Tramping on Life Part 31

"--haunted!" boomed the voice of a man coming down the ladder, "you stop this silly nonsense right now ... don't spread such talk as that ...

it's stowaways!"

We saw a pair of legs to the knees again. We lay still, breathless. A watch chain dangled down in a parabolic loop. Then followed a round face, beef-red with stooping. It looked under apoplectically at us.

"Ah, me b'yes, c'm on out o' there!"

And out we came, dragged by the foot, one after the other, as I myself in my childhood have pulled frogs out from a hole in a brook-bank.

"I've been hearing them for hours, Mister," spoke up the little, shrivelled, leathery-skinned West Indian negro, who spoke English without a trace of dialect, "and I was sure the place was haunted."

We stood before the captain, cap deferentially in hand.

But he looked like anything but a man in charge of a ship. He was short.

In outward appearance, moreover, he was like a wax doll. He had waxen-white cheeks with daubs of pink as if they had been put there from a rouge pot. His hair was nicely scented, oiled, and patted down. His small hands were white and perfectly manicured.

Nippers began to snicker openly at him. But the sharp variety and incisiveness of the oaths he vented at us, soon disabused us of any opinion we might have held that he was sissified....

"What's wrong with _you_, you young ---- ---- ---- ---- you?" began the captain. The snicker died slowly from Nipper's lips, and in his face dawned an infinite, surprised respect....

Then, after he had subdued us:

"So you're stowaways, eh?... and you think you're going to be given a free ride to Brisbane and let go ash.o.r.e, scot free?... not much! You'll either go to jail there or sign up here, as cattlemen for the trip to China--even though I can see that your mouths are still wet from your mothers' t.i.ts!" And he ended with a blasphemous flourish.

Nippers and I looked at each other in astonishment. Of course we wanted to sign on as cattlemen. No doubt some of the men hired at Sydney had failed to show up at the wharf.

The ship's book was pushed before us.

"Sign here!" I signed "John Gregory" with satisfaction. Nippers signed after, laboriously.

"And now get aft with you, you ----!" cursed the captain, dismissing us with a parting volley that beat about our ears.

"Gawd, but the skipper's a _right_ man enough!" worshipped Nippers.

We hurried down the ladder to gobble up what was left of the cornbeef and potatoes.... Nippers looked up at me, with a hunk of beef sticking from his mouth, which he poked in with the b.u.t.t-end of his knife....

"Say, didn't the old man cuss wonderful, and him lookin' like such a lady!"

There was plenty of work to do in the few days it took to reach Brisbane, where the cattle were to be taken aboard. The boat was an ordinary tramp steamer, and we had to make an improvised cattleboat out of her. Already carpenters had done much to that effect by erecting enclosures on the top deck, the main deck, by putting up stalls in the hold. Every available foot was to be packed with the living flesh of cattle.

We gave the finishing touches to the work, trying to make the boarding and scantling more solid--solid enough to withstand the plunging, lurching, and kicking of fear-stricken, wild Queensland steers unused to being cooped up on shipboard....

We had made fast to a dock down the Brisbane River, several miles out from Brisbane ... nearby stood the stockyards, with no cattle in them yet.

In a day's time of l.u.s.ty heaving and running and hauling we had taken on the bales of compressed fodder that were to feed the cattle for the twenty-day trip to Taku, China.

Then the little, fiery, doll-like skipper made the tactical error of paying each man a couple of bob advance on his forthcoming wages.

In a shouting, singing mob we made for Brisbane, like schoolboys on a holiday.

Two shilling apiece wasn't much. But a vagabond can make a little silver go far. And there are more friends to be found by men in such a condition, more good times to be had--of a sort--than a world held by more proper standards can imagine.

In both brothel and pub the men found friends. There were other sailors ash.o.r.e, there were many swagmen just in from the bush--some with "stakes" they had earned on the ranches out in the country ... and in their good, simple hearts they were not averse to "standing treats."

As if by previous appointment, one by one we drifted together, we cattlemen of the _South Sea King_--we drifted together and found each other in the fine park near the Queensland House of Parliament.

We had, all of us, already over-stayed our sh.o.r.e-leave by many hours.

We grouped together in informal consultation as to what should be done--should we go back to the ship or not?

"We might run into a typhoon ... with all them crazy cattle on board!"

voiced one....

Nevertheless, perhaps because it was, after all, the line of least resistance, because there regular meals awaited us, and a secure place of sleep, by twos and threes we drifted back, down the long, hot, dusty road, to where the _South Sea King_ lay waiting for us ... the mate, the captain, and the cattle-boss furious at us for our over-stayed sh.o.r.e-leave....

The cattle had been there these many hours, bellowing and moving restlessly in their land-pens, the hot sun blazing down upon them.

Our cattle-boss, it seems, knew all about the handling of his animals on land. But not on sea. When, the following morning, we started early, trying to drive the cattle on board ship, they refused to walk up the runway. In vain the boss strewed earth and sod along its course, to make it seem a natural pa.s.sage for them ... they rushed around and around their pens, kicking up a vast, white, choking dust,--snorting, bellowing, and throwing their rumps out gaily in sidelong gallopades ...

all young Queensland steers; wild, but not vicious. Still full of the life and strength of the open range....

Then we scattered bits of the broken bales of their prepared food, along the runway, to lure them ... a few were led aboard thus. But the captain cried with oaths that they didn't have time to make a coaxing-party of the job....

At last the donkey-engine was started, forward. A small cable was run through a block, and, fastened by their halters around their horns, one after the other the steers, now bellowing in great terror, their eyes popping for fear--were hoisted up in the air, poised on high, kicking, then swung down, and on deck.

You had to keep well from under each one as he descended, or suffer the befouling consequences of his fear ... we had great laughter over several men who came within the explosive radius ... till the mate hit on the device of tying each beast's tail close before he was jerked up into the air.

What a pandemonium ... shouting ... swearing ... whistles blowing signals ... the chugging respiration of the labouring donkey-engine ...

and then the attempted stampede of each trembling, fear-crazy animal as soon as he rose four-footed, on deck, after his ride through the sky....

The ship was crammed as full as Noah's ark. In the holds and on the main deck stood the steers, in long rows....

On the upper deck, exposed to all the weather, were housed the more tractable sheep, who had, without objection, bleated their way aboard docilely up the runway--behind their black ram ... that the cattle-boss had to help on a bit, by pulling him the few first yards by his curly horns.