Tropic Days Part 17

Here a distinct branch is made towards a river, across which Nature, the first of bridge-builders, many a generation ago afforded an easy, dry pa.s.sage by throwing down a huge tree. It spans from bank to bank, and the wood is worn to slippery smoothness by the pa.s.sing of shoeless feet.

Thence it leads through forest and jungle and mangrove belts to another river, and away south.

The western branch keeps to forest and jungle, following, generally, the ridges, for in the wet season the gra.s.s lands are flooded, when the track is but a silvery grey ribbon on a carpet of green. With careless indecision it trends west, with here an angle and there a curve, dipping and twisting, crossing gullies and creeping up slopes. The men whose feet made it in ancient days knew all the landmarks. Mostly it keeps to sound ground, albeit its wanderings perpetuate wayward impulses.

Imagination may follow the blacks of bygone days as they swung past, a fallen tree; where sportful youths wandered a few yards to throw gra.s.s-tree spears at white-ants' nests on bloodwood-trees; where they turned aside for a drink from the palm creek. Possibly the track deviated to follow the run of a scrub turkey, or because the boys knew of a scrub hen's mound, where the rich pink eggs were raked out by the gins. It was gin's work to overhaul the mounds; the boys did not like to do the digging with their hands, for often little snakes bedded themselves in the warm compost--snakes, though they bite not to the death, make one's hands big and sore. Why incur any risk when there was a well-disciplined woman to take it? There was a turn off (which was officially followed) leading to a huge tree where in the hollow bees had hived; and another straggled up the creek to the pool where eels secrete themselves in the moist, decaying leaves.

Six or seven miles from the beach, where the scarcely discernible crabs, with persistency as eternal as the sea, are strewing the way with millions of tell-tale pellets, the track, skirting swamps, following the bends of a river, pa.s.sing through forest and jungle, is lost in vagueness and indecision.

When it was ordained that roads should be defined in the interests of settlers, it was natural that the original track as it then existed--broadened and amended and bridged by the good bushmen who had used it for practical purposes--should be followed. On the plan the formal road runs a strangely erratic course, for in many places it is faithful to the footpad. Some of the zigzags of the long past, some of its elbows and angles, its stringent lines and curves, have been copied and confirmed, for the bush track is one of the fundamental things, bearing the stamp of Nature, and no more to be obliterated by the trivialities of art than is the sand of the sh.o.r.e and the illimitable crabs.

THE LITTLE BROWN MAN

"Care, that troubles all the world, was forgotten in his composition."--CHARLES LAMB.

If you chance to visit the Chief Protector of Aborigines on board his yacht the MELBIDIR, one of the first to greet you, be you an old acquaintance or a stranger, may be "Jimmy," the cook.

He is a little brown man who wears blue shoes, which are also socks, and a perpetual smile. The shoes, which are of some soft material, have a separate compartment for the great-toe, and hook down the heel. The Chief Protector has a similar pair of combination shoes--a gift from "Jimmy"--and is given to smiling; but he does not pretend to compete with his cook in that quality. "Jimmy's" smile is almost a fixture. It is set, yet not professional. It is the smile of a happy man, and of one who is a diplomat as well as a ship's cook. His customary costume is of holland. When on duty he wears an exaggerated bib, and "Jimmy" without his bib would be as little conceivable as "Jimmy" without his smile. He may discard it when he puts on his sky-blue pyjamas for the night, but that he smiles in his sleep is sure. The honourable wrinkles on his mahogany-hued face forbid him to relax the appearance of unceasing good-humour, and who would suggest that his serenity is artificial?

When he takes a hand with the whole of the ship's company to get up sail or hoist the dinghy on board, he whistles as well as smiles, and then the black boys laugh, and life on the trim ship is more buoyant than ever. He goes down into the doll's-house galley backwards, smiling. Now, it is no smiling matter to be jambed up against a hot stove on a hot day when the seas run high and the yacht digs her crescent nose into the blue and washes her own decks with Neptune's suds. But "Jimmy" will bob up again in due season with a plate of hot cakes or, perhaps, even cool cakes--and the smile. He has been smiling to the oven, which is inclined to gymnastics, only it is restrained by effectual bolts. "Jimmy" is a gymnast, and his free great-toes enable him to cook under circ.u.mstances and conditions which others not so equipped would profane.

Smiles are his antidote for all injurious mental ferments, and how many diseases of the mind are there which are not to be alleviated by such apt physic?

It has been said that "Jimmy" is a diplomat. He certainly is. The MELBIDIR had run within hailing distance of another yacht, the owner and commander of which is an old friend of the Protector and "Jimmy." When we did hail, a silvery head and a sunburnt pair of shoulders popped up from below, and with a comprehensive wave of sunburnt arms--the red type--vanished. Soon the same head and the same shoulders, decently but loosely clad in blue and followed by the rest of the hearty body, emerged, and in a few minutes friends were gripping each other's hands and talking furiously about a particular island, pilots, pearls, and Torres Straits "Jimmy" pa.s.sed, and the florid man in blue said, nudging his friend, "I seem to know that boy."

"Of course you do," replied the Protector; "that's 'Jimmy' from T. I."

When "Jimmy" next appeared he had a jug of water in his hand and a bigger smile than ever.

"Well, 'Jimmy,' you haven't forgotten me?" suggested the big man in blue.

"No. You capitain! My word, you young fellow now!"

And we all laughed, for though the years had been tender to the man in blue, still, they had come and gone by the decade since the previous meeting. "Jimmy's" smiles became vocal. Professional diplomats use the great gift of speech, it is said, to delude the enemies of their country. "Jimmy's" adroit compliment was the more delicate in that it was not official and he cannot possess an enemy.

When he puckers his lips to whistle, "Jimmy's" smiles are singularly infectious. The Protector's yacht is not a missionary, but merely, as her name signifies, a messenger; but the Protector does not forbid the hymnal. "Jimmy" has one, and as he studies the pious poems, for he reads fluently, whistles appropriately. While we lolled on deck, familiar tunes wooed my wandering thoughts. "Jesu, Lover of my Soul," came line after line, verse after verse, precisely, though the tone was soft.

Was the black boy thus accompanying his work at the pump? No; for the strokes were not in time, and the boy occasionally chatted with his chum. I asked, and was told that "'Jimmy' mak'm good fellow corroboree."

Presently he came up--smiling, and with the last notes of "Abide with Me" on his lips. Then I questioned him, and for a s.p.a.ce we discussed our favourite hymns and hummed them, or rather I did, for "Jimmy" was too shy to do more than nod in time before a stranger. He confided, almost in a whisper, that when he was alone he learned the words of the hymns, and afterwards picked up the tunes. Is it not pretty to think of the wrinkled j.a.panese in bunk beside the hot and clamorous engine conning hymnal--a trifle blotched with grease here and there--and whistling softly those endearing tunes on which so many of us were brought up?

Long may "Jimmy" cook and wear blue shoes a modestly supplicate "For those in Peril on the Sea"! That he may smile to the last would be a superfluous prayer. He cannot do else.

UP AND AWAY

"Man is the merriest species of creation; all above and below him are serious."--ADDISON.

"Let's up and away, Bill," said Breezy Jim, as he started to his feet.

"I'm dog tired of this game. We're just working for tucker for the boys and nothing--not even a smoke--for ourselves."

"Don't be in such a flurry. We might drop on a patch yet. I vote we stay for another week. The anchorage is all right, and the season's young. The little bit of fish we've got ain't too stinking. It'll pay expenses." Placid and patient, the half-caste Solomon Islander, Billy Boolah, kept cheek on his impetuous partner, whose restless disposition forbade him to continue long in one stay unless circ.u.mstances were essentially favourable.

Certainly fish were not too plentiful, but the aboriginal crew worked well, and were lighthearted almost to a fault. They had had no credit to pledge for the season's stores. They had merely to pick up inert and unresisting beche-de-mer from among the coral five fathoms down, where the deceptive sea looked no more than ten feet deep under the squalid flatties; to smoke and jabber in idle moments; to eat and to sleep, and to listen to Mammerroo's version of the opening phrases of "The Last Rose of Summer" on a mouth-organ worn with inveterate usage to the bold bra.s.s. The tune was not quite beyond recognition, and no musician was ever more in earnest, ever more soul-tied to an elusive, unwritten air than the black boy who wore little else than his own unwashed complexion and a strip of red Turkey twill. For long months he had pursued it with all the fervour of his simple soul, and though it said him nay, still did he hope and woo. Out of his scanty earnings he bought mouth-organs by the dozen, for he believed that owing to some defect on the part of such instruments the tune was impossible save to one. Would he ever obtain that prize? The organ which could play that tune as he had once heard it when his boss took him to a concert at Cairns had to be discovered, and to earn money to buy it Mammerroo shipped on these detestable beche-de-mer cruises. In the meantime he would play with all his energies and with endless repet.i.tion the halting, nerve-disturbing notes he knew to be incorrect.

"That boy will drive me mad. He bought ten mouth-organs at Cooktown, and he hasn't got the one that plays the tune yet. Does this smell like 'The Last Rose of Summer'? Why, you can hear those fish of yours humming!

What with hardly any fish, the stink of the whole boat, and that maddening mouth-organ, I feel almost inclined to jump overboard and marry a mermaid. Let's chuck it."

"It's you as got the bad breath, Jim. Every man when he gets nasty temper he gets bad breath. That tune it's little bit close up. He can play right up to the 'left blooming alone' sometimes."

"He's taken four months to get up to the 'left blooming alone'! At that rate it will be years before he gets to the finish. I'll be mad if he stays on this hooker another month. I'll chuck the three of them--organ, boy, and tune--overboard."

"If you make yourself a fool like that, no more work from that boy.

Don't be a fool and spoil this game. We're out till November. Let's make the best of it."

It was not clean work. The reek of the fish-raw, cooked, smoked, and drying in the sun-saturated everything, even the damper. The brown, shrivelled things were scattered in orderly profusion wherever the sun could catch them to top them off prior to bagging. The bitter, eye-searing smoke from the red mangrove fire in the hold, where the meagre catch of yesterday was lying on a couple of trays, stung the nostrils. The odour was as interminable as the half-accomplished tune, and Breezy Bill writhed. He was not new to the game, but bad luck had been the portion of the ship from the start, and small things irritated him, rasping his far from sensitive soul.

"I think you are going to catch fever, Jim. That's what's the matter with you. At the mission I used to read about that bird you call the brain-fever bird. It just keeps on whistling the same old thing, and white men go mad. That 'Last Rose of Summer,' it's got hold of you.

Don't be a fool! It's only a good tune half done. It won't kill anybody--at any rate, a tough old sh.e.l.l-back like you!"

"Oh, bother! Stinks and rotten 'Last Rose of Summer' are driving me mad.

I could stand lots of both if we were doing well. They might be forty overproof and played by forty bands, and every darned piccolo of them out of tune, if only we were making money. Come, let's up stick and away. We can't do worse and we might do better on that bit of 'reef Mammerroo talks about. Here, Mammerroo, stop that blasted corroboree!

Come and tell us where that little fella reef sit down."

Mammerroo shuffled down to the hatchway covering and traced a chart of the locality with a grimy forefinger.

"That fella reef sit down 'nother side Red Hill alongside mainlan'. No deep water. Plenty mangrove--my word full up pigeon. Reef him little fella. Full up t.i.t fish, calla-calla, mainlan' black. Fill'um up boat.

Take'm alonga Thors'dilan'. Come back. Fill'm up one time more. Too much. Full up."

"The same old yarn. I've been all over that ground. There's no reef there, and if there had been it would have been found and skinned years ago," said dogmatic Billy, with a sneer.

"I see," said Jim; "the season's over as far as you are concerned. You can go where you like. I'm sick of it now."

TROPIC DAYS

The next morning saw the NAUTILUS scudding before a strong south-east breeze, Jim, true to his name, sulky as a toad-fish. The good wind harped on the rigging as Mammerroo tirelessly lagged after the ever evasive tune. Jim heard him not. Billy, in a rage, was inclined to bundle the boy and his battered instrument overboard, for he saw in the race north nothing but a waste of time.

Three days later the NAUTILUS anch.o.r.ed to the north of Red Hill under the lee of a low mangrove island uproarious with nutmeg pigeons.

All hands turned out to prospect, with Mammerroo as pilot. He was not long in locating the reef--a forgotten and neglected patch that teemed with fish. Beche-de-mer lay in shallow water, thick and big, by the ton.. The reef, with its clear sandy patches, seemed to be the gathering-ground, the metropolis, the parliament of the curious creature which makes feeble eddies with its distended gills, moves with infinite and mysterious deliberation, and which, though it may be two feet long and three inches thick, can pa.s.s through a half-inch s.p.a.ce, constricting its bulging body during the progress.