I had really forgotten the gramophone incident, being pretty well used to the eccentricities of men who live for the most part alone in the bush, when the Marquis touched me with his elbow and asked me to “demand the signifying of that astounded event.”
“Oh, by the way,” I said, “what on earth were you playing at when we came up?”
Most of the men fell silent again. Hubbard took up the word.
“Why,” he said, “we’d just buried poor old Bobby-the-Clock, and when we came back from planting him we thought we’d hear him sing again for the last time—he did love singing, poor old Bobby, though he never could do it; and Burchell here had a record he’d made one day when Bobby was having an unusually good time. So when we came back, we put it on. And we gave poor old Bobby-the-Clock a last drink, and we put him away on the shelf. You needn’t look shocked, you, whoever you are—” addressing the Marquis.
The Marquis rose, bowed and introduced himself. I said I never could remember his name, so I won’t try to write it down.
“Well, Mr. Marquis,” went on Hubbard, totally unmoved, “as I say, you needn’t look shocked, for we did the whole thing as reverent as if we’d been in church and nobody could say we didn’t. Now he’s planted, and we’ve done all we could for him, and we’re going to forget about him and cheer up; so here’s luck, Mr. Marquis.”
He finished his beer.
We got away as soon as we could from Bobby-the-Clock’s memorial service, for we were both suffering from the effects of the “perish” we had been through, and the Marquis declared he could not exist another hour without a new set of clothes. The store, rough as it was, provided sufficient for our needs; we took the plain shirts and trousers over to the men’s sleeping-place, washed, dressed and made ourselves decent again.
“Marky, you look like a miner now,” I said.
“A cat may look like a king,” said the Marquis, “but a king in gloves catches no mice. I fear I should not make myself much wealth, even in these uniforms of the field, with the pick and plate of Mr. Bobby-the-Clock. And, by the road, Flint, what is the signifying of that singular name?”