Settling Day Part 14

A sound of liquid flowing into a gla.s.s was balm to the shipping reporter of the _Morning Light_.

'Try this. It's a drop of the best.'

The man of letters--ships' letters, sipped it with the air of a connoisseur.

'Splendid stuff, doctor, splendid,' he said.

'That poem has cost me many hours' deep thought,' said Dr Tom.

'No doubt. It is an elegant composition.'

'I wonder if the _Morning Light_ would publish it,' mildly suggested the doctor. 'Here, try another; it will do you no harm.'

'I'll ask our sub; he's not a bad sort. He might cram it into the weekly,' said the reporter.

The doctor looked crestfallen.

'The weekly,' he said sorrowfully. 'Surely it is worthy of a place in the daily.'

'It is, doctor. Upon my word, it is; but you know what they are in the office. They're death on poems. It would be risking my place to suggest it for the daily.'

Dr Tom jingled the gla.s.ses, and there was something in them when the sound ceased.

'Try your best,' said Dr Tom. 'I'll give you a couple of real good startling pars about this voyage if you'll get it in the daily.'

'And you'll not tell the other fellows?'

'No. I'll not breathe a word to 'em,' said Dr Tom.

'Then I'll risk it. Now for the news.'

The doctor related a couple of rather spicy incidents that had occurred during the voyage from London, and the shipping reporter chuckled over them.

'I reckon these will get that poem in, doc.' The whisky had made him familiar in his speech. Sure enough Dr Tom succeeded in his object, and when his skipper read the poem in the _Morning Light_ next morning, he went about Sydney saying things, and, encountering the happy doctor, vowed he would not take him back in his ship.

'I have no ambition to sail again in your old tub,' said Dr Tom. 'My fortune is made.' So Dr Tom remained in Sydney, found his fortune was not made, and eventually came to Swamp Creek.

As Dr Tom sat meditating over his fortunes, or what remained of them, he thought of many things.

He thought of the first mate on the ship he had left in Sydney, and who had cleared out at the same time as himself. He had never liked that mate, he was a bad lot, and Dr Tom had at one time serious thoughts of dosing him and giving him to the sharks.

He also thought of the days he had spent wandering about Sydney, almost penniless, until a friendly hand had helped him to Swamp Creek and a monotonous existence, and yet it was an existence he did not dislike. He had not an enemy in the place, so far as he knew, and everyone was kind to him.

True, he did a lot of work, and got very few fees, and had even on one occasion to borrow money from Jim Dennis to purchase drugs to supply to sick people.

'When all my accounts are settled,' said Dr Tom to Jim Dennis, 'I mean to buy a station and throw this job up.'

'Don't let the folk around here know that or you'll never be paid. They would not lose you for anything, old man.'

It was very hot after the rain, and Dr Tom had very little else to do but kill time.

Having bottled up his medicines, he commenced to smoke and think.

What a life his had been. One of those men who with a little exertion might have made a name for themselves, he had been contented to drift carelessly and aimlessly through life.

On board ship he had acquired the art of cultivating laziness, and he was an adept at killing time.

The doctor was a visionary dreamer, and happy in a thousand fancies he conjured up in his imagination.

Children loved him, for no one could tell them a yarn suitable to their tender years better than Dr Tom.

The youngsters of Swamp Creek darted in and out of his dwelling in unrestricted freedom.

'Bless their little hearts, they have overturned that medicine chest again,' he would say on looking at the havoc they had made, and then proceed to put matters to rights in his own careless way.

But when there was danger at hand and Dr Tom was called, as he had been to Willie Dennis, to try and save life or relieve suffering, the best part of the man in him came out, and he strove with might and main to conquer death, and he often succeeded.

He was pottering about as usual, with no coat or waistcoat on, when Constable Doonan came in.

'Busy as usual, Dr Tom,' said the constable in a hearty voice.

'No, my boy, I am not busy. I have been sitting down making up a few prescriptions and picking up a few threads of the past.'

'And how do the threads unravel?' asked Doonan.

'Fairly well, my lad. There's a few tangles, but they are not of much account; there's no occasion for any cutting.'

'No, I'll bet there's not,' said Doonan. 'Jim Dennis is mighty proud of the job you have made of that lad of his.'

'Nice little chap,' said Dr Tom. 'He had a narrow squeak, and I don't mind telling you, if it hadn't been for Sal's care he might have gone before we got there. That woman's a marvel. Wonder who her father was.'

'They give Rodney Shaw's father the credit for it,' said Doonan.

'Eh! You don't say so! Bless me, what a heathenish lot they are about here.'

'Try and convert 'em, doctor.'

'Not I. We ought to import a few pulpit thumpers and let them try their hands.'

'They ought to start on Dalton's gang. I hear there is trouble brewing there.'

'Who's the victim this time?' asked Dr Tom.

'Jim Dennis.'

'Then, by heavens, he'll find one or two to help him!' said Dr Tom, bringing his fist down with such a bang on the table that all the bottles danced.

'What's it about?'