But there was more trouble awaiting me. In shooting the laughing jackass I had committed a crime in the eyes of the Australian sporting people, akin to that perpetrated by a man over here who has the temerity to shoot a fox, and when I returned to Melbourne and emptied my bag proudly on the floor of the “Under the Earth” bar, consternation reigned supreme. My “crime” was explained to me in language more forcible than polite. The rabbits I had shot, and which by this time were exceedingly odoriferous, were the cause of much merriment. I had also shot two or three rosella parrots, and these were passed round, and duly admired. But the laughing jackass was quite another matter.
However, in the end, Mrs. Hill, the genial proprietress of the establishment, consented to smuggle it over the bar, and even went to the length, after a lot of persuasion, of promising to have it stuffed for me. This, I may add, she did, and I have the bird now. But the affair got talked about, and in the end I was summoned before the magistrate for my breach of the Australian game laws.
“Why did you shoot the bird?” asked the “beak” sternly.
“Because he laughed at me,” I answered on the impulse of the moment.
At this the Court roared, and the magistrate inquired blandly whether I wasn’t used to being laughed at? “Would you shoot me if I laughed at you?” he said, with a twinkle in his eye.
I knew then that I was all right, and was immensely relieved, for I had visions of a heavy fine staring me in the face, or even possibly a term in the local gaol. In the end I was fined ten shillings and the costs, and I of course paid up cheerfully, glad to have been let down so lightly; and glad also, for probably the first and last time in my life, at having “got the bird.”
Speaking of birds reminds me that just before leaving Australia I bought a talking parrot from a dealer.
I was strolling through a turning off Burke Street, Melbourne, when my attention was particularly drawn to the bird owing to hearing it repeat two or three times, “Marie! Marie! I love Marie!”
Now Marie happens to be my wife’s name, and it at once occurred to me that it would please her very much indeed if I took the parrot home, and when I presented it to her explained to her how I had caught it in the bush, and toiled hard through many weary weeks to teach it to speak these beautiful words, always present of course in my own mind—“I love Marie.”
I bought the parrot fairly cheap, the dealer explaining that it spoke no other words. This, I reflected, suited me admirably, and I bore my prize away in triumph, inclosed in a handsome cage.