Round a blazing fire, the warmth of which, in the sharp autumn morning, was decidedly pleasant, were grouped thirty or forty men engaged in talking, warming themselves, and in a leisurely way partaking of a substantial breakfast. From a pyramid of chops, replenished from an immense frying-pan, with a handle like a marlin-spike, each man abstracted whatever he chose. Wedges of damper (or bread baked in hot ashes) were cut from time to time from great circular flat loaves of that palatable and wholesome but somewhat compressed-looking bread, while gallons of hot tea were procurable from buckets full of the universal bush beverage.
The overseer and some of the horse drivers were absent, as the hacks and cart-horses had wandered during the night rather farther than usual. Ernest and his companion applied themselves to the serious business of the hour, the former conscious that he was being subjected to a searching inspection from his fellow-employees. His rough tweed suit was sufficiently different from the blue serge shirts and peajackets of the others to mark his different social position, had not his hands, fresh complexion, and general appearance denoted him to be a ‘new arrival,’ and more or less a swell. Swells out of luck are unfortunately by no means rare as ordinary bush hands in Australia, and such a phenomenon would not ordinarily have excited curiosity or hostile criticism. Still a little rough jesting is not to be avoided sometimes when an obviously raw comrade joins a bush brigade.
It was natural enough then that a tall, dissipated-looking fellow with a whiskerless face and long hair, a leader and wit of the community, should step forward and address Mr. Neuchamp.
‘Well, Johnny, and what do you think of travelling with store sheep in this blessed country? You didn’t do none o’ that in the blessed old country as you’ve just come from, did ye now?’
‘My name is not Johnny,’ replied Ernest, arresting mastication and looking calmly at his interlocutor. ‘As for driving sheep, it would be pleasant enough if people didn’t ask impudent questions.’
There was a shout of laughter from the crowd at this retort, which was held to have rather turned the tables upon the provincial humorist.
‘Come, come, Johnny! don’t cut up rusty,’ he continued; ‘you may as well tell us what sort of work you bolted from to turn knock-about-man; counter-jumping, or something in the figs line, by the look of your ’ands, eh?’
Mr. Neuchamp had a reasonably good temper, but he had not as yet been accustomed to aught but extreme civility from the lower classes. He had not slipped on too recently the skin of a knock-about-man to realise how it felt to be chaffed as an equal by a fellow-servant.
‘You’re an insolent scoundrel,’ said he, dashing down the remainder of his breakfast, ‘whom I will soon teach to mind his own business. Put up your hands.’
Ernest, though not above the middle size, was strongly knit, and had received the ordinary fisti-culture which enables the average English gentleman to hold his own so creditably against all comers. He was a hard hitter when roused, and doubtless would have come out of the encounter with honour. But his antagonist was three inches taller, longer in the reach, a couple of stones heavier, and being in top wind and condition after six months’ road-work, and withal a sort of second-rate bruiser, might have inconvenienced and would certainly have marked Mr. Neuchamp in any case.