Pastoral Scenery, N.S.W.
About a week after seeing those drovers pass by we arrived at a place called “Bummer’s Creek” and stayed there for several days, helping Riley the boss to build some outhouses. There seemed a good many loafers hanging about that small township, for the Australian bush climate does not inspire men to work. We were offered two horses at five shillings each and I at once bought them. We sat astride, William and I, and proudly waving our hands bade the men of the township farewell as we started up the slope. I plied the stock whip and in less than half-an-hour we had almost travelled three hundred yards! I was not much of a judge of horse-flesh at that time, and I felt pretty wild at being so sucked in. Two of the bushmen crept up the slope and then suddenly discharged their revolvers close to the ears of those two horses of ours, and that seemed to wake them up and off we went! Before sunset we looked back and were out of sight of the township. I got terribly sore through the protruding backbone of that stubborn beast; sometimes William would dismount and laughing get behind and push it as its big eyes stared like soap bubbles with fright. I felt sorry for it though, especially when its underlip protruded as though through extreme nausea it yearned to be sick and couldn’t. My comrade’s horse was nearly as broken up as mine. We held a consultation together and decided to turn them adrift. Away they went across the bush that night; we saw their delighted tail stumps sticking up as they galloped across a patch of moonlight and disappeared and became wild horses of the boundless plains.
XXV
Before the Mast—Bound for San Francisco—Man Overboard—I see ’Frisco High Life—My first Funeral Expenses—Joss Houses—Guest my Friend
I will now leave my next three months of bush life unrecorded, as it would be very much the same as I have already written about. William and I got South Sea Island mad. It was my fault. I used to tell him about my experiences and as I told him of Papoo and various other Samoan and Fijian beauties, his eyes would gleam as he listened, until at last his sole ambition in life was to go to the South Seas. Indeed I got a bit of the fever on me to go out there again, and when we at length arrived in Sydney I tried to get away with him, but as luck would have it he managed to secure a billet on the German boat as messroom steward. I was very sorry indeed to see him go, and he too when I said good-bye to him. We had been happy and seen a lot together in our twelve months’ friendship. I stood on the wharf and waved good-bye to him. Dear old William, I often wonder what became of him; I never saw him again.
A week after he left me I shipped before the mast on the Cairnbulg, a large sailing ship bound for ’Frisco and then round the Horn home. We had a terrible spell of bad weather. About two weeks after leaving Sydney, one evening just as sunset faded a typhoon began to blow. We were all sent aloft to take in sail; but it was too late, the mainmast split and went overboard, taking and throwing one of the crew into the raging sea. He still clung on to the tackle of the broken mast as it floated overside, and then a big sea came down and he was washed off. We hove her to and lowered the lifeboat; over came the seas like huge icebergs, crashing to the decks as she shivered and groaned and pitched with her broken masts and torn sails, swaying and screaming beneath the storm-swept sky. There was no slackness of volunteers to man the lifeboat as those white-faced sailors with the soul of pluck in their eyes stood by and the chief mate took the helm. They lowered away; three times they were nearly upset and thrown into the sea as the ship lay right over and the big iron side seemed to lay under the lifeboat’s keel. At last they got her safely on the water; the skipper stood on the poop, the hurricane whipping his shouted orders away like pistol shots as a sea came over and washed three of us along the deck. We all came crash against the bulwark side, scrambled to our feet and rushed back again to see if we could catch sight of the lifeboat that was out on the pitch-black waters. How she lived in that sea was a marvel. They came back, but without our comrade: he had gone for ever, and that night we sat in the fo’c’sle on our sea-chests puffing our pipes deep in thought, feeling very sad and wretched, and I heard the drowned sailor’s special chum crying in his bunk opposite me for a long time as overhead the look-out tramped to and fro and the fixed-up wind-jammer once more tore along on her voyage. The empty bunk of the lost sailor which was just below mine got on my nerves, and often when I was tired out and turned in I lay sleeplessly thinking of the poor fellow away in his ocean grave behind us, and would get up and go on deck and finish by sleeping on the forepeak hatchway.
When we arrived in San Francisco our ship had to go into dry dock to have a new mast fixed in and I got in with some American fellows ashore, and what with the beautiful climate and congenial society and being sick of living on “hard tack,” “soup and bully” and salt junk, I resolved to leave the ship and stay behind. One of those shore friends of mine was the manager of a dancing saloon in the north of the city, and he told me that if I could play dance music on the violin he could offer me a good salary. I got hold of a good book of dance music and, taking a small room near Kearney Street, I practised the whole day long for nearly a week, and soon got my hand in and eventually became a crack hand at the job. The orchestra for that dancing establishment consisted of two violins, a banjo and a harpist. The ladies who visited that secluded hall were painted up to the eyes, some of them were pretty old stagers painted and dressed up; whirling round the ballroom they passed off as girls in their teens.
I had a good opportunity of observing the visitors of that ’Frisco “high-class dancing saloon.” I found out after a little while that it was used for various different crimes, and one night just as we had finished the overture and the old Californian roués were taking their partners, a fashionably dressed lady burst into the room and shot her husband in the neck. I heard one of the bullets from her revolver whiz by my head. The painted lady who had been hanging on the wounded man’s arm fainted away and there was a terrible scene altogether, but the whole matter never reached the public, it was all hushed up as the victim was a gentleman who held a high position on the Bench. I think he was a judge. I did not even care to play the fiddle to that crowd, but I persevered and sawed away night after night. I received exceedingly good money for the job and had no need to mix with the crew that danced to the strains of music, as those wicked-looking members of the Californian “elite” revelled in the atmosphere of freedom and all the dubious games that caused the downfall of their old ancestors Adam and Eve.
I was then living in apartments in F—— Street; it was not a very fashionable residence, but my comrade, whose name was “Crane,” lived there, and persuaded me to live near him. He told me that he was an Englishman and talked a good deal about dear old London, thinking that it pleased me. There also lived a man in the same building who I was told was the captain of a large sailing vessel. He was a suave-speaking man, and spoke with a strong Yankee twang, wore side-whiskers, and every time I chanced to meet him on the stairway, he was most genial in his remarks and would praise my violin-playing, for I would play a good deal during the daytime, not having much else to do. One morning my friend Crane opened my room door and, coming in with a long face, sat opposite me and said, “I say, Middleton, the Captain’s in great sorrow, his wife’s dead, and if he can’t raise fifty dollars she will have to be buried in a pauper’s grave.” I was very much touched as he continued the tale, and told me several distressing details of the affection between that captain and the poor wife, and when at last he described the death scene the tears came into my eyes, and I at once volunteered to advance the necessary cash, so as to give the poor fellow’s wife a decent funeral.