Australian Tales. Marcus Clarke
I could devise, while I was always dropping boots and things in "carrying over." Jack would endeavour sometimes to see how I was getting on, but he told me one day that he couldn't understand why I should keep four plugs of Barrett's twist in the Long Swamp Paddock, and put our married couple's wages to the debit of Weathers and Weaners. I really don't think he understood much about it.
In the Long Swamp Paddock, by the way, lived one Long Tom, who was an oddity. He was nearly seven feet high and thin as a harpoon. He had been a sailor, digger, explorer, stockman, everything but a quiet stop-at-home. For the last ten years, however, he had rested in the hut by the Long Swamp, and the place was known as Long Tom's Waterhole; indeed, Long Tom and his dog were better known at the stations round about, than the name of the Chief Secretary of the Colony. His dog was one of the biggest impostors--for a dog--that I have ever met. He was called Old Moke, and was supposed to be of marvellous sagacity; he was a stumpy-tailed, long-bodied, shambling beast, who worked just when he chose, and as he chose. Long Tom, when riding to muster, would remark that if we didn't get the sheep soon, he would have to put "Old Moke on 'em," as though the act was equivalent to working a miracle, or dissolving Parliament. By-and-by Old Moke was "put on." "Moke!" Tom would remark in tones of conscious superiority, "get away forward!" We would hear a howl, and see a streak of white lightning slip out from under the belly of Tom's horse. Moke had obeyed the summons. By-and-by, in the depths of the forest, faint barks would be heard, and Tom would grow uneasy. He would whistle. Still the barking would continue, and presently, with a rushing sound, a flock of ewes would fly past us bewilderedly. Tom would shift in his saddle, and we would grin.
Presently McAlister gallops up, raging. "Call off your cursed dog, Tom!" he shouts. "Hi, Moke!" roars Tom. "Moke! Moke! Sink, and burn, and-and-and----the dog. Moke! Hi! Moke!" Then would Long Tom, vomiting fury, gallop madly into the bush, some agonised howls would be heard, and old Moke would be seen no more until supper, when he would meet us at the hut wagging his delusive stump defiantly. Yet everybody around believed in the beast. Old Moke was a sort of religion at the Dinkledoodledum, and to express doubt of his immense value would be heresy of the deepest dye. One would meet stockmen going home with puppies, squeaking at their heels. "Any good?" one would ask, nodding at the black and white mass. "Good! I believe you. That's one of old Moke's," would be the proud reply. Alas! old Moke--honest impostor, thou and thy crack-brained master are both gone! Gone, let us hope, old dog, to a place where the faults of both of ye will be as lightly dealt with as in the pleasant days of old.
When Thwaites had gone to bed in the corner--he was a most determined sleeper--McAlister and I would pitch another log on the fire and prepare for enjoyment. Carefully filling our pipes, we placed the grease-pannikin on a mark made exactly in the centre of the table, and "yarned." By "yarning," dear reader, I don't mean mere trivial conversation, but hard, solid talk. McAlister was a man of more than ordinary natural talents, and had he been placed in other circumstances, would have cut a figure. It was not easy to argue with him, and some of our discussions lasted until cock-crow. The arguments not unfrequently merged into story-telling, and in that department my memory served me in good stead. I had been a sickly brat in my infancy, and having unfettered access to the library of a man who owned few prejudices for moral fig-leaves, had, with the avidity for recondite knowledge which sickly brats always evince, read many strange books. I boiled down my recollections for McAlister, and constituted myself a sort of Scherezade for his peculiar benefit. He would smoke and I would fix my eyes on a long strip of bark which hung serpentwise from the ridge pole, and relate. I think if that strip of bark had been removed, my power of narration would have been removed with it. In this fashion we got through a good deal of Brantome, several of the plays--or rather plots of the plays--of Wycherley, Massinger, and Farquahar, and most of Byron. We rambled over the Continent with Gil Blas, discussed the Alchemists, strolled up and down Rome with Horace, and investigated the miracles of the early Saxon churchmen in company of a lot of queer fellows who lived somewhere about the time of the Venerable Bede. We talked Candide and Dr. Lardner's Encyclopædia; we saw Hogarth with Ireland's descriptions; we quarrelled bitterly over Tom Paine's Age of Reason, and made friends again over the pathetic adventures of one Moll Flanders, a friend of Daniel Defoe.
Oh, cheery bark hut, despite all miseries of rough ways and rougher weather, despite all hideousness of lamb-cutting and sheep-slaughtering, despite the figs of tobacco that would get mixed up with my record of maiden-ewes and two-toothed wethers, despite rain, storm, and tough mutton, I recall thy memory with unfeigned regret. Thither "never came the trader, never waved a European flag;" no smiling bill-discounters ever invaded thy sacred precincts; no severe duns, rightly claiming that which is, alas! their own, and that which I am unable to pay them, ever darkened thy hospitable doorway; no folio documents, demanding instant official attention, were ever brought by the merry black-boy to thy rude letter-box; no monstrous civilisation with its luxurious necessities overshadowed, Upas-like, thy imperfect roof. A glorious barbarism was thine, a jovial freedom born the cares of the morrow was the charter of thy liberties. I disliked thee once, and grumblingly did abuse thy hospitable shelter, but I have since found other roofs less pleasant than thine, have since--pent within stucco and inurned in marble mockery of grandeur--yearned for the careless fortune of thy uncultured surroundings, cried often in vain amid the uncomfortable comfort of the city.
"Give me again my hollow tree, my crust of bread and liberty."
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