With that, having turned the key twice in the lock after her, I threw it out of the window as far as I could! I felt then as bloodthirsty as any savage. Why did these blacks not come? The only thing that puzzled me, as I traversed the house from one shutter to another, was what I should do if they came underneath the house. They might then fire the building. No, they should not. I would have them yet. I would take the two-inch augur and bore holes all over the floor, so that I might shoot through. I was soon boring away making holes for a long time right and left, when the girl whispered, "What are you doing?"
"I am boring holes," cried I, "in the floor to shoot through. Shall I bore a hole in your door? Then you could kill half a dozen with a revolver. If you have a mind, I will."
"Oh, there they are!" cried the girl.
"Ha, where? Come on!"
"Stop, you fool, it is the master and the missis. Don't you hear the whip? Let me out."
"Master and missis? I cannot let you out. I have thrown the key away."
Then it dawned on me what a fearful ass I must presently appear. It is impossible for me to keep on with the particulars. I could not find the key again and let the girl out. The floor was spoiled, the house upside down. I should have been game to have fought his Satanic Majesty himself, but to face the contempt of the "boss" and good, kind Mrs. —— was terrible. So I talked through the door at the girl and told her to say, if any one made inquiries for me, that I was not at home. With that I decamped, and did not present myself before the next midday. After a while the matter was only referred to as a joke.
I should have liked very much to have been able to write a detailed account of the whole twelve months I spent at this place. I am quite sure that if truly written, much of it would prove interesting to people who never were so far north, but I must of necessity pass quickly over many things of which I should have liked to write more fully, or else I shall never come to the end of my travels. Suffice it, therefore, to say that the Kanakas arrived in great numbers; that the "boss" and I went to Cardwell on horseback to fetch them; that a lot of white men were also brought together on the plantation; that I was overseer, or "nigger driver," over part of the Kanakas for some time; that I, during the twelve months, gained a good deal of colonial experience: learned to ride, drive bullocks, split fencing stuff, &c., also how to build slab-houses, as they are called—that is, to go into the bush, and with the help of a few tools, single-handed, to make a good house out of the growing trees. All this I learned, more or less, and then when I had been there about twelve months I caught the fever. This fever is, I believe, peculiar to certain parts of North Queensland; it is not deadly, but very common, indeed my impression is that there was not a man on the Herbert River who had not got it more or less. It comes with shivering of cold, followed by thirst and utter exhaustion, once a day or once every second day. Most people are able to work all the time they have it until they feel the "shakes" coming over them. Then perforce they must lie down, but they generally get up to their work again after the prostration which follows is over. With me it was different. A couple of weeks of it made me so weak that when I felt myself strongest I could only stagger about with the help of a big stick. I had built a carpenter's shop, and my room was off that. Then I would lie down of an evening on the bed, with bed-clothes piled on me enough to smother one, and still the gasping and the "shakes" would gradually commence. The very marrow in one's bones seemed frozen, while the teeth would rattle in the head, and the breath would come and go with fearful quickness. After a couple of hours of this, heat and prostration would follow, coupled with terrible thirst. Of course there was no hospital, and there was no one to hand one a drink. When I properly understood the matter, I would always place my wash-basin in the bed, filled with water, so that when the time came I could lean over and drink, because I was too weak to lift a billy can or a pint pot off the floor. But when I upset this basin, which happened once, my sufferings were intense. I remember on two or three occasions when I had no water how I tried to get out of bed, how I fell and lay on the floor for hours, then crept on my hands and knees out around the shed to where a bench stood with a tub of water on. There I would sit or lie over the water for hours and drink. Such a matter as this excites no sympathy in a place like that. There were now a lot of other men, and most of them had a touch of the fever as well. If I had slept among other men I have no doubt some one would have given me a drink, but to ask any one to sit up with me, or disturb their night's rest on that account, would have been asking too much, I fear. Then when I had been alone before the new hands arrived, I had shared pot-luck with my employer and his family, but now it seemed as if one was only lost in a crowd. I had nothing to eat but half-putrid corned beef and bread, served on a dirty tin plate, tea of the cheapest sort, boiled in a bucket, and sweetened with dirty black sugar, was my fare too. How could any sick person eat or drink such stuff? As I write now it seems to me it is enough to cause a strong man to die of slow starvation, and yet it is the ordinary average diet put before working men all over the Queensland bush twenty-one times a week. One day Mrs. —— came down and asked me very sympathetically how I was getting on. So I showed her my plate with my dinner on, covered with flies as it was, and very unappetizing indeed, and upbraided her and her husband for serving such rations. "Dear me, how shocking! None of the other men complained. Was the meat bad?" Then she assured me I should have anything I wished for, and for the last few days I was there I was constantly invited to their own table, although I scarcely could eat anything even there. But I thought I had been there long enough, and when the mailman came in his boat I took a friendly leave of my employer and his family, and was assisted down into the boat. I had with me then my cheque for a hundred pounds sterling, and another for seven or eight pounds.