It Is Never Too Late to Mend Part 87

A thousand pounds! How many men have toiled for money all their lives, have met with success, yet never reached a thousand pounds.

Eight thousand servants, fed and half clothed at their master's expense, have put by for forty years, and yet not even by aid of interest and compound interest and perquisites and commissions squeezed out of little tradesmen and other time-honored embezzlements, have reached the rubicon of four figures. Five thousand little shopkeepers, active, intelligent and greedy, have bought wholesale and sold retail, yet never mounted so high as this above rent, housekeeping, bad debts and casualties. Many a writer of genius has charmed his nation and adorned her language, yet never held a thousand pounds in his hand even for a day. Many a great painter has written the world-wide language of form and color, and attained to European fame, but not to a thousand pounds sterling English.

Among all these aspirants and a million more George Fielding now made one, urged and possessed by as keen an incentive as ever spurred a man.

George's materials were five hundred sheep, twenty cows, ten bullocks, two large sheep-dogs and Carlo. It was a keen clear, frosty day in July when he drove his herd to his own pasture. His heart beat high that morning. He left Abner, his shepherd, a white native of the colony, to drive the slow cattle. He strode out in advance, and scarce felt the ground beneath his feet. The thermometer was at 28 degrees, yet his coat was only tied round his neck by the sleeves as he swept along all health, fire, manhood, love and hope. He marched this day like dear Smollett's lines, whose thoughts, though he had never heard them, fired his heart.

"Thy spirit, Independence, let me share, Lord of the lion heart and eagle eye; Thy steps I follow with my bosom bare, Nor heed the storm that howls along the sky."

He was on the ground long before Abner, and set to work building a roofless hut on the west side of some thick bushes, and hard by the only water near at hand. And here he fixed his headquarters, stretched a blanket across the hut for a roof, and slept his own master.

CHAPTER x.x.xVII.

AT the end of six months George Fielding's stock had varied thus. Four hundred lambs, ten calves, fifteen cows, four hundred sheep. He had lost some sheep in lambing, and one cow in calving, but these casualties every feeder counts on; he had been lucky on the whole. He had sold about eighty sheep, and eaten a few but not many, and of his hundred pounds only five pounds were gone; against which and the decline in cows were to be placed the calves and lambs.

George considered himself eighty pounds richer in substance than six months ago. It so happened that on every side of George but one were nomads, shepherd-kings--fellows with a thousand head of horned cattle, and sheep like white pebbles by the sea; but on his right hand was another small bucolical, a Scotchman, who had started with less means than himself, and was slowly working his way, making a halfpenny and saving a penny after the manner of his nation. These two were mighty dissimilar, but they were on a level as to means and near neighbors, and that drew them together. In particular, they used to pay each other friendly visits on Sunday evenings, and McLaughlan would read a good book to George, for he was strict in his observances; but after that the pair would argue points of husbandry.

But one Sunday that George, admiring his stock, inadvertently proposed to him an exchange of certain animals, he rebuked the young man with awful gravity.

"Is this a day for warldly dealings?" said he. "Hoo div ye think to thrive gien y'offer your mairchandeeze o' the Sabba day!" George colored up to the eyes. "Ye'll may be no hae read the paurable o' the money changers i' the temple, no forgettin' a wheen warldly-minded chields that sell't doos, when they had mair need to be on their knees--or hearkening a religious discourse---or a bit psaum--or the like. Aweel, ye need na hong your heed yon gate neether. Ye had na the privileege of being born in Scoetland, ye ken--or nae doot ye'd hae kenned better, for ye are a decent lad--deed are ye. Aweel, stap ben led, and I'se let ye see a drap whisky. The like does na aften gang doon an Englishman's thrapple."

"Whisky? Well, but it seems to me if we didn't ought to deal we didn't ought to drink."

"Hout! tout! it is no forbedden to taste--thaat's nae sen that ever I heerd't--C-way."

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII.

GEORGE heard of a farmer who was selling off his sheep about fifty miles off near the coast. George put money in his purse, rose at three, and walked the fifty miles with Carlo that day. The next he chaffered with the farmer, but they did not quite agree. George was vexed, but he knew it would not do to show it, so he strolled away carelessly toward the water. In this place the sea comes several miles inland, not in one sheet, but in a series of salt-water lakes very pretty.

George stood and admired the water and the native blacks paddling along in boats of bark no bigger than a c.o.c.ked hat. These strips of bark are good for carriage and bad for carriage; I mean they are very easily carried on a man's back ash.o.r.e, but they won't carry a man on the water so well, and sitting in them is like balancing on a straw. These absurd vehicles have come down to these blockheads from their fathers, so they won't burn them and build according to reason. They commonly paddle in companies of three; so then whenever one is purled the other two come on each side of him, each takes a hand and with amazing skill and delicacy they reseat him in his c.o.c.ked hat, which never sinks--only purls.

Several of these triads pa.s.sed in the middle of the lake, looking to George like inverted capital "T's." They went a tremendous pace--with occasional stoppages when a purl occurred.

Presently a single savage appeared nearer the land and George could see his lithe, sinewy form and the grace and rapidity with which he urged his gossamer bark along. It was like a hawk--half a dozen rapid strokes of his wings and then a smooth glide for ever so far.

"Our savages would sit on the blade of a knife, I do think," was George's observation.

Now as George looked and admired blackee, it unfortunately happened that a mosquito flew into blackee's nostrils, which were much larger and more inviting--to a gnat--than ours. The aboriginal sneezed, and over went the ancestral boat.

The next moment he was seen swimming and pushing his boat before him. He was scarce a hundred yards from the sh.o.r.e when all of a sudden down he went. George was frightened and took off his coat, and was unlacing his boots--when the black came up again. "Oh, he was only larking," thought George. "But he has left his boat--and why, there he goes down again!"

The savage made a dive and came up ten yards nearer the sh.o.r.e, but he kept his face parallel to it, and he was scarce a moment in sight before he dived again. Then a horrible suspicion flashed across George--"There is something after him!"

This soon became a fearful certainty. Just before he dived next time, a dark object was plainly visible on the water close behind him. George was wild with fear for poor blackee. He shouted at the monster, he shouted and beckoned to the swimmer; and last, s.n.a.t.c.hing up a stone, he darted up a little bed of rock elevated about a yard above the sh.o.r.e.

The next dive the black came up within thirty yards of this very place, but the shark came at him the next moment. He dived again, but before the fish followed him George threw a stone with great precision and force at him. It struck the water close by him as he turned to follow his prey; George jumped down and got several more stones, and held one foot advanced and his arm high in air. Up came the savage panting for breath. The fish made a dart, George threw a stone; it struck him with such fury on the shoulders that it span off into the air and fell into the sea forty yards off. Down went the man, and the fish after him.

The next time they came up, to George's dismay, the sea-tiger showed no signs of being hurt and the man was greatly distressed. The moment he was above water George heard him sob, and saw the whites of his eyes, as he rolled them despairingly; and he could not dive again for want of breath. Seeing this, the shark turned on his back, and came at him with his white belly visible and his treble row of teeth glistening in a mouth like a red grave.

Rage as well as fear seized George Fielding, the muscles started on his brawny arm as he held it aloft with a heavy stone in it. The black was so hard pressed the last time, and so dead beat, that he could make but a short duck under the fish's back and come out at his tail. The shark did not follow him this time, but cunning as well as ferocious slipped a yard or two insh.o.r.e, and waited to grab him; not seeing him, he gave a slap with his tail-fin, and reared his huge head out of water a moment to look forth. Then George Fielding, grinding his teeth with fury, flung his heavy stone with tremendous force at the creature's cruel eye. The heavy stone missed the eye by an inch or two, but it struck the fish on the nose and teeth with a force that would have felled a bullock.

"Creesh!" went the sea-tiger's flesh and teeth, and the blood squirted in a circle. Down went the shark like a lump of lead, literally felled by the crashing stroke.

"I've hit him! I've hit him!" roared George, seizing another stone.

"Come here, quick! quick! before he gets the better of it."

The black swam like a mad thing to George. George splashed into the water up to his knee, and taking blackee under the arm-pits, tore him out of the water and set him down high and dry.

"Give us your hand over it, old fellow," cried George, panting and trembling. "Oh dear, my heart is in my mouth, it is!"

The black's eye seemed to kindle a little at George's fire, but all the rest of him was as cool as a cuc.u.mber. He let George shake his hand and said quietly, "Thank you, sar! Jacky thank you a good deal!" he added in the same breath; "suppose you lend me a knife, then we eat a good deal."

George lent him his knife, and to his surprise the savage slipped into the water again. His object was soon revealed; the shark had come up to the surface and was floating motionless. It was with no small trepidation George saw this cool hand swim gently behind him and suddenly disappear; in a moment, however, the water was red all round, and the shark turned round on his belly. Jacky swam behind, and pushed him ash.o.r.e. It proved to be a young fish about six feet long; but it was as much as the men could do to lift it. The creature's nose was battered, and Jacky showed this to George, and let him know that a blow on that part was deadly to them. "You make him dead for a little while,"

said he, "so then I make him dead enough to eat;" and he showed where he had driven the knife into him in three places.

Jacky's next proceeding was to get some dry sticks and wood, and prepare a fire, which to George's astonishment he lighted thus. He got a block of wood, in the middle of which he made a little hole; then he cut and pointed a long stick, and inserting the point into the block, worked it round between his palms for some time and with increasing rapidity.

Presently there came a smell of burning wood, and soon after it burst into a flame at the point of contact. Jacky cut slices of shark and toasted them. "Black fellow stupid fellow--eat 'em raw; but I eat 'em burn't, like white man."

He then told George he had often been at Sydney, and could "speak the white man's language a good deal," and must on no account be confounded with common black fellows. He ill.u.s.trated his civilization by eating the shark as it cooked; that is to say, as soon as the surface was brown he gnawed it off, and put the rest down to brown again, and so ate a series of laminae instead of a steak; that it would be cooked to the center if he let it alone was a fact this gentleman had never discovered; probably had never had the patience to discover.

George, finding the shark's flesh detestable, declined it, and watched the other. Presently he vented his reflections. "Well you are a cool one! half an hour ago I didn't expect to see you eating him--quite the contrary." Jacky grinned good-humoredly in reply.

When George returned to the farmer, the latter, who had begun to fear the loss of a customer, came at once to terms with him. The next day he started for home with three hundred sheep. Jacky announced that he should accompany him, and help him a good deal. George's consent was not given, simply because it was not asked. However, having saved the man's life, he was not sorry to see a little more of him.

It is usual in works of this kind to give minute descriptions of people's dress. I fear I have often violated this rule. However I will not in this case.

Jacky's dress consisted of, in front, a sort of purse made of rat-skin; behind, a bran new tomahawk and two spears.

George fancied this costume might be improved upon; he therefore bought from the farmer a second-hand coat and trousers and his new friend donned them with grinning satisfaction. The farmer's wife pitied George living by himself out there, and she gave him several little luxuries; a bacon-ham, some tea, and some orange-marmalade, and a little lump-sugar and some potatoes.

He gave the potatoes to Jacky to carry. They weighed but a few pounds.

George himself carried about a quarter of a hundredweight. For all that the potatoes worried Jacky more than George's burden him. At last he loitered behind so long that George sat down and lighted his pipe.

Presently up comes Niger with the sleeves of his coat hanging on each side of his neck and the potatoes in them. My lord had taken his tomahawk and chopped off the sleeves at the arm-pit; then he had sewed up their bottoms and made bags of them, uniting them at the other end by a string which rested on the back of his neck like a milkmaid's balance.

Being asked what he had done with the rest of the coat, he told George he had thrown it away because it was a good deal hot.

"But it won't be hot at night, and then you will wish you hadn't been such a fool," said George, irate.

No, he couldn't make Jacky see this; being hot at the time Jacky could not feel the cold to come. Jacky became a hanger-on of George, and if he did little he cost little; and if a beast strayed he was invaluable, he could follow the creature for miles by a chain of physical evidence no single link of which a civilized man would have seen.

A quant.i.ty of rain having fallen and filled all the pools, George thought he would close with an offer that had been made him and swap one hundred and fifty sheep for cows and bullocks. He mentioned this intention to McLaughlan one Sunday evening. McLaughlan warmly approved his intention. George then went on to name the customer who was disposed to make the exchange in question. At this the worthy McLaughlan showed some little uneasiness and told George he might do better than deal with that person.

George said he should be glad to do better, but did not see how.

"Humph!" said McLaughlan, and fidgeted.

McLaughlan then invited George to a gla.s.s of grog, and while they were sipping he gave an order to his man.

McLaughlan inquired when the proposed negotiation was likely to take place. "To-morrow morning," said George. "He asked me to go over about it this afternoon, but I remembered the lesson you gave me about making bargains on this day, and I said 'To-morrow, farmer.'"