Three Elephant Power and Other Stories Part 7

"No; he can't get in at your gate," is the reply; "but I think his commando are in your back garden now."

Then follows a frantic rush. Your neighbour falls downstairs in his haste, and the commando, after stopping to bite some priceless pot plants of your neighbour's as they come out, skips easily back over the fence and through your gate into the street again.

If a horse gets in his hoofs make no impression on the firm turf of the Parramatta gra.s.s, and you get quite a hearty laugh by dropping a chair on him from the first-floor window.

The game fowls of your other neighbour come fluttering into your garden, and scratch and chuckle and fluff themselves under your plumbago bush; but you don't worry. Why should you? They can't hurt it; and, besides, you know that the small black hen and the big yellow one, who have disappeared from the throng, are even now laying their daily egg for you behind the thickest bush.

Your little dog rushes frantically up and down the front bed of your garden, barking and racing, and tearing up the ground, because his rival little dog, who lives down the street, is going past with his master, and each pretends that he wants to be at the other--as they have pretended every day for the past three years. The performance he is going through doesn't disturb you. Why should it? By following the directions in this article you have selected plants he cannot hurt.

After breakfasting at noon, you stroll out, and, perhaps, smooth with your foot, or with your spade, the inequalities made by the hens; you gather up casually the eggs they have laid; you whistle to your little dog, and go out for a stroll with a light heart.

THIRSTY ISLAND

Travellers approaching a bush towns.h.i.+p are sure to find some distance from the town a lonely public-house waiting by the roadside to give them welcome. Thirsty (miscalled Thursday) Island is the outlying pub of Australia.

When the China and British-India steamers arrive from the North the first place they come to is Thirsty Island, the sentinel at the gate of Torres Straits. New chums on the steamers see a fleet of white-sailed pearling luggers, a long pier cl.u.s.tered with a hybrid crowd of every colour, caste and creed under Heaven, and at the back of it all a little galvanized-iron town s.h.i.+ning in the sun.

For nine months of the year a crisp, cool south-east wind blows, the snow-white beach is splashed with spray and dotted with the picturesque figures of j.a.panese divers and South Sea Island boatmen. Coco-nut palms line the roads by the beach, and back of the town are the barracks and a fort nestling among the trees on the hillside. Thirsty Island is a nice place--to look at.

When a vessel makes fast the Thirsty Islanders come down to greet the new-comers and give them welcome to Australia. The new-chums are inclined to patronise these simple, outlying people. Fresh from the iniquities of the China-coast c.o.c.ktail and the unhallowed orgies of the Sourabaya Club, new-chums think they have little to learn in the way of drink; at any rate, they haven't come all the way to Thursday Island to be taught anything. Poor new-chums! Little do they know the kind of people they are up against.

The following description of a night at Thursday Island is taken from a new-chum's note book:

"Pa.s.sed Proudfoot shoal and arrived at Thursday Island. First sight of Australia. Lot of men came aboard, all called Captain. They are all pearl-fishers or pilots, not a bit like the bushmen I expected. When they came aboard they divided into parties. Some invaded the Captain's cabin; others sat in the smoking room; the rest crowded into the saloon.

They talked to the pa.s.sengers about the Boer War, and told us about pearls worth 1000 pounds that had been found lately.

"One captain pulled a handful of loose pearls out of a jar and handed them round in a casual way for us to look at. The stewards opened bottles and we all sat down for a drink and a smoke. I spoke to one captain--an oldish man--and he grinned amiably, but did not answer.

Another captain leaned over to me and said, 'Don't take any notice of him, he's boozed all this week.'

"Conversation and drink became general. The night was very hot and close, and some of the pa.s.sengers seemed to be taking more than was good for them. A contagious thirst spread round the s.h.i.+p, and before long the stewards and firemen were at it. The saloon became an inferno of drink and sweat and tobacco smoke. Perfect strangers were talking to each other at the top of their voices.

"Young MacTavish, who is in a crack English regiment, asked the captain of a pearling lugger whether he didn't know Talbot de Cholmondeley in the Blues.

"The pearler said very likely he had met 'em, and no doubt he'd remember their faces if he saw them, but he never could remember names.

"Another pa.s.senger--a Jew--was trying to buy some pearls cheap from the captains, but the more the captains drank the less anxious they became to talk about pearls.

"The night wore on, and still the drinks circulated. Young MacTavish slept profoundly.

"One pa.s.senger gave his steward a sovereign as he was leaving the s.h.i.+p, and in half an hour the steward was carried to his berth in a fit--alcoholic in its origin. Another steward was observed openly drinking the pa.s.sengers' whisky. When accused, he didn't even attempt to defend himself; the great Thursday Island thirst seemed to have communicated itself to everyone on board, and he simply _had_ to drink.

"About three in the morning a tour of the s.h.i.+p disclosed the following state of affairs: Captain's room full of captains solemnly tight; smoking-room empty, except for the inanimate form of the captain who had been boozed all the week, and was now sleeping peacefully with his feet on the sofa and his head on the floor. The saloon was full of captains and pa.s.sengers--the latter mostly in a state of collapse or laughing and singing deliriously; the rails lined with firemen who had business over the side; stewards ditto.

"At last the Thursday Islanders departed, unsteadily, but still on their feet, leaving a demoralized s.h.i.+p behind them. And young MacTavish, who has seen a thing or two in his brief span, staggered to his berth, saying, 'My G.o.d! Is _all_ Australia like this place?'"

When no s.h.i.+ps arrive, the Islanders just drop into the pubs, as a matter of routine, for their usual evening soak. They drink weird compounds--h.o.r.ehound beer, known as "lady dog", and things like that.

About two in the morning they go home speechless, but still able to travel. It is very rarely that an Islander gets helplessly drunk, but strangers generally have to be put to bed.

The j.a.panese on the island are a strong faction. They have a club of their own, and once gave a dinner to mark the death of one of their members. He was shrewdly suspected of having tried to drown another member by cutting his airpipe, so, when he died, the club celebrated the event. The j.a.panese are not looked upon with favor by the white islanders. They send their money to j.a.pan--thousands of pounds a year go through the little office in money-orders--and so they are not "good for trade".

The Manilamen and Kanakas and Torres Strait islanders, on the other hand, bring all the money they do not spend on the pearling schooner to the island, and "blow it in", like men. They knife each other sometimes, and now and again have to be run in wholesale, but they are "good for trade". The local lock-up has a record of eighteen drunks run in in seven minutes. They weren't taken along in carriages-and-four, either; they were mostly dragged along by the scruff of the neck.

Billy Malkeela, the South Sea diver, summed up the j.a.panese question--"Seems to me dis Islan' soon b'long j.a.panee altogedder. One time pa-lenty rickatta (plenty regatta), all same Isle of Wight. Now no more rickatta. All money go j.a.pan!"

An English new-chum made his appearance there lately--a most undefeated sportsman. He was put down in a diving dress in about eight feet of water, where he bubbled and struggled about in great style. Suddenly he turned, rushed for the beach, and made for the foot of a tree, which he tried to climb under the impression that he was still at the bottom of the ocean. Then he was hauled in by the life-line.

The pearlers thought to get some fun out of him by giving him an oyster to open in which they had previously planted a pearl; he never saw the pearl and threw the oyster into the scuppers with the rest, and the pearlers had to go down on all fours and grope for that pearl among the stinking oysters. It was funny--but not in the way they had intended.

The pearlers go out in schooners called floating stations (their enemies call them floating public-houses) and no man knows what hospitality is till he has been a guest on a pearling schooner. They carry it to extremes sometimes. Some pearlers were out in a lugger, and were pa.s.sing by one of these schooners. They determined not to go on board, as it was late, and they were in a hurry. The captain of the schooner went below, got his rifle and put two bullets through their foresail. Then they put the helm down and went aboard; it was an invitation almost equivalent to a royal command. They felt heartily ashamed of themselves as they slunk up on deck, and the captain of the schooner eyed them reproachfully.

"I couldn't let you disgrace yourselves by pa.s.sing my schooner," he said; "but if it ever happens again I'll fire at the deck. A man that would pa.s.s a schooner in broad daylight is better dead."

There is a fort and garrison at Thirsty Island, but they are not needed.

If an invading fleet comes this way it should be encouraged by every possible means to land at the island; the heat, the thirst, the h.o.r.ehound beer, and the Islanders may be trusted to do the rest.

DAN FITZGERALD EXPLAINS

The circus was having its afternoon siesta. Overhead the towering canvas tent spread like a giant mushroom on a network of stalks--slanting beams, interlaced with guys and wire ropes.

The ring looked small and lonely; its circle of empty benches seemed to stare intently at it, as though some sort of unseen performance were going on for the benefit of a ghostly audience. Now and again a guy rope creaked, or a loose end of canvas flapped like faint, unreal applause, as the silence shut down again, it did not need much imagination to people the ring with dead and gone circus riders performing for the benefit of shadowy spectators packed on those benches.

In the menagerie portion matters were different; here there was a free and easy air, the animals realising that for the present the eyes of the public were off them, and they could put in the afternoon as they chose.

The big African apes had dropped the "business" of showing their teeth, and pretending that they wanted to tear the spectators' faces off. They were carefully and painstakingly trying to fix up a kind of rustic seat in the corner of their cage with a short piece of board, which they placed against the wall. This fell down every time they sat on it, and the whole adjustment had to be gone through again.

The camel had stretched himself full length on the tan, and was enjoying a luxurious snooze, oblivious of the fact that before long he would have to get up and a.s.sume that far-off s.h.i.+p-of-the-desert aspect. The remainder of the animals were, like actors, "resting" before their "turn" came on; even the elephant had ceased to sway about, while a small monkey, asleep on a sloping tent pole, had an attack of nightmare and would have fallen off his perch but for his big tail. It was a land of the Lotus-eater

"In which it seemed always afternoon."

These visions were dispelled by the entry of a person who said, "D'ye want to see Dan?" and soon Dan Fitzgerald, the man who knows all about the training of horses, came into the tent with Montgomery, the ringmaster, and between them they proceeded to expound the methods of training horseflesh.

"What sort of horse do we buy for circus work? Well, it depends what we want 'em for. There are three sorts of horses in use in a circus--ring horses, trick horses, and school horses; but it doesn't matter what he is wanted for, a horse is all the better if he knows nothing. A horse that has been pulled about and partly trained has to unlearn a lot before he is any use to us. The less he knows, the better it is."

"Then do you just try any sort of horse?"

"Any sort, so long as he is a good sort, but it depends on what he is wanted for. If we want a ring horse, he has to be a quiet sober-going animal, not too well-bred and fiery. A ring horse is one that just goes round the ring for the bareback riders and equestriennes to perform on. The human being is the "star", and the horse in only a secondary performer, a sort of understudy; yes, that's it, an understudy--he has to study how to keep under the man."

"Are they hard to train?"