Discussion turned on a race meeting of the morrow. A race meeting on T.I.! Why not? I had forgotten that wherever you find an assembly of more than two Australians, there you will find a race-course of some sort. It appeared that someone had stolen the favourite; nothing less! The horse had been pastured on Friday Island, a few miles distant, and now, a day before the race, it had vanished. The owner, who happened to be present, was telling us just what he was going to do to the culprit when he caught him, but I fear my attention wandered. An aboriginal was standing at my elbow with the most ghastly healed wound encircling his neck that could have been inflicted without decapitation. How the man could have suffered it and remained alive, was beyond my comprehension.
"That," I was told, "is Treacle, the only man who's had his head in a shark's mouth and got it out again. Care for an introduction?"
I did care, and after sundry amenities elicited the following: "Me push; 'im leave go." That was all, delivered with every appearance of delight and pride in the accomplishment. Some of the shark's teeth were still embedded in the fellow's skull. With a vast grin, he will guide your finger to the spot—for sixpence; and for a like amount one is permitted to photograph Treacle the miraculous.
The Australian "abo's" recuperative qualities are equalled only by his inventiveness. Was he not the originator of the boomerang, that most ingenious of weapons? And had he not, before the advent of the white man, instituted certain surgical operations which might, with advantage, be introduced into other lands? For example, the rendering incapable of a degenerate male parent to propagate his species, whereby his race was kept up to the highest standards of physique.
But let these things pass, as relics of barbarism if you will, and there is still a quaint originality in his make-up that shows itself in his speech. Bèche-de-mer, or Pidgin-English, is his tongue for dealing with white folk, and here is some of his vocabulary:
"Trousers belong letter" = Envelope.
"Bokkus belong noise" = Gramaphone, piano, or almost any musical instrument.
"Pull um come; push um go, brother belong tomahawk" = Saw.
"Belly belong me fnuast" = I am hungry.
"What time papa belong you plant um you?" = How old are you?