“Well, me boy, is it brooding over the mimery of the dusky daughters of fair Ohinemuri ye’ve left far behind you in far Zealandia, you are, or has some Australian rose
“Put your ring on her finger
And hers through your nose”?
And the gay, dapper little Dublin licentiate winds up his bit of good-natured banter with a piece of impromptu verse, as he seats himself by Claude’s side.
Why is it that Irish doctors are, as a class, the most fascinating of men? Is it because in addition to their attractive mother wit and natural kindness of heart, their glorious profession makes them also better judges of mankind than the ordinary outside barbarian, by teaching them the “why” of human sayings and doings, where every-day folk only observe the “how”? We don’t know. But at any rate, Dr. Junelle, as a representative of the class, was just the right man in the right place to charm Claude out of his moody thoughts.
Noticing immediately, with quick medical eye, from the slight flush of confusion that rises on Claude’s face, that his carelessly thrown conversational fly has hooked the real cause of the young man’s thoughts, he proceeds to cover his mistake by plunging at once into the theme that he knows will interest his friend. Dr. Junelle has travelled through a great deal of the little-known and less-populated districts of Australia called generally the “outside” country. Whilst moving amongst the frontier settlers of these parts, as the medical referee of one of the great assurance associations, he had ample opportunity for studying the effect of some of the wildest forms of bush-life upon the human mind and body, and has made an especial study of hereditary characters developed by the offspring of Australian backwoodsmen.
“I’ve got a bit of news for you, my dear fellow,” he continues; “in troth, that’s the reason I’m after bothering you this minute. Did you happen to notice that tall young fellow who joined us at Mackay? Sure it’s himself that’s standing there with his swately embroidered forage-cap stuck on the north-east end of his face, wid a military air an’ no mistake. You did, eh? Well, and he’s an officer in the Corps I was telling you about. I’ll introduce you by-and-by, if it’s to your liking. He’ll be glad to give my Royal Geologist here any information he can, but don’t you go indulging in any of the caustic remarks about his profession that you did to me when I told you some of my experiences of the work of the Black Police. No, cushna machree, remember the swate little Irish melody, ‘Tha ma machulla’s na foscal me,’ which, being translated literally, means nothing at all but ‘I’m ashlape and moinde ye don’t thread on me tail.’ For it’s myself that knows what power and influence these same gentlemen have in the north, and our friend over there would pay any grudge he had against you on your humble servant, that’s me. Now it’s live and let live, say I, although I am a doctor, and I’m after making a fortune as soon as ever I can, me boy, and then, hey! for the bosky dells of scrumptuous New Zealand, and divil a bit I’ll pine any longer in this confounded tropical climate.”
“Well, doctor,” answered Claude, laughing, “I’ll be just real glad, as our American friends say, to have a chat with the hero of a hundred fights over there, and I’ll promise I won’t offend him. I don’t expect all these inspectors are the savage, Nero-like demons you and Williams make out. He looks quiet enough, in all conscience. By-the-bye, do you really mean to settle down in our tight little island of the south some day or other?”
“You can lay your last dime on that, me boy, an’ sure I won’t be long before I’m there, if the spalpeens don’t spoil me honest fields of labour for a year or two by going in for those cursed Saxon innovations that no medical man with an honest pride in the rights of his profession likes to see about him,—drainage and temperance. But, nonsense aside, just to show you that ‘it’s the truth I’m telling you’ when I say the officers of the Black Police,—or Native Mounted Police, as the Corps is officially termed,—that these fellows hold a good deal of social power up north, I’ll spin you a yarn if you’ll promise you’ll not go off to sleep. It’s all about a quandary a friend of mine—a Dublin man—was put in, and how he had to knock under to the powerfully persuasive police of his district.
“At a mining township not far from that ‘rocky road to Dublin’ you will have to follow, I expect, on your way up-country, there used to be a lot of natives employed about the houses of the miners. There were ‘batteries,’ or something of the kind, in the place that employed a lot of men, and some twenty natives used to come into town every morning and work as hewers of wood and drawers of water for the miners’ wives. These niggers were as quiet and well-behaved as any in the colony, barring one I’ve got at home myself, who’s always up to some divilmint. And they were all as well-known as the bodagh on me father’s own estate, which, botheration! was left to me uncle instead when me gran’father died. Now one day—all this happened about five years ago—an inspector of Black Police rides up to the town, all alone but for his regiment of ‘black boys,’ who came up some time after, and, showing a warrant for the arrest of certain blacks for murder of a stockman, asked, as politely as you please, of the townsfolk if they could inform him where these unauthorized vivisectionists were at present to be found. Divil a one of them was known in the place. But the good gentleman wasn’t going to be beaten, and with the admirable zeal that had made an inspector of him determined not to return home with hands full of nothing. So my noble sends his ‘boys’ round the township, and they catch all the aboriginals who haven’t run away the moment they saw the red-and-blue uniforms, and these were three or four ‘buck’ niggers, a very old chap, some native women, and a child or two. All these, mind you, Angland, were as well-known, and better, than the Maoris that help you with your maize at home.”