Later in the morning the weather cleared, the cliffs, the hills and the snowy mountains were glorious in the sunshine, and the troops basked at full length on deck while distant points took form far ahead, came on the beam and passed astern. Once through the Strait, the fleet took up its regular formation, the ten transports in two lines of five, with the two large cruisers ahead and the two small ones astern. Late at night, the Farewell Light passed into the blackness, and when dawn broke again, grey, chill and wet, no land was visible behind the reeling stern.
For five or six days—Mac lost count—the transports rolled and creaked and swayed up the grey, lumpy swell, lurched over the crests and plunged away down into the troughs. The spray lifted over the bows and swept along the decks, the wind howled dismally through the rigging, and the ship was wet and comfortless. All was grey—the ships, the sky, the sea and the long trails of smoke fleeing away to leeward. Mac had found a good job on board, together with Joe of the Canterbury Squadron and Jock of his own squadron, in charge of the fodder. Both were from the sheep country and real fine fellows, though Joe had had a college education, while Jock claimed only to have been dragged up in the bush. Three times a day, about an hour before their own meals, they weighed out for the horses the rations of chaff, oats, hay, linseed and so forth, and issued them to fatigues from the troops, the service corps and the mounted machine-gunners, who came slipping and sliding along the deck in heavy gum-boots.
The second-class dining saloon of peace days had descended to becoming a fodder room for the horses, and outside its door gathered the boys clamouring for their loads, laughing and swearing and generally hindering Mac and his cobbers at their work. Everything had gone like clockwork in port, but, for the first few days at sea, these practical sons of the bush and the sheep-stations were for the moment put out of their stride. Hefty men lay huddled helplessly on their bunks and others moped about searching for the drier, warmer corners. But the horses had to be fed, though many of them, too, hung their heads in the deepest dejection. The men who were not seasick turned to with a will, and many who were went to work with bold hearts, though feeling too utterly miserable for description when down below on the stuffy, reeling horse-decks.
Mac, in the foolishness of his abandonment, had flung himself at the first spasm of seasickness on to the top of some of his bales of hay; the sweet fragrance of the hay aggravated the evil effects of the rolling, and three days passed like an interminable nightmare. Sometimes the bales and bags slid about the place with the rolling of the ship, occasionally he made weak though desperate attempts to help Joe and Jock who struggled on nobly; but eventually Mac managed to drag himself and two blankets to the top of the horse-boxes high on the boat-deck. There lay rows of men like corpses in their blankets, with pinched white faces peeping out, which smiled pathetically with the bashfulness of returning spirits.
All were on their feet again by dawn of the sixth day, and in odd moments between work peered over the side to catch a glimpse of the low dim line of the Tasmanian coast. They kept along the land for a few hours, and then, forming single line-ahead, steamed slowly up the beautiful sunny waters of the Derwent, with white curving beaches and bush-clad hills on either side. Five ships berthed at once for fresh water. In the afternoon the troops were marched through the town, and the people cheered heartily and hurried in great excitement to see them, bringing cake and fruit and beer. Some of the boys, keen on adventure, slipped quietly out of the ranks and down side streets, and in the evening other hard cases garbed themselves as stokers, walked boldly past the guard and spent the merriest of evenings in Hobart, to return, perhaps, to a term of C.B. which the holiday was well worth. The other five vessels watered in the morning, and by evening the fleet was again at sea, steaming slowly southwards in a fog towards the southern point of Tasmania. In Morse code each ship in turn mournfully wailed her number, and endeavoured to keep station in the thick pall.
For day after day they swung over the long seas which always sweep across the Australian Bight, but the troops ran about the ships as if they had never been anywhere else, and the horses stamped and whinnied unanimously when the boys stood ready to feed, and looked eagerly for more than the martinet of a Vet would allow.
The Vet was a brusque man whose job was to look after the horses and not to concern himself with the fine points of military lore, distinctions of rank, or the airs of those officers who thought themselves not made of ordinary clay. He was impatient with people who were incompetent or who hindered him in his work. So on the occasions when Captain O'Grady violated the sanctity of the fodder-room by stowing there some of his infantry equipment, the Vet would angrily demand:
"Mac! What's that blanky stuff doing there? Is that some more of
O'Grady's blanky rubbish?"
"Yes. He said you said he——"
"I don't care a blank what he said. Heave his blanky stuff out of here. O'Grady and his blanky stuff can go to hell. Next time he tries to bring his rubbish in here you tell him to get to blanky blazes with it! See?"