soyer, and control the destinies of empires from a palace kitchen. Bush cooking, forsooth! Why this--this latest triumph is nectar--ambrosial stuff, Nick--more good, hearty body in it than any wines the gods ever quaffed. You'll see, I shall begin forthwith to lay on fat, like a Christmas turkey.'

My father could not always rise to such flights, of course; but many and many a time he took a meal he would otherwise have lacked, solely to gratify his small cook.

There came a time when my father passed the whole of every morning in bed, and, later, a time when he left his bunk for no more than an hour or two each afternoon. The thought of seeking a doctor's help never occurred to me, and my father never mentioned it. I suppose we had grown used to relying upon ourselves, to ignoring the resources of civilisation, which, indeed, for my part, I had almost forgotten. Not often, I fancy, in modern days has a boy of eleven or twelve years passed through so strange an experience, or known isolation more complete.

The climax of it all dates in my memory from an evening upon which I returned with Jerry from a journey to the road (for stores) to find my father lying unconscious beside the saloon table, where his paper and pens were spread upon a blotting-pad. Fear had my very heart in his cold grip that night. There was, no doubt, a certain grotesqueness, due to ignorance, about many of my actions. In some book (of Fielding's belike) I had read of burnt feathers in connection with emotional young ladies' fainting fits. So now, like a frightened stag, I flew across the sand to our fowl run, and snatched a bunch of feathers from the first astonished rooster my hand fell upon. A few seconds later, these were smoking in a candle flame, and thence to my father's nostrils. To my ignorant eyes he showed no sign of life whatever, but none the less--again inspired by books--I fell now to chafing his thin hands. And then to the feathers again. Then back to the hands. Lack of thought preserved me from the customary error of attempting to raise the patient's head; but no doubt my ignorance prevented my being of much real service, though every nerve in me strained to the desire.

My father's recovery of robust health, or my own sudden acquisition of a princely fortune, could hardly have brought a deeper thrill of gladness and relief than that which came to me with the first flutter of the veined, dark eye-lids upon which my gaze was fastened. A few moments later, and he recognised me; another few minutes, and, leaning shakily on my shoulder, he reached the side of his bunk. When his head touched the pillow, he gave me a wan smile, and-- 'So you see you can't trust me to keep house even for one afternoon, Nick,' he said.

This almost unbalanced me, and only an exaggerated sense of responsibility as nurse and housekeeper kept back the tears that were pricking like ten thousand needles at my eyes. Savagely I reproached myself for having been away, and for having no foreknowledge of the coming blow. In one of his bags my father had a flask of brandy, and, guided by his directions, I unearthed this and administered a little to the patient. Promising that I would look in every few minutes, I hurried off then to relight the galley fire and prepare something for supper.

Later in the evening my father became brighter than he had been for weeks, and, child-like, I soon exchanged my fears for hopes. And then it was, just as I was turning in, that, speaking in quite a cheery tone, my father said:

'I haven't taken half thought enough for you, Nick boy; and yet you've set me the best possible kind of example. It's easy to laugh at the simple folks' way of talking about "if anything happens" to one. But the idea's all right, and ought not to be lost sight of. Well then, Nick, if "anything" should "happen" to me, at any time, I want you to harness up Jerry and drive straight away into Werrina, with the two letters that I left on the cuddy table. One is for the doctor there--deliver that first--and the other is for a Roman Catholic priest, Father O'Malley; deliver that next. It is important, and must not be lost, for there's money in it. I wish it were more--I wish it were. Bring them here now, Nick.'

I brought the letters, and they were placed under a weight on the little shelf over my father's head.

'Don't forget what I said, Nick; and do it--exactly, old fellow. And now, let us forget all about it. That gruel, or whatever it was you gave me just now, has made me feel so comfortable that I'm going to have a beautiful sleep, and wake up as fit as a fiddle to-morrow. Give me your hand, boy. There--good-night! God bless you!'

He turned on his shoulder, perhaps to avoid seeing my tears, and again, perhaps, I have thought, to avoid my seeing the coming of tears in his own eyes. He had kissed my forehead, and I could not remember ever being kissed by him before. For, as long as my memory carried me, our habit had been to shake hands, like two men....

I find an unexpected difficulty in setting down the details of an experience which, upon the whole, produced a deeper impression on me, I think, than any other event in my life. When all is said, can any useful purpose be served by observing at this stage of my task a particularity which would be exceedingly depressing to me? I think not. There is assuredly no need for me, of all people, to court melancholy. I think that, without great fullness at this point in my record, I can gauge pretty accurately the value as a factor in my growth of this particular experience, and so I will be very brief.

On the fifth evening after that of the attack which left him unconscious on the saloon deck, my father died, very peacefully, and, I believe, quite painlessly. He spoke to me, and with a smile, only a few minutes before he drew his last breath.

'I'm going, Nick--going--to rest, boy. Don't cry, Nick. Best son.... God bless....'

Those were the last words he spoke. For two hours or more before that time, he had lain with eyes closed, breathing lightly, perhaps asleep, certainly unconscious. Now he was dead. I was under no sort of illusion about that. Something which had been hanging cold as ice over my heart all day had fallen now, like an axe-blade, and split my heart in twain. So I felt. There was the gentle suggestion of a smile still about the dead lips, but something terrible had happened to my father's eyes. I know now that mere muscular contraction was accountable for this, and not, as it seemed, sudden terror or pain. But the effect of that contraction upon my lonely mind! ...

Well, I had two things to do, and with teeth set hard in my lower lip I set to work to do them. With shaking hands I closed my father's eyelids and drew the sheet over his face. Then I took the two letters from the shelf and thrust them in the breast of my shirt.

Walking stiffly--it seemed to me very necessary that I should keep all my muscles quite rigid--I left the ship, harnessed Jerry, and drove off into the darkling bush towards Werrina. The sun had disappeared before I left my father's side, and the track to Werrina was fifteen miles long. A strange drive, and a queer little numbed driver, creaking along through the ghostly bush, exactly as a somnambulist might, the most of his faculties in abeyance. Three words kept shaping themselves in my mind, I know, and then fading out again, like shadows. They never were spoken. My lips did not move, I think, all through the long, slow night drive. The three words were:

'Father is dead.' _

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