‘But it always ruins a man in the long run, perhaps kills him right out.’
‘That’s all very well, sir, only look at his part of it: a man comes in from a long spell of bush work—splitting, fencing, dam-making, cattle-droving, what not—into one of these bush townships. He’s tired to death of sheep and cattle or gum-trees; or perhaps he’s been in some place, all plains for a hundred miles with never a tree or a stone; all he’s seen has been the overseer to measure his work, his mates that he worked with, the regular tea, damper, and mutton, day after day; perhaps flies and mosquitoes enough to eat him alive. Well, he’s had a year of this sort of thing, perhaps two; say he’s never smelt grog all the time.’
‘All the better for him too,’ said Ernest; ‘see what splendid hard condition he’s in; fit to go for a man’s life.’
‘That’s all right, sir, but he’s so precious dull and hungry for a change that he feels ready to go to h—l for a lark, as the saying is; so he comes to the public-house bar, in some hole of a bush township, and the first glass of grog he gets makes him feel like a new man, in a new world.’
‘Well, why doesn’t he stop there?’
‘He can’t,’ continued Jack, ‘else he’d slip back, so of course he takes another, and the stuff is ever so bad, rough, very like tobacco in it, or some rascally drug, but it’s strong, and it’s the strength he craves for, from the tips of his fingers to the very inside of the marrow of his bones; when that glass is swallowed he has forgotten that he is a poor, ignorant, working man; he knows he’s a sort of king; every good thing he’s thought of in his life is a-coming to him; he’s to be rich, happy, clever, able to marry the girl he likes; if any man looks at him he can knock his head off—ten men’s heads off! Drink? Fifty glasses wouldn’t make him drunk! Capital grog it is too; feels more sober every glass he takes; landlord’s splendid fellow; must have some more drink; and so on.’
‘But how do you know a man has all these grand ideas? I grant it’s enticing.’
‘Because I’ve passed through it all myself,’ said the henchman grimly, yet with a half air of shame and regret. ‘I’ve been on the burst, as we call it, more than once or twice either, worse luck.’
‘I hope you never will again, Jack.’
‘I think not, sir, if I know it. But a man shouldn’t be too sure. It’s an awful craving, by——. It drags you by your very heart-strings, once you get it right.’