The Confessions of a Beachcomber Part 22

Tom, in his surly moments, is exquisitely cruel; but Nelly's devotion is unaffected. Her vanity led her to flaunt her gaudy hat in the hut. Tom reproved such flashness--he invariably selects the gayest s.h.i.+rts himself--by burning the hat and all the newly-acquired finery. Nelly struck back, and Tom, as her eyes were big and ablaze with fury, threw--at the cost of burnt fingers--a handful of hot sand and ashes into her face. From Tom's point of view it was a splendid feat--one of those bold and effective master-strokes that only a ready and determined sportsman could conceive and on the instant carry into effect. Nelly's eyes were closed for weeks--well-nigh for ever--and the skin peeled off her face; but she consented to the cruel punishment without a murmur after the first shriek of agony, and won Tom to good temper and tolerance of her vanity by all sorts of happy concessions.

How many such tiffs--tough and smart--has poor Nelly borne? Her grief has been so sore that she has torn her hair out by the roots in frenzy and stamped upon it; but Tom, surly and impa.s.sive Tom, is her lord as well as her most exacting master, and in their own way they are devoted to one another.

The roughest cross Nelly was called upon to bear was the presence of Tom's third wife--"Little Jinny"--the manner of whose wooing and home-coming is to be told.

News came from Lucinda Point to Clump Point--pa.s.sed from one to another--that Tom's half-brother (a purely fictional relations.h.i.+p) had died, leaving a young widow. According to Tom's rendering of the matrimonial laws, he was the rightful heir. The widow was all that his half-brother had left that was of the slightest consequence.

Tom, telling the circ.u.mstances, asked for a holiday that he might personally lay claim to his inheritance. Reminded that he had one wife, he frankly declared in Nelly's presence, and she seemed to acquiesce, that she was no good; but that the other one was a "good fella" in every respect, even to was.h.i.+ng plates and scrubbing floors.

His holiday was granted. He went away with money in his pockets, blankets, several changes of raiment--among them Nelly's best dress and hat, dilly-bags brightly coloured, and weapons--boomerang, two black palm spears, a great wooden sword, a s.h.i.+eld decorated with a complicated pattern in red and white earth, and a flas.h.i.+ng new tomahawk.

So he departed, with Nelly's best wishes, and full of hope and expectation, promising to return in two weeks.

Two months slipped past, and one evening a forlorn, ragged, lean scarecrow of a black boy--without a hat, unshaven, without a blanket, and even dest.i.tute of a pipe, clambered over the side of the steamer, and dropped into the boat without a word. It was Tom!

In shreds and patches the history of his experience was related. He had arrived at Lucinda, had charmed "Little Jinny" with his manly presence and spruceness and the amount of his personal property, supplemented by the display and free bestowal of Nelly's choicest finery, and had, as a matter of course, been compelled to fight for her. He had been beaten, terribly beaten. One ear had been viciously "marked," a triangular slice being missing (a subsequent combat removed all trace of this mark), and he showed the meritorious scar of a spear-wound on the arm.

Having failed in the stand-up fight, he had resorted to stratagem, had been foiled, and forced to flee, abandoning everything, even to that last vestige of independence--his pipe.

We knew that he had been hard pressed, for on going gaily away he had volunteered to bring a fat young pig from one of the wild herds of Hinchinbrook, and he came back empty-handed. He talks of the pig--how fat and very young it was--even to this day. He came with his life--that was all, and a threadbare sort of life it was at that.

Several months went by--a black boy recovers condition in a day or two as does a starved dog--and Tom had saved money. He never forgets, never swerves from a purpose. He is as determined as a dung-beetle.

Another leave of absence was granted. A second raid was made upon Nelly's wardrobe--two big bailer sh.e.l.ls. Elated, freshly shaved and smiling, he was a different sort from the individual who had shamefacedly slipped over the side of the steamer, bereft of everything but life.

He said he would be back in two weeks, and to the day he appeared. His youthful third wife he handed down into the boat, and the boat was full of their luggage. Ah, that desolated camp at Lucinda! The young lady's trousseau was complete even to lingerie. He had won the fight, and the bride and the spoils were his.

Poor Nelly! She welcomed "Little Jinny" effusively, and "Little Jinny" gave her a dress and a second-best hat. Life for a couple of days at the camp was idyllic. Then they took back the gifts of clothing, and turned Nelly out of the hut. She built a separate establishment--a dome of dried gra.s.s on bent sticks, and in it she wept and upbraided, and fired up frequently under the torments of jealousy.

Shrill squabbles were of daily occurrence, until the great Peacemaker removed Tom's favourite wife. And who more sorely grieved than Nelly!

Will the t.i.tle bear a few words as to Tom the hunter? Was ever a keener, a more patient, a more self-possessed, and consequently a more successful, sportsman? He it was who, from a cranky punt (no white man would venture out to sea in such a craft,) at three o'clock one windy afternoon, harpooned an immense bull-turtle, which towed him towards the Barrier Reef, into the track of the big steamers 4 miles to the east. He battled with the game all the afternoon and evening, overcame it at "the dead waste and middle of the night," and towed it back to the beach, landing after thirteen hours' continuous work. Tom accomplished the feat in a strong breeze and with a turtle diving and tugging, when he might have cut the line at any moment and paddled home comfortably.

He is as much at home on the top of a bloodwood tree, hanging round a swaying limb while cutting out a "bee nest," as in a frail bark canoe among the sharks on the skirts of a shoal of bonito.

As we neared the beach one day a big sea-mullet came into view. Without a moment's hesitation, and as it flashed past the boat, Tom, using the oar as a spear, hit the slippery fish with such precision and force as to impale it. He will harpoon a turtle as it rushes away from the boat, 5 feet beneath the surface, with the coolness of a billiard-player, and with unerring accuracy "taking off" for the speed of the boat and the refraction of the water. All the ways and habits of fish, and their favourite feeding-grounds, are to him as pages of an open book.

A groper, more voracious and bolder than usual, followed a safely-hooked perch from the dim coral garden, worrying it like a bull-dog. As the struggling fish splashed on the surface the groper, abandoning its illegitimate prey, swerved swiftly downwards. The retreat was a second too late, for Tom had seized the, harpoon lying athwart the boat, and though the fish appeared through a fathom and a half of water, a vague, fleeting, contorted shadow, he reached it. The barbed point pa.s.sed through it, carrying a foot or two of the line, and a 30-pounder was added to our catch at one stroke and without a tremor of excitement on Tom's part.

He sailed his punt--12 feet long and 4 feet wide--6 miles, loaded with eight adults, eight piccaninnies, five dogs, a cat, blankets for the crowd, and all the frowsy miscellanea of a black's camp. It was not a boatload that landed on the beach: it was a procession. But Tom would go to sea on a chip. His skill as a sailor of small boats is largely a manifestation of characteristic caution, his precept being--"Subpose big seas come one, one--all right. Subpose come two, two--look out!"

"LITTLE JINNY"

In Life and In Death

She was called "Little Jinny" to distinguish her from another of the blacks about the place--a great, good-natured, giggling creature who laughs perpetually and grows ever fatter. There was nothing in common between the two. Indeed they frequently had differences, for "Jinny"

proper is industrious, obliging, cheerful, and full of fun, while she, "Little Jinny," was silent, sulky, and ever averse from toil.

Tom, her man, alternately petted and beat her. She, no doubt, deserved both, for she was proud and haughty for a black gin, and as venomous at times as a scorpion. His hand is heavy, and when he lifted it in anger poor "Little Jinny" suffered--but suffered in silence. Her chastis.e.m.e.nts were not frequent, but they seemed to increase her loyalty towards her lord and master.

From a European standpoint, "Little Jinny" had little of which to be vain. She had a fuzzy head of hair. Some, like fur, crept down across her brows, giving her face a singularly unbecoming cast. I did not notice this peculiar uncomeliness until she was dying, and I felt then more than ever that she was not to be judged in accordance with our standard of beauty--though she had many of our little weaknesses. Her ignorance of civilised ways was pathetic, yet she was vain and coquettish as the fairest of her s.e.x. And her besetting vanity was endeavouring to be a "lady." Work was sordid, for she wore garments which made her the leader of fas.h.i.+on. She possessed a pair of--well, a bifurcated garment--and her whole life was spent in trying to live up to it--or them. She succeeded to a certain extent. Her ways were mincing and precise, and she lazed away her days quite artistically. A can of water was too heavy for her to carry, less than two hours "spell" at a time quite an offence to her ideal of the amount of repose that a lady wearing the bifurcated garment should permit herself. She was wont to sit in the shade of the mango-tree and pretend to do a little gardening.

It was all pretence. What she really loved to do was to wander among the bloodwoods--with Tom, of course--with next to nothing on, the next to nothing being the drawers. There, you have them. Then you saw her at her best--or rather worst, for she was a thin sapling of a girl, of a dull coppery colour, and the garment was not always snowy-white.

Hers, after all, was an ideal existence. She had plenty to eat, as much tobacco as was good for her, and outer raiment that in gaudiness outrivalled the flame-tree and the yellow hibiscus. She was the favourite of two consorts, and only when her pride and scorpion-like attributes got the better of her was she corrected.

Now, just the other morning, Tom announced that "Little Jinny" was sick "along a bingey" (stomach), and suggested that salt medicine might do her good. It was quite a common occurrence for her to be sick. It was such an easy and excellent excuse for a day's holiday, when she would bask on the soft grey sand and smoke, gazing across the placid bay and waiting for meal-times. So no one took her sickness seriously.

Subsequent inquiries, however, elicited the fact that "Little Jinny"

had eaten little or no tucker the day prior to Tom's application for medicine on her behalf, and that she was really ent.i.tled to sympathy of the most practical kind. But no one had the least suspicion of the fact.

Dinner-time came and she did not appear, though she was strolling about the flat below the house, apparently only a "little bit sick," as Tom reported when he came up to his work.

"That one all right to-morrow," was the reply to an inquiry.

But at five o'clock Tom visited his hut, and hurried back for medicine.

"Little Jinny" was very bad. We went down with remedies that seemed fit from his diagnosis of the case and description of the symptoms, and there lay "Little Jinny," obviously dying. She had never complained nor whimpered when Tom's heavy hand had corrected her, though the dried trickle of blood had been seen on her forehead, and now that she lay a-dying, with her figure strangely swollen, she moaned only when Torn, with his heavy hand, sought to squeeze out the dead man, "all the same like debil-debil," who was, according to him, the cause of the trouble.

But it was all too implacable and crafty a "debil-debil" for Tom to cast out. We did our best with brandy and steaming flannels; but it was all so useless, for none understood the sickness, or how to prescribe a remedy that might be effective. Our helplessness was grievous. We could only repeat the sips of brandy and water, and endeavour to warm the chilly little body with steamy flannels.

All did something. Even Nelly, the second best wife, who had had to play a very subordinate part in the camp, and whom "Little Jinny" had slapped and had abused with all the volubility of spite and temper, crouched beside her dying rival, chafing her cold hands and warming her cheeks.

And here was the most touching incident of the pathetic scene. We had brandy and blankets and flannels wherewith to endeavour to afford relief. Poor Nelly had nothing. Her poverty was grim, but she had some resource. She had no means of alleviating the suffering save those which spendthrift Nature provided--the smooth oily leaf of the "Raroo." She used these aromatic leaves, all that she had, with no little art and tenderness. Warming them over the fire until the oil exuded, she would apply them to the hairy jowl of the girl, and anon to her furry forehead and cheeks.

While there is life there is hope is evidently Nelly's creed, and so she crunched and warmed the pungently odorous leaves, and rubbed the hands that had often smitten her in anger. Poor Nelly sighed piteously as she continued her work, while Tom ma.s.saged the body of the girl, hoping to expel the "debil-debil!" His theory was, and is, that some man whom "Little Jinny" had known down about Hinchinbrook had died, and his "debil-debil all the same like dead man," had "sat down" in "Little Jinny's bingey,"--hence her distended condition.

His efforts to cast out this personal "debil" were futile, and as the poor creature lapsed into unconsciousness he would blow gusty breaths upon her big black eyes. It was his method of revivification. In my ignorance I knew none more to the purpose. But it was all in vain. The great eyes of this specimen of uncivilised humanity clouded over, and then brightened. She moaned in response to Tom's well-intended but too forcible ma.s.saging. Nelly applied without ceasing the one means of relief that she possessed, the heated "Raroo" leaf, to cheek and forehead, while we exhausted our woefully meagre stock of knowledge in endeavouring to ease the last moments of the dying.

But poor "Little Jinny's" creditor was not to be denied. He was exacting, cruelly exacting, imperious, implacable. He would have the uttermost farthing's worth of her poor, crude life.

Nelly might sigh and use the whole armful of "Raroo" leaves; Tom might ma.s.sage, and the others do their best, which was pitiably poor, and their uttermost, which was ever so mean and little, the Conquering Worm would have its victim. And so with a few long-drawn, gulping sighs, each at a longer interval than the last, until the final one, "Little Jinny"

pa.s.sed away as the sun touched the dark blue barrier of mountains across the channel to the west.

Then Nelly's sighs changed into a wail, in which the other members of the camp joined, a penetrating falsetto cry which continued for two days, mingled with the strong man's expression of woe, a low, weird yet not inharmonious hum. For two days they chanted the virtues of the dead, told of her likes and dislikes, and of their grief, crouching beside the blanket-covered form. Then they buried her in the smoky hut in which she lived, digging a shallow grave in the black sand, and there she rests with them.

Tom has put on the mourning of his tribe, and will not for several years eat of a certain fish a.s.sociated with "Little Jinny's" original name.

Nor can he bear to be reminded of her. The day after she was buried he spent the hours between daylight and sunset wandering about wherever "Little Jinny" had been wont, obliterating the tracks made by her feet.

With the keenest of sight, which is one of the superior qualifications of the race, he discerned the tracks on the sandy, forest-clad flat, and rubbed them out with his foot.

Just as love-lorn Orlando ran about the forest of Arden carving on

"Every tree The fair, the chaste, the unexpressive she,"

so this tough, rude savage, spent the, whole day smothering the marks that would "sad remembrance bring" of the poor creature for whom he had that kind of feeling that in the savage stands for love. Nature would have performed the office as effectually, and perhaps more tenderly, but Tom's hasty grief drove him remorselessly, until no outward and visible sign of the dead girl remained to challenge it.

When I ponder upon Nelly's "Raroo" leaves and Tom's terrible and precise earnestness in blotting out the memory of the past, I am convinced that this race, despised and neglected of men, can be as devoted to one another as truly as we who are so superior to them in many attributes.