Last Leaves from Dunk Island

PART I

THE TEMPEST

SHORE-LINES

If in these writings the subject of the March cyclone crops up with irritating persistency; if, indeed, it becomes as intrusive as King Charles the First did in the memorials of the famous Mr. Dick, peradventure pardon may be granted; for, after all the event was real, and has stamped itself so deeply on the face of the land that no glance is free from impressive reminders of its hasty coming, brief term, and boisterous disrespect towards the concerns and sentiments of human beings.

Yet it may be quite possible to say certain pleasant things about the event, and to speculate whether it may not have beneficial results as time passes. Indeed, already incontrovertible evidence exists on the latter point. Within a few weeks after the storm two strange grasses appeared in three different localities—within a few feet of high-water limit in two places, and about fifty yards therefrom in another area over which the tidal wave had romped. Soon the cows showed that the grasses were good, substantiating the welcome of man. It is safe to say that these grasses had not previously been included in the island flora, nor had any of those to whom they were pointed out ever seen them either. One of the visitors who shrewdly examined both is a man of wide experience as a grazier in North Queensland, a cattle-owner, and one who takes more than ordinary interest in the dietary of his herd. He was unable to identify either, and was astonished when proof of the cows avidity for them was pointed out.

My well-informed friend is apt in the opinion of abnormal developments in various directions traceable to that fateful whirl. Do they crop up not only in connection with plant and bird life, but also with the actual life of the island itself? Did not the storm cut deep furrows here, raise ridges there, amend the shore-line beyond belief, and subject the mental processes of its inhabitants to a vigorous but not to be despised treatment which has brought about subtle changes of temperament—something beyond “the immediate material compulsion of life?” Can it be other than a pleasant and proper duty to register from time to time, as they become obvious, some of the physical changes due to such an exhibition of magnificent and supreme force?

Much might be written of the more simple problems which affect the shore-line. Let it be said that the tidal wave swept over an isolated rock mass known geographically as “the Forty-foot Rock” and locally by the less significant but better-sounding title of “Wolngarin,” and it will be the more readily understood how the shore-line in more impressionable material was cut up and transfigured. The work of repair began almost with the next high tide, and has been slowly maintained since; but between the ordinary tidal range and the limit of the advance of the tidal wave over the flat shore, raw sand still lies, with here and there shoots of buried shrubs peering through the repugnant covering. In this inhospitable element, and just beyond high tide, several species of plants have shown themselves, inclusive of watermelons, tomatoes, (not of that degenerate variety which sometimes crops up in unexpected places, but good, rotund, sweet-flavoured sorts), the beach hibiscus, the native cabbage, that lovely silvery-leafed shrub known as SOPHORA TOMENTOSA, the poona oil tree, with its coppery new foliage, many small and vigorous plants of the umbrella-tree, and several varieties of grass.

There is, therefore, actual promise, within seven months from its desolation, of the restoration of the admirable and lovely features of the strand-line; but on the weather aspect, where for the greater extent compact vegetation overhung the sea, the band of bare, hot rock, forty feet wide, will probably remain until many wet seasons have encouraged the successive encroachment of adventurous vegetation.

The “vagrant wheat” which came wellnigh to maturity on the coarse sand of the spit may be satisfactorily accounted for; but these plants were not the only ones to sprout. Others sprang up in other situations, mystifying the observer as to the origin of the seed, and seeming to establish their right to occupy the barren margin of the Isle, and to proffer, as did Herrick’s, twice ten to one for each bushel sown.

The most prodigious, if not the most remarkable of the vagrant plants of the beach was a single specimen of the castor-oil plant, which on being transplanted into garden soil developed hugely. Whence did the single seed come? True it is that some years ago seeds were sown half a mile from the spot where the plant established itself; but since none came to maturity it would be vain to look for a local origin for the wanderer.

So far only two of the plants that have undertaken the care of the shore-line are to be credited with special qualities for the work, one being the more wiry of the running grasses previously mentioned. This has already highly commendable results to its credit; and it is to be noted that, though the seeds must have been wave-borne, and that all the plants are growing in sand, those which lie close to high-tide mark show indifferent resistance to the scalding of sun and sea. What a recent writer on the entertaining subject of tidal lands terms “vegetable groynes” are necessary influences in the restoration and maintenance of shore frontages. It will be interesting to note the part taken by the self-sown plants in a great natural process, the beginning of which occurred, as has been said, within a few days after the destruction of the first and second lines of defence against such assaults of the sea.

Readers of Rudyard Kipling’s SECOND JUNGLE BOOK will remember with joy and thankfulness how with elephantine vigour the jungle was let in upon a village, the inhabitants of which had earned the displeasure of the “man cub.” Let the great wind of half a year ago represent the wild creatures that acted on the suggestion of Mowgli, and see how true to nature are the writings of men of genius. Over a considerable extent of this Isle the wind did uproot and trample down the great crop of trees, so that the scene was distorted and rumpled; but what is the result? Vitalizing sunlight was let into many a shadowy spot; seeds from the jungle which had lain dormant for many a year germinated under its influence and that of warm rain; and now, instead of a shady forest, there stands a mutilated one, with an undergrowth of jungle vegetation which promises to become dominant in the fight for supremacy. This thick undergrowth excludes grasses and low shrubs, and is too succulent to burn, so that the promise of the immediate future is a change from forest to damp jungle with its cooling airs and earthy scents.

Truly, there are infinite problems to be watched and waited for.

SOUNDS AND SWEET AIRS

THE WONDERFUL SEASON

If Gilbert White of Selborne were living to-day, and among us, he would deem it a duty to record every characteristic and incident of this wonderful season—its winds and calms, its rains and mists and drizzles, its temperatures; the growth of its vegetation; the condition and conduct of domestic animals; the moods of its birds, the activities of its insects, baleful as well as beautiful—and draw just conclusions therefrom for the edification of his day and for generations to come. Possibly he would have referred to it as ANNUS MIRABILIS, not because of bewildering disasters, such as plagues and fires and floods, and falling stars, but because of its genialities, its uniform and, so far, persistent beneficences, and its charms.

Bold in the assurance that no cruel comparisons can be made between the records of a man of genius who delights hosts of readers all over the world and the crude, thin observations of a loving disciple, an attempt herein is made to register, as Gilbert White would have wished, some of the everyday facts which have been noted since the beginning of the year. It is understood, of course, that merely local conditions are to be mentioned, though it is apparent that similar experiences have been the fortunate lot of the North, whether along the coastal strip or in the big, open spaces where conditions are generally quite dissimilar.

What could be more agreeable to the needs, or more in consonance with the hopes, of those of us who live in direct touch with the goodwill of Mother Earth than the lasting, artistically modulated wet season, with naught of excess and but one attempt on the part of unruly winds to fly in the face of a serene barometer? The sum of the first three months being much below the average did, it has to be confessed, seem to signify a shortage of rain throughout the year; but, just when one was inclined to give way to doubt, came a series of genial showers, followed by nearly two months of mist and drizzle, with warm, clear, radiantly blue days. These restored confidence and that good-humour which is never far below the surface in the mind of a man who loves land and expects it to respond to his trivial ticklings. And so the season progresses, without a single note of disapprobation, save on the part of the confirmed pessimist who declares it to be too good to last, while the little creeks babble with assurance, and most of the trees and plants revel and indicate well-being by the exhibition of glossy leafage and abundant flower.

There are singular exceptions, however, to the general appearance of vegetation impudent with fat living, and certain birds have been wholly misled. The umbrella-trees quite forgot to flower, and the big tea-trees made but a poor attempt. Both produce nectar in excess, and expectant birds must have been driven to less prolific and less tasteful fountains. Two species of birds seem to regulate their migratory flights in accordance with food-supplies—nutmeg pigeons and metallic starlings, and, as has been recorded, (CONFESSIONS OF A BEACHCOMBER”) the blacks were wont to foretell their coming by three trees in particular, one of the palms, the coral-tree, and the nutmeg. The latter was always specially associated with the pigeons, but since it and the coral-tree manifest (the one with fruit, the other with flowers) the advance of the season, the blacks accepted them as calendars. When the leaves fell, and red flowers began to decorate the leafless branches of the coral-tree, the blacks knew of the coming of the pigeons.

This year (1920) the coral-tree has been unusually dilatory, and it would seem that the theory of the blacks in respect of its association with the pigeons is established. Records of nigh upon a quarter of a century show that the pigeons arrive about the 7th of August, the starlings having preceded them by two or three days. This season the starlings arrived on the 10th, announcing themselves, as they invariably do, with the whir of rapid wings, and acidulous exclamations. Not until the 20th were the first pigeons seen—a small flock that seemed to be weary and spent with travel. When it is said that the local coral-trees have still to bloom, and that the nutmegs are scarcely edible, from the pigeons point of appreciation, it will be admitted that the season has its contradictions, and the birds were in the right in delaying their arrival.

It has been noted, too, that some of the orchids are later than usual, and that certain culinary vegetables have been exasperatingly slow in development. Reports from the immediate neighbourhood tell of the tardiness of the orange bloom, while the mango-trees have flowered off and on during the last three months without establishing hope of fruit, and without that excess of foliage which often registers a mild and encouraging season. It is said that sugar-cane is making the heart of the farmer rejoice over the next year’s prospects, that new lands are being cleared and planted, and that the cultivation of the banana in the North is about to be revived on a scale worthy of the fruit and the clime.

See, therefore, the elasticity of the mind of man under the pull of the weather. Not that in ordinary seasons there is much to complain about as far as the coastal tract is concerned; but when all conditions are favourable the stimulus becomes irresistible. Timely rains, naught of excess in temperature, bright and cloudy days ideally alternated, wholesome mists which have swathed mountains and hills in a dripping blanket of grey—under such influences hope springs eternal in the breast of that portion of humanity which gaily gambles with the weather for livelihood.

And that brawny breast, does it not expand with this vitalizing, tepid air that folk from the chill South hasten to share with the fortunate North Queenslander? And is he not proud of his country? And does he not chuckle over the juvenile inconsistencies of those who cry, tremulously, for a White Australia, while declaring out of their ignorance or prejudice that the most richly endowed part of it is fit only for blacks?

Ah! we know-do we not?—the riddling and the quibbling of theorists on what they term “climatology,” and how they apply their theories. We know. too, that we have the only part of Australia in which certain articles of food can be produced to the best advantage in quality, quantity, and in the shortest space of time, and that we enjoy a monopoly—bestowed by climate, and therefore permanent and superior to the manipulations of the envious—over other products essential to the well-being of the Commonwealth. When we do trouble ourselves to ponder affectionately over the catalogue of our industries, present, prospective and possible, we ought to be the most contented of Australians.

THUNDER SEASON

Thunder every other day and revivifying showers have characterized November (1917). Plant-life becomes almost obnoxious under the stimulus of the heat which precedes the thunder and the rains which maintain in the soil the dampness of a forcing-house. Between successive flashes of heat cool and calm days intervene, deluding the exasperated tiller of the soil with promise of easier times—less rain, less heat, and, consequently, less impertinence on the part of the vegetation he finds it necessary to repress. When the cycle of change is completed in a single day the changes are, of course, sudden, and mayhap sensational under given circumstances.

If the morning promised fair—agreeable temperature, cloudless sky, gentle easterly breeze and swell-less sea—was it not an invitation to abandon ordinary occupations and start off to the mainland, with, primarily, the benevolent purpose of visiting a neighbour six miles away, in a remote nook on the slope of the blue range across the blue water, and incidentally of absorbing some of the delicate sensations derivable from perfect weather and changeful scenes?

Almost insensibly the breeze veered to the north, creating that gently frolicsome sea in which a little boat seems to be sprightly with eagerness and vanity and endearing swan-like buoyancy. With the wind from that quarter there is a cosy cove for her, into which her betters in size must not intrude; and there was she left, bowing to each admiring swell that peered over the basaltic boulders, which form a rude sort of protection even when the weather comes from open sea.

From the landing a track through jungle leads to a lonesome hut. No gleam of sunshine penetrates to the red soil; the lofty, thickly-leaved trees are for the most part the hosts of creepers, some parasitic, some with huge, independent stems, strangely twisted and festooned, springing from the ever-damp earth. Their own leaves, and those of the great burdens imposed on the trees, create an agreeable shade; but to-day the soft light has a singular quality, not worth emphasizing but yet perceptible, and the cassowary after which the dog raced seems to be grumbling and mumbling in the distance at strangely regular intervals, as if its hasty flight had carried it a mile ahead.

Emerging from the jungle into the forest, we felt that the wind had ceased. Few, indeed, of the everyday sort of breezes visit this sheltered nook; the stillness, therefore, was more of a mental than a physical sensation, and the mutterings of the nervous, long-winded cassowary suddenly became transformed to distant thunder, grumbling behind intervening hills.

Having chatted with the lonesome man, and having eaten abundantly of the varied and kindly fruits of his well-kept clearings, it was time to return to the beach through the leafy tunnel, now gloomy, but richer than before with the scents of flowers and profuse leaves and wholesome earth. Certain effects—an agreeable warmth, a delicate stillness, an echoless silence—gave our voices unaccustomed tone; at least, the listener fancied so. Perhaps the atmosphere was denser than during the morning, and voices did not carry so far, and appeared to be abrupt, yet clear. Though scores of nutmeg pigeons were feeding among the tree-tops, and an occasional displaced fruit fell with a thud or pattered through the foliage to the ground, no voice of bird sweetened the air. Nature seemed to be holding herself in check for some authoritative effect in the way of sound.

From the beach how changed the aspect! Blue-black clouds overhung distant islands, and draped mainland hills in unbecoming sombreness. The storm which the morning had heralded with cassowary-like plaints was gathering fast. Its centre seemed to rest on the customary pivot—the always-dark mountain north-westwards—and it was wheeling to impose itself between the anchorage and home. The question of the moment was, Is it possible to cross the leaden-hued water before thunder-charged clouds make mischief? Let the risk be taken; at least we shall feel in half an hour the influence of the Isles, breaking down the angry seas if the wind veers to that quarter from which it makes the present spot uncomfortable if not dangerous. So, up and away with all possible speed!

No sooner was the hurrying boat so far on the way that she would have been caught as surely in retreat as in advance, than the thunder spoke in menacing tones; skirmishing drifts flew down the ridges to the west, and an enveloping movement on a grand scale began to operate with irresistible vigour and haste. The glassy sea was ruffled here and there with spear-heads of wind, which subsided almost as suddenly as they appeared, but became broader every second; and the sounds of the eager engine, coaxed to emit every atom of power, were heightened by the quietude. With dramatic rapidity the black wall to the south changed to grey, the mainland was smeared out with a similar hue; a vertical flash of lightning descended, or seemed so to do, on the highest peak of our homeland; a deafening roar shook the boat, and the wind and rain raced towards her with a line of foam in straight and unbroken array, as if both wind and rain stamped to the music of the thunder. In a few seconds the boat was the centre of a grey blotch a few yards in diameter., in which furious though not great seas seemed intent upon tearing her to pieces, while the wind rushed past like a fiend, angry and searching.

In the brief opening phase of the fight both steersman and engineer were soaked to the skin. As in a cyclone, the wind brushed off the crests of the waves, so that the circle in which the boat was central was a blur of most indefinite outline. For a time the steersman felt the way by the sting of the mixture of rain and spray on his right cheek, but presently these uncertain aids to direction became confusing; however he turned his face, they smote him on both cheeks at once, and, though it might be safe to assert from the location of the lightning and thunder-peals that for a time at least the boat headed across the track of the storm, a very few minutes elapsed before sense of the course was lost, and all that could be done was to attempt to dodge the seas that flew at the bows, three at a time, and sent jagged pieces from stem to stern, sharp as teeth and cold yet savage.

Faced with an exciting problem which exacted immediate solution, we drew the waterproof cover over the boat and up to the knees of the steersman, who had to handle the tiller and keep the pump going. At all hazards the engine must be kept dry, for who could guess at the duration of the storm, and how far the boat might be carried out of her course before a sight of land verified her whereabouts?

Now the tumult increased, after never so slight a rift directly overhead. A flash of lightning seemed to hit the sea just ahead; with but the briefest interval, the thunder crashed and the rain fell in torrents, so benumbing the anxious crew that it was barely possible to attend to urgent and essential duties.

An hour earlier the sultry jungle had teemed with pleasantness, and was pervaded with silence!

In the midst of universal greyness, ‘mid lightning and thunder, the rush of rain and the snap of fierce little seas on bows that always mounted them, the chill which made teeth chatter and benumbered fingers, there was time to recollect the calmness, the stillness, and the warmth of the leafy tunnel through which we had wandered with light-hearted, time-ignoring carelessness. Not that the present moments were entirely destitute of pleasure—for does it not brace the nerves to be in a sound and worthy boat when she battles with forces that you are convinced she may overcome, given some sort of co-operation and guidance? You have seen her behaviour in all sorts of weathers, and have never known her cause the slightest apprehension. She accepts the seas, and is still mistress of her fate; but at the moment there are other circumstances to be considered. Will the supply of petrol hold out? What freakish spirit in the engine makes the mixture of petrol and kerosene, which usually gives pure satisfaction, distasteful? Charge the repugnance to the thunder-impregnated air, and yet no practical solution to the doubts of the moment is forthcoming.

Is it not best to conserve the pure spirit and let the boat drift before the storm? She will do so in safety, but when the storm ceases where shall we be? Where is the despised compass now? With the stopping of the engine, strife with the encircling waves ceases. The boat, an irresponsible chip centralizing the blur, drives easily, with lightning and thunder and torrents of rain as startling, loud, uncomfortable, but harmless attendants. Vain are speculations as to the direction of the drift and its speed. Will it take the boat on to the rocky point—or past it—or to the neighbourhood of the anchorage left ever so long ago? There is nothing to be done save to shiver with cold, find comfort in the heat of the silencer, and watch the edges of the blur for hope-giving light. The rift overhead was but momentary; but now along one edge appears a straightened halo, dim at first but rapidly gleaming through the crest-broken waves and the rain. In five minutes the sky is clear, with the thunder retiring to the mountain, which seems its lair, the seas just lively, and the deck already drying. The boat has drifted in the direction of the cosy corner wherein she spent the day; but the engine responds to the first impulse, and she runs home with, as the crew is happy to reflect, a certain saucy jauntiness, a conscious exultation of having fought a good fight without the least show of submission, and now with real joy in the victory.

The sun shines brightly, the air is sprightly, the distances radiant. The cycle from freshness to sultriness, storm, and obscurity, and again to freshness and clear sky has been completed for the edification of two holiday-makers in a single wayward day.

A HOMELY GARDEN

If one wanted proof of the significance of Kipling’s saying that last year’s nuts are this year’s black earth, it lies at hand. just before the cyclone a diminutive garden, solely for utilitarian purposes, was made in sand fronting the beach, and with a short, narrow, spongy depression, tributary to a little creek, as a background. Tall tea-trees and many pandanus palms flourished there in the peaty soil which was never dry, and where the frontal ridge rose from swampy levels the sand was black with the mouldering vegetation of centuries.

Adjacent to the crude fence once stood a huge coral-tree which had had its day and ceased to be, and the soft wood as it decayed formed heaps of tindery stuff that mingled with the sand, helped to this end by the industry of scrub-fowls.

For generations before the coming of white men the great coral-tree, as has been told elsewhere (“CONFESSIONS OF A BEACHCOMBER”) was the centre of activities of the aboriginal proprietors of the Isle. Some of their dead were buried beneath its shade. The living feasted there, for have not their stone ovens been unearthed? Birds lodged in the big tree. Being deciduous and of succulent foliage, it contributed largely to the enrichment of the absorbent sand which its roots explored far and near.

When it died it fell silently—so silently that the few resident blacks were scared, and began to cast about for some unlucky chance that ought to follow so unaccountable a fact. Other forms of vegetation sprang up like magic, to the further sustenance of the sand, and the spot became a circle of decayed vegetation with a scrub-fowl’s mound about the base of the rotting trunk.

Taking a hint from Nature, it was decided to form a vegetable garden where water and sandy humus, enriched by the deposition of the refuse of ages, were available. Tons of vegetable mould were transferred a few yards; tons of decayed manure from the milking shed were added as a special stimulant, and to give it body; and the work was wellnigh completed when the storm and its attendant tidal wave desolated the scene. The buoyant elements of the soil were carried off like froth, and deposited in the peaty hollow where the pandanus palms stood, ever refreshed; little but salt sand, raw from the beach, remained on the scene which had absorbed so much enthusiastic labour. The fencing had to be restored, the beds reformed, and some of the disarray of the spiteful breeze smoothed with hasty hands, for the season was advancing. The cows became curious, discovering fencing insecurities, and making havoc among the irregular plots that were ready for seed.

How speedily, notwithstanding the ruffianly check, did the site justify itself! It might have been thought that the very heart had been taken out of the soil, but elements inappreciable to the eye remained in the seemingly intractable sand, and soon gave positive evidence of their existence. Seeds germinated with almost magical spontaneity, and plants of varied character made extraordinary growth.

In one case another lesson direct from Nature was accepted in thankful spirit and put into practice. It was seen that vagrant tomato plants grew among the beach rubbish, until the cows developed a taste for foliage and fruit alike. Several bags of decaying leaves, seaweed, sponges, the cases of dead crustaceans and mummified little fish were dumped beside a huge log, and in this light stuff young tomato plants were set. The results have been excellent as to quantity and flavour, though in size the fruit has much to its discredit. Cabbages, beans, green peas, carrots, parsnips and radishes, with neglected sunflowers, are giving good returns, though for several weeks the weather has been by no means propitious for succulent greens, and oft-times serious affairs have interfered with regularity in watering the beds.

Let it be remembered that most of the crops in the primitive garden belong to cool, if not cold, climates, and that here—well within the tropics—in almost pure sand, in some spots hot enough at noon to blister the feet, no check has been sustained by plants usually associated with cloudy skies and dripping mists. On the untended sand-ridge beyond the highest limit of the tidal wave pumpkins and vegetable marrows have gone on doing more than justice to themselves, some plants having lived through two seasons productively. But the particular area occupied by the rampageous vines was previously covered with wattles and a great variety of more or less densely-foliaged shrubs, each of which would add its quota to the accumulation of fallen leaves and discarded fruit or shelly seed-husks, slow but certain of decay.

“Alas for human culture!” exclaims Thoreau. “Little is to be expected of a nation when the vegetable mould is exhausted and it is compelled to make manure of the bones of its fathers.” Was this thought in the minds of the authorities when the regulations against the careless use of fire were issued subsequent to the cyclone? Was it recognized that in the jungle country fire would destroy not so much fallen timber as the very life of the soil, the result of ages of vegetable decay? Here in the North lies the biggest deposit of “last year’s nuts.” No other area within our borders possesses such an accumulation of the spoils of the past; and it is the duty of the individual, if not of the State, to safeguard the elements of the soil which are liable to destruction by fire.

Of course, it is true that all jungle lands prior to cultivation have to undergo the chastisement of fire; but it would be a calamity if during the dry season now prevailing fires were started in jungle country which had been subject to the will of the cyclone. We do not yet make use of the bones of our own ancestors to enrich our garden plots, but in the primitive spot referred to the bones of the forefathers of the vanished blacks may have had their part in its fertilization.

What must not be permitted is the destruction of the soil; therein lies life not only for the transient individual. but for the ever-improving race of mankind. If the labour of trivial hands may produce results such as this ribbon of sand displays, what might be the result of proper cultivation of the soil in areas where Time and Nature have performed their offices, unrestrained, time out of mind?

IN RESERVE

Though flocks of light-hearted tourists flee from. the searching cold of the South to bask for a brief season in the genial warmth of the North, there are scenes of fascination denied them. They may wander with unquiet haste far and wide to accredited beauty-spots, but sequestered ones of infinite charm are in reserve for the permanent dweller, who abhors the misuse of God’s good time, and disdains unholy zeal for quantity rather than quality in his scenery.

It may be but a proof of conceited simplicity on the part of an individual to proclaim such a spot or such another as the most satisfying, since a bare half-dozen people may be capable of confirming his opinions or confounding them. Yet, if these little-known charms were to remain uncommended, mischief might be wrought. Chivalry, too, should compel the fortunate individual who may have joy, special and peculiar, in a particular scene to give others pleasure by telling of the combination of blue sea and green islets and glowing sky which appeals more strongly than other land and sea scapes.

Among the islets of the Family group, sprinkled between Hinchinbrook and Dunk islands, not one is denied distinction. All are, for the most part, rugged on the Pacific slope, though some decorate even that exposed aspect with vegetation of a sumptuousness that conceals the crude, confused masses of granite. Each has a truncated sand-spit jutting out to the north-west, while two have masses of snow-white coral spoil, which clinks and chinks underfoot, and upon which shrill-voiced terns scatter, with careless profusion, daubed and spotted eggs. The waves that break on it with measured stride, scarcely whiter than the coral, wallow among its finger-shaped fragments, combing and rustling them, until all point obediently to the reef whence old Ocean tore them.

But not always does the sea burst roughly on those banks to overhaul and re-arrange its treasures in severe lines. More often it sleeps, and smiles in its sleep; and then the lighter and unconsidered coinage tinkles as it rolls under the impulse of playfully indifferent touches. Then, too, the hot rocks glisten with micaceous spangles, and, where the sand is, our toughened and unworthy feet are dusted with glittering specks. It is all wealth of a kind—not material in the accepted sense, but real enough if you are in the state of mind which is superior to the “toil of fools.”

When one wanders among such scenes, where there is no sign of traffic save that of his own footprints, no sound save the confidential whispering of the sea, the thin screams of terns and the whimsical cackling of scrub-fowl in the jungle, he becomes a part of the realm of Nature, a trivial and insignificant item soon to disappear, but for a brief space supreme—the only part of teeming Nature capable of disinterested joy in all the other parts. The sea will quickly smooth away the last trace of his trespassing feet, and will moan and gurgle in cool crevices whither bottle-green crabs scurry when the red-backed sea-eagle soars vigilantly overhead. Yet for a time he has been absorbed into the scene. He possesses it and is possessed by it, and will bring away with him a loving remembrance of it which entices beyond power of abstinence.

There is, of course, one scene which combines more of excellences than the others, however admirable individually. A little bay lies open to the turbulent south-easters, yet lacks not a sheltering cove wherein a small boat may nestle. The cove is formed by a bold and rounded mass of granite, on which pandanus palms and straggling shrubs find foothold. The boat glides round the sturdy rock, revealing a white beach, the sand of which has been ground to such singular fineness that it feels as silk underfoot. Where the anchor rests, it is rippled in correspondence with the gentle heaving of the sea, while patches of golden-brown weed sway to the same poetic motion. Coarse grass marks time at high-water limit.

From a low pinnacle of rock, on which an osprey is fond of perching, the virtues of the wider scene are best revealed. Five islets, wildernesses of leafage, trip out to the east. A mass of fantastic rocks, round which confusing currents swill, intercepts the fairway, and beyond the islets are the Brooke group, with Goold Island and Hinchinbrook to the right to complete the picture. The bay beneath is shallow close inshore, for coral is industriously building substantial domes and fragile lacework in limestone. The reef gleams dull-red through the blue water, and white and pale green patches show where sand has occupation of the unallotted places.

On a very still and clear day you may see turtles browsing on the weed below, and at any time they may burst upwards through the surface with splash and bubble for gulps of scented air.

On the rocks, piled high, is a long pencil-cedar log, weathered almost to the tone of the granite. It has reposed there, with but slight changes of position, for fifteen years and more, and the salt spray and the tepid rains have done it but small harm; but the rocks have fretted its sides as it has rolled uneasily when the seas have sought to claim it again. The old log is the one relic of the coarse effects of the hands of man. Few visit the spot. All its charms are held in reserve.

THE SERENE SEA

No sort of tedium dulled the too brief trip over the serene sea. No device for killing time by eating inordinately, or quarrelling, or flirting, was needed, though we had one custom in common with life on an East Indiaman before the age of steam—ceremony was banished.

Porpoises, snow-white terns sitting on drifting wood, sea-eagles, ospreys, sea-snakes, sails, the smudge of steamer-smoke and its ten-mile plume, sunlit isles and speckless sky, with no sound save the purring of the engine and the prattle of the water against the bows—a catalogue of the commonplace, and yet stimulative of entertainment and content. Not one of the three would have exchanged places with far more favoured mortals. Here was, indeed, the freedom of the sea—the sea in its happiest and most alluring and loveliest of moods. No restrictions existed. The little boat sought out ways of her own, nosing shoal-showing buoys and beacons, and hugging the land whensoever and wheresoever she chose.

New aspects of familiar scenes thus become revealed. Seen from such a low level, the heights of Hinchinbrook and all the shoulders and spurs and ridges of the mountain demand uninterrupted attention, for are they not transformed? Bold and clean-cut, the skyline with its abrupt declivities, its peaks and contours—here the profile of a giant with beetling brows, long, slim nose and babyish lips, there a succession of irregular notches and knolls—are projected against a perfectly limpid atmosphere, while in vale and gorge

Just a faint cloud of rose shall appear,
As if in pure water you dropped and let die
A bruised, black-blooded mulberry.

And this tinted haze seems to magnify trees and obtruding rocks, revealing hitherto well-guarded secrets. The sources of torrents which in the wet season seam the brown rocks with silver, now cushioned with moss and islanded with yellowing sedges, are shown by an occasional flash and glitter as the sun plays upon them at a reflective angle.

Each time the channel is explored from the deck of a steamer some new feature stands to the credit of the gaunt hills, and those who know them best make free to assert that it is beyond the capabilities of man to carry in mind all their individualities. A few miles back Leafe Peak was a perfect cone of delicate blue. More than once it has seemed to change its position, and now it might stand for a model of Castle Hill, Townsville, as that was wont to be ere nakedness shamed its base. There is legend extant that the name is derived from the ribbon of leaves which almost invariably stretches from the mangroves and jungle at the foot to the mangroves of the flats of the mainland; and it is further said that hereabouts the northern and the southern current meet, creating the watery ridge defined by leafy flotsam. But there exists a counter-statement to the effect that the name commemorates that of one of the surveyors of the channel. It is a good name, whatever its origin; and perhaps the wavering line of yellow leaves, as permanent in its perpetual renewal as the impassive rocks, will retain its hold on the imagination as an emblem of unity between the mountain and the mangroves, when good folks in holiday humour have ceased to concern themselves about the name of a mere man.

In days that are gone an adventurous black “boy” told of a short cut from Ramsay Bay, skirting the mangroves of Missionary Bay, to the channel. No one credited him, though he gave dramatic evidence in support of his account, describing the manner in which the spurs and slopes of certain mountains interlocked. Viewing the landscape from the deck of the hasty little boat, the route taken by the “boy” was easily discerned, and since the chart shows that the distance from the mangroves in Missionary Bay to those of the channel is not more than four miles, the pass ought to be better known.

In popular imagination the mountains of Hinchinbrook, however picturesque and grand, are too severe, rugged and precipitous to tempt any but the boldest and toughest of athletes; but a resident of the Herbert district undertook many years ago to demonstrate that from a mountaineering point of view the difficulties of ascent were not so great as appearances suggested. For the love of the thing he rowed across the channel from Lucinda Point, fought his way through the jungle, scaled the shoulders of Mount Diamantina, and signalled his presence at the great rock on the summit by smoke in such a short space of time that the Mount might well have felt humbled. A singular feature of the boulder surmounting the rugged height is that it seems to be a pivot round which other elevations swing—at least, such is the illusion as the boat runs down the channel and out to sea to the south-east, and from whatsoever aspect the stern boulders of the mount are viewed, they seem to express aloofness and disdain. Not so the nooks and coves in the sheltered parts of the channel, which coax little boats to spend quiet hours within rocky arms, and promise gurgling lullabies the livelong night.

Within such a cove the boat lay in silence and serenity. In the deep shadow of the morning a fast steamer, blurred with mist, came rushing down the channel—a white blotch with a backward-curling smudge of smoke, calling to mind one of Turner’s masterpieces; but that famous picture lacks the foreground of bold declivities and the distances of hills aglow with the beams of the rising sun. Thence the course was to the northern extremity of Pelorus Island, avoiding the shallow shoals opposite Lucinda, and, when a clearance was made, direct to Pioneer Bay in Orpheus Island.

Here is good shelter for small boats in all weathers, save the uncommon and brief winds from the west which seldom raise a sea. The entrance needs to be known, for it is interlocked by boulders and blocks of coral. Thence the course lay almost due south, miles to the westward of the steamer track, close past Dido Rock, with its outlying sandbank, snow-white in the distance—not much larger than, and somewhat of the shape of, an upturned boat. Most of these islands, rocks and shoals bear the names of men-of-war, derived in the first instance from the classics. Is it not possible, then, that the steep-faced, weather-scored rock which bears the name of Dido caught the fancy of surveyors who had in mind the citadel that valiant woman built on the African coast, when a storm drove her fleet there, and she bought of the inhabitants as much land as could be encompassed by a bull’s hide cut into thongs?

Swarms of welcome swallows issued from the crevices of the red rock, circled round the boat, twittering greetings, and flew back to their nests when their invitations to stay were disregarded. At Herald Island, where anchor was dropped at 4 o’clock in the afternoon close inshore, flocks of swallows again paid the boat respect, perching on the rigging and spars, and making themselves easy and familiar.

Two or three spent the night on board, and the rest of the colony seemed to have homes among the low granite boulders and blocks that fringed the shore just above high-water mark. Here, as elsewhere, the sea was sparklingly clear, so that isolated rocks crowned with brown, wavy seaweed, rounded masses of coral and dead shells, gleaming white, were revealed, and the merging tints, pale-green to deep-blue as the water deepened off-shore where the sand was soft and pure white, made the heart glad. It was invigorating, too, to wallow in such stainless water before sunrise, the air being crisp and the only sound that of the cheeping of the welcome swallows.

Suddenly clouds gathered in the south-west, and before a moaning wind the serenity of the sea fled, chased by white horses. The boat lay snug under the spit until the early snack of coffee and biscuit was disposed of—then, rejoicing as a strong man to run a race, she swept disdainfully round its apex and with frolic and saucy capers flew homewards.

TROPIC GLORY

Last evening (March 6, 1921) we saw the very gates of heaven. Those who live under sullen skies seldom have a chance of seeing the majestic paintings of the sun; but here, where hills and sea and sky are the mediums in which a tropical sun plays fantastic tricks of bewildering variety, you become accustomed to, though never satiated by, the glories of The Beyond.

All day it had been scorching hot—that kind of hotness that tingles the small of the back and adds two shades of brown to the shoulders during the sun-bath following the noontide wallow in the sea. I had spent an unclad hour clearing away loose coral from one of the favourite runs of the little fishing-net, and had cooled down in the sparkling, noisy streamlet that the wet season stimulates and freshens. That loll in the fragrant water—it comes down the palm— and fern-tree-embowered ravine—created an appetite for lunch, and afterwards influenced a dreamy while of reading.

When I really woke and began to stroll among the mango-trees, the western half of the sky, or rather a big area of it, was sullen—thickly, diabolically blue, as if reeking with fumes from hell. Beneath was a zone of curry-coloured sky, outlining ranges almost black in the intensity of blue.

Away aloft, so high that a backward tilt of the head was necessary, the cloud-bank was edged with light as ineffably variable as the shadows over a wheat-field on a breezy day. Soon rainbow tints, appearing, disappearing and reappearing magically in detached flakes and patches, and severed by purple rays, hovered and flitted over and along the cloud. Occasionally lightning zig-zagged horizontally across the densest part, and you could just catch the mutterings of thunder.

A great patch of yellow light sprang from the middle of the upper edge of the dusky cloud, like the half of an enormous nimbus, glowing and glittering. Then, with the gentlest of gradations, its yellow gave way to other primary colours, delicately displayed and quivering with fairy-like agitations. A huge ravine opened up, a valley through rainbow-land, leading to a wall as ruddy as imagination may paint, and embossed with a pearl as great as a house.

Twice appeared a strange shape. Picture a bird soaring in a huge, circling flight from north to south, hidden by the cloud-screen save for one fully-extended wing, and that wing displaying bands of blending tints of gold and green and silvery rose, with feather-tips of sepia, fluffy and breathlessly soft. Picture the wing wavering and slowly vanishing, until the final feather seemed the shadow of a golden plume and as slowly reappearing in all its magnificence—inspiring the hope that the glorious bird of Paradise would emerge and be seen soaring in its proper sphere at the gate of heaven.

All the ships, the ragged remnants, the fragments and frayings of all the rainbows of the most decorative of wet seasons, skirted the cloud or were tossed about in luminous heaps; and then the scene burnt itself out in extravagant redness, leaving the Isle in a lurid gloom, and its inhabitants stiff-necked, but with a rare joy at heart.

PART II

THE PIGLING AND THE PICCANINNY

Though the piccaninny’s arrival had preceded it, the pigling vanished first, and since this is a record of departures it deserves prominence in the title.

Both were island bred.

George the Greek, who seldom leaves the vicinity nowadays, brought the pigling from Goold Island, where there was wont to be such a superfluity that parents abandoned them on the merest sniff of danger. Possibly George had murdered one of its able-bodied relatives, for he had with him a joint of something that bore a distant resemblance to pork and was so tough and tasteless that Debil-debil (the authoritative dog now of “that equal sky”) and his consort got it, after apologies to George. Impossible pork, it looked like a junk out of a newly-felled bloodwood log, but had naught of the wholesome odour of the fresh red wood.

So much for the pigling’s uncle.

George was upbraided because he had inflicted the Isle with a rest-disturbing orphan, helpless and squeakful. Inspired by hope, and permitting his imagination to dwell on the attractiveness of a six weeks’ suckling, fat and tender, with a crisp exterior, browned and glistening, and an interior gushing with gravy and fragrant with herbs, he proceeded to pet the helpless, lean little creature. Imprisoned in an improvised hutch, well padded and bedded with blady grass, the pigling forgot its brief experience of freedom, finding consolation in a diet of coco-nut milk.

Intent upon giving its flesh a nutty flavour, over which his eyes twinkled, George, after three or four unsuccessful attempts, made a huge grater out of a foot square of galvanized iron, and spent an hour or so every day stuffing his pet with porridge of shredded coco-nut and milk. As its fat increased the squeaks of the pigling mellowed into throaty grunts. Was it not living an ideal life? A luxurious nest, a plethora of squashy food, a foster-parent who watched over it with stern vigilance. If it had been in the habit of reflecting, it might have thanked its lucky stars that fate had brought it to a scene where there was no vociferous competition for mother’s milk, no trapesing through blady grass as one of a hustling brood, no sort of care or anxiety regarding the next meal.

About a month before the advent of the pigling, Lucy had made Ned gloomy and thoughtful by becoming the mother of a piccaninny, about a span-and-a-half long, the colour of a tan shoe, with whitish soles to its feet, and hands and fingers so crumpled and soft, and of such tender hue, that they might have been the unfolding frond of a tree-fern. About the same age as the pigling that protested shrilly if George’s other duties belated meal-time, the piccaninny so seldom made a sound that its devoted mother began to imagine that it never would. Within its tiny hutch it kicked feebly, grasped at empty nothings with fern-like fingers, grimaced and writhed in an agonized attempt to cry, and emitted a squeak so puny and faint that it was hardly worth an effort so painful. But in its mother’s ears that beetle-power sound was as charming as the din of a corroboree.

George ignored the piccaninny, but took the pigling to his heart, ever and anon assuring the community that very soon it would be fat and tender. He hung about its hutch, contemplating its proportions in the exulting, gruesome mood of that midshipmite who seasoned the steamy cauldron, and, no doubt, hummed to himself in Greek, “How very very nice you’ll be!”

Both youngsters prospered. The piccaninny began to make her voice heard. Her fingers unfolded. Her complexion became that of a new penny and her mother foresaw all sorts of charms in her face. The pigling squeaked when hungry (which was seldom), grunted when satisfied, snored when asleep (which was often) and spent all the time putting on fat; and its foster-parent saw more of beauty in its rapidly rotunding figure than did Lucy in her wrinkled and crumpled offspring.

As far as interested observers could judge, both parties were happy, each tolerant of the other’s pet, each anxious to demonstrate the peculiar fascinations of pigling and piccaninny, respectively. Interested observers, moreover, came to the inevitable conclusion that, at this stage, for intelligence and appreciation of the appropriate benefits of life the pigling had the advantage. George liked it and in a sense bullied it. It knew George and liked him and bullied him, and, true to his cast of mind, George liked the bullying, responding by scratching the bully’s pink-and-white back until it squirmed and wriggled in ecstasies of delight.

The dogs watched the petting from a distance; for George scowled fearsomely when they approached the hutch, and promised exquisite tortures if they dared to sniff. They also pricked their ears when the piccaninny began to wail above a whisper. It was a foreign sound to them, impossible, for all their restraint, to ignore. The conduct of both, however, was admirably discreet. They were interested. No affectation in that respect could avail. They were curious, but their curiosity was tempered by wisdom. They were obviously jealous, but suppressed that emotion under a pose of austere superiority. How could high-spirited dogs be sincere in their indifference to two strange animals, one vocal with assertiveness, the other a mere whimperer? They glared out of the corner of their eyes while their tails waggled the assurance that both were quite safe so far as they were concerned. If Debil-debil’s state of mind was interpreted aright, all his sentiments were humanized by that great gift of his—humour. He would direct sudden gleams of actual savagery towards the grunter’s hutch, and then, turning towards his master would, like a popular actress grinning with her teeth, demonstrate love and affection and universal peace and goodwill!

Brooking no contrary opinion on the point, George decided the date of the execution of the pigling, foretelling a rare feast, and, of course, Ned and Lucy did their share of anticipatory gloating.

Two days before the fatal date, while the sun was below the sheltering hill, Ned discovered that during the night the half-expected had happened. Unable longer to resist temptation, the dogs had overturned the pigling’s hutch, scratched and torn at the door until it flew open, and the rest was—!

There sat the upturned hutch, minus its petted occupant, while the dogs stood by, sniffing and tail-wagging with what appeared to be a blending of self-accusation and plea for mercy in their faces. Who could blame dogs for the inability to resist so pleasant a sin? When George came on the scene, anger and grief made the hills vocal.

On the assumption that the dogs might have merely chased the pigling into the jungle and that it might be tracked by them, they were encouraged to sniff the hutch, which they did joyfully, and with Ned, experienced tracker, in the lead, all the able-bodied of the Isle joined in the hunt. The dogs, leading across the paddock to the ravine, ran, nose to ground, down its steepness and up through the orange plantation, followed enthusiastically by Ned and the others, just as the character of country permitted. Early in the hunt the dogs put up a scrub-fowl, which noisily fluttered and spluttered through the jungle, and, ending its flight on a lofty branch, jeered and chuckled as it peered down at the intruders.

Then Debil-debil scented a big brown lizard, cosy in a hollow log and loudly appealed for help, which Ned gave with a stick; but Cricket had the best of the luck and made a good catch. Debil-debil scored with a fat rat which, nosed out of its nest of leaves, had scampered up a slender sapling. Leaping high, he jostled the rat to the ground and snapped it up with the alertness of a conjurer.

Being now hot for the chase both dogs ran wild, quartering the shady places industriously, and soon struck off up the steep slope on a good scent. In a few minutes they gave tongue, yapping and yelping with uncontrollable eagerness. Through the undergrowth, Ned in advance, we struggled as fast as lawyer vines, the prickly raspberry (almost as obstructive as barbed wire), saplings and shrubs interwoven with creepers permitted; for did not humanity and love for delicately-fed pigling demand that the fugitive should not be altogether wasted on the dogs?

Hot and puffing, with scratched and bleeding hands and arms, and George anything but poetic in his terms of denunciation, we got up to the dogs—to find them frantically trying to unearth a spiny ant-eater, which was just as frantically but mutely digging itself in among a mat of roots!

George poked up the animal with a stick as Debil-debil took a spell, his bleeding muzzle showing that the “porc” had drawn first blood. Without a pick and shovel, extrication was impossible; besides, we were after a distressed and homeless pigling, not a porc disturbed while at home in ease. George wanted to put in operation tactics he had once applied at Hinchinbrook when his pup had scented out a porc and fought it for three hours, with claws and teeth and voice. Night had come on and then George took the part of the pup. A jamtinful of kerosene was poured on to the creature’s back and touched with a match.

“That pup he work for t’ree hour; he dig out t’ree barrow-load ground. In t’ree seconds that porc he run feefty yard like star, that pup biting fire all the time!”

Forbidden to experiment with fire on the pet porcs of this Isle, George became sulky, and said awful things about Debil-debil, which the good dog accepted as compliments, no doubt concluding that George’s blistering terms were meant for the porc.

Calling off the dogs, the hunt went farther afield, Ned exhorting both; but naught was seen save ordinary vermin. In the afternoon we took a different direction, under the leadership of Ned, whose theory it was that the pigling was still alive, but too frightened to respond to affectionate and soothing calls. The dogs enjoyed themselves, and so, apparently, did the blacks and George. Alas, results were negative, though Ned skilfully pointed out fresh tracks and once said that he heard the lost pigling’s squeal.

A season of regrets, tempered by philosophy, followed.

George’s incessant proclamation of the richness of a roast sucking-pig crammed with herbs had created imaginary bilious attacks. Besides, there was far too much of garlic in his scheme of flavouring for the tastes of those denied more than a strictly poetic sight of the Levant. He was excitedly, deeply affected by the loss not only of a pet, but of a prospective feast that would have smothered the subtle scents of the Isle. Others beheld the silent hutch without the tribute of a sigh.

Lucy continued to smile as the piccaninny passed from the squealing to the squalling phase. Even Ned’s responsibilities seemed less tragic.

Just as George had become reconciled to the loss of the pigling the piccaninny vanished—not alone either. Both father and mother accompanied her. The hut on the beach was silent—and smellful. On a shelf was half a loaf of bread and half a tin of jam. Sticking in the roof was an unfinished boomerang. On the walls were pictures from illustrated papers, and on the floor oddments of raiment and a mattress of bags. There had also vanished from its anchorage a big flattie belonging to a fisherman, a countryman of George’s. Two days later the owner came to recover the boat, and after a week’s search found it on the mainland, high and dry.

Three months passed, then George, having occasion to visit the mainland, discovered something for which he was not looking and has never been able to see—a popular joke. It was rife and blithe in every blacks’ camp between the mouth of the Tully and the Tully Falls up among the ranges, and from the Hull River to Wreck Creek down by Cardwell. And when the blacks take hold of a joke the birds of the air hear of it. Cockatoos scream it; scrub-fowls chuckle over it; honey-eaters make a song about it; the listening lilies overhear the lotus-birds whispering it, and, nodding, smile.

Every black grinned like “Debil-debil,” for there was not one but knew that the perfidious Ned, and Lucy and the giddy piccaninny had eaten the pigling.

PETER: A FISHER OF MEN

Weakly, sedately, yet not lacking mincing precision, Peter slowly followed the margin of the rippleless sea.

The boys, at the moment busy cleaning and painting the boat resting on her cradle, knew him and smiled at his pensive progress. Further, they made jerky remarks about him in their own tongue, one word of which—“Ba-bah”—gave clue to his character.

Approaching the busy scene he slowed down, hesitated, and, glancing ahead, saw that it was not possible to pass along to the corner of the Bay, into which the babbling creek flows, without incurring the derogatory asides of his contemptuous countrymen. His glance back towards the sand-spit, where the water is deep, was momentary; with an assumption of friskiness—too energetic a term for so mild and transient a mood—he ventured nearer and politely greeted me, holding his battered hat abaft his shoulder. There was such humiliation in his attitude and tones, such obsequious deference, that a cheery response was necessary to set him at ease.

Hunger and illness were plainly written in his face; but he smiled wanly as I intercepted him and gave him the formal freedom of the Isle,

“Ba-bah” described him.

In his left hand he carried an aggressively sacerdotal book, and from his arm, in the approved style, hung the crooked handle of an umbrella of the past, its ferrule shining with the polish of the sand. His right hand balanced with unstudied ease a long and slender fish-spear. In the meekest of tones he said that he had fever—too many of his fellow exiles were at the moment making like complaint, but in different terms. His was the voice of the patient martyr intent upon the edification of the unelect.

“I have had nothing to eat this morning, Mister. I was just going out to spear some fish. Will you let me go round to the other little bay? I won’t do any harm. I am a very releegious boy, Mister. I like going by meeself, away from the other boys. I can read a little of this good book; but not much, Mister. It is the Bible.”

He spoke slowly and with novel inflection, as if understudying some mouthing pulpiteer, and turning over the leaves of the book, glanced at the print. It was the BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER—held upside down.

“I am very seeek this morning, Mister; but I must not grumble, for I am a Christian. I am a very releegious boy, Mister. I am Church of England boy, Mister. This book tells me true. I must be a good boy.”

Tremulously weak and quite beyond the spearing of fish, he brisked up when told to go to the house for physic and food, returning in about an hour quite translated, to announce to the ribald boys that the mistress of the house was also a Christian. Fish spearing no longer an urgency, he sat in the sun, ignored the other boys and told of his conversion, of his hatred of bad language, of playing cards, and prayerless companions. He tried to do good.

Like others with a mission. he earned jeers. The boys said he was cranky. Was a man cranky when he tried to stop boys from using bad language and playing cards? The good book told him he ought to make Christians.

The paint-besmeared boys giggled.

Peter had his dinner apart at the house, and disappeared. Referring to him afterwards, the boys said, “Ba-bah!”—and giggled.

The natives’ camp was on the sand-spit under the shade of the ever-sighing beach oaks. Most of its occupants were would-be escapees from the settlement over the water. Some were not quite virtuous. Indeed, they were rowdy as well, deceitful, and as lazy as overfed pups. The camp boasted of cards—a grubby, frowsy, and incomplete pack; and the boys spent most of the nights playing, or rather imitating the playing of, euchre, with language of the strongest type as the chief part of the game.

At daylight next morning one of the truly respectable members of the camp was at the house, wild-eyed and fear-stricken. He told of certain nocturnal happenings, and on the strength of his story I went to the beach. The boat-shed was half full of scared gins and big-eyed piccaninnies, and thence towards the sand-spit sleepers were distributed at odd intervals, just above the limit of high tide. The only occupants of the camp were Peter, his wife and little boy. They were peacefully asleep.

Dick—truthful, gentlemanly Dick—told of the happenings of the night. The card-players had indulged in imaginary gambling and real language to the tormenting of the soul of the righteous Peter, who had exhorted them to give up their bad habits and become Christians, until, driven to desperation by the jeers and the taunts of “Ba-bah!” he had let loose all his zeal and endeavoured to convert the heathen with the fish-spear unused yesterday, and with the might of a much-refreshed arm.

In the blackness of the night the camp had vanished. Better the whole scene to his Christian self and family than the presence of gamblers given to unwholesome phrases. In his exalted mood he had not discriminated, for unoffending Dick and his family and all the other quiet folks had been driven into darkness with the triple-pronged spear, and not one of the crowd, orderly or disorderly, dared to whisper “Ba-bah!” lest Peter., in his repose, might hearken and be saucy.

When the Christian family awoke, Peter, without the slightest taint of exultation, corroborated all that Dick had told, merely adding that, being a very “releegious” boy, he could not stand the bad language and bad habits of the gamblers, and had taken the course of stopping both by hostile demonstrations with his spear and the repetition of some texts from the Bible.

As he glorified his actions, his wife, Maude, sauntered up and was presented. She, too, was civil, not to say choice, of speech, and quickly made proclamation of her Christianity and abhorrence of evil-speaking and cards.

If there exist social and other grades of society among the descendants of the original occupants of this favoured land, and if the hint of such an idea may be carried to finality, then does Peter stand apart as the representative and exponent of the Oxford style and air towards his degenerate fellows. In his attitude to them the grace of humility is abandoned. In demeanour and utterance he is a class by himself—superior, convinced of his superiority, rather disdainful of those who are not such as he.

The last of the family to crawl out of a scanty blue blanket was a neatly-dressed boy of about eight, who came forward with assurance. Maude indicated him as “My little boy.” Peter referred to him not as Bill or Billy, or even Will or Willy, but as “Will-yam,” with lofty and dogmatic stress on the “yam.” Neither approved of the society at the settlement. It was rude. Besides, there was no school, and it was the purpose of his parents that Will-yam should have the advantages of a superior education. Maude emphasized the point. Willyam must be sent to a good school. Peter declared that Will-yam must learn to read the good book and be a Christian like himself, a very “releegious” boy, and a Church of England boy. He must never gamble or use bad language. To these terms Will-yam meekly assented. And there stood on the beach an elated, happy, self-satisfied family, though it possessed naught but two thin blankets, a fish-spear, the handle of a discarded umbrella. and a prayer book, soiled with grease and smoke!

Peter was no longer humble. He had been victorious; he was proud. Had he not rebuked the scornful, piously burnt the broken pack, and with a frail weapon scattered a hostile and hideous crowd?

Exhorted to refrain from violence, however earnest in the spread of Christian knowledge, and in the suppression of gambling, in concern for the purity of speech, Peter’s eyes flashed with the inflammable fervour of the fanatic. The coarse-tongued boys were right. He was in fact “Ba-bah;” but until he was under proper supervision the derisive word lapsed; the boys kept at a safe distance and there was not a giggle left in them!

BILLY TOO-GAL’S GHOST

This story had the chance of being quite true. It would have been so, but for the denial of certain surly facts. So much the worse for the story.

As half-forgotten incidents became fixed in mind and were associated with happenings of the recent past, righteous endeavours were made to discover corroborative evidence of doubtful points; but fact and fable had become so blended that little could be done in the way of sorting out.

Would it not have been satisfactory to all concerned if it could have been proved that the rusty rifle-barrel lying among odds and ends in the barn was ever in the possession of Billy Too-gal (otherwise “Billy of the Leg”) and that it had been a serviceable weapon with carefully polished stock and rather more of brave brass in its mountings than is the style of the day? History is silent on this important point, while tradition shouts confidently in the affirmative. Trust rather to the affirmative of tradition than to the cheerless negative!

Tradition said that Billy Too-gal had been directly acquainted with the rifle; that he had treasured it during his day, and that when he had passed into the land of shades one of the mystery-men of the time had flung it into the sea because he deemed it uncanny, dangerous, and like to transcend in direct effect the magic in which he himself dealt. Years afterwards, “Jack Walk About” found it—a shapeless mass of rust—protruding from the sand at low water, and having chipped away some of the corrosion, had taken it to a certain Isle, as evidence, perhaps, of a forgotten tragedy!

There be some who declare that Billy Too-gal’s affection for the weapon was a grim sort of sentiment, which had germinated in the idea that he had suffered strange martyrdom through it. They assert that the bullet fired by the hasty and aggravated white man struck him on the left knee, giving to his gait that singular lurch or strut—almost rollicking in style—that his phantom perpetuated. Others, with equal force, and on, perhaps, slightly sounder evidence, maintained that the bullet shattered his lower jaw, so that the vestiges thereof hung loose; that he was thereby deprived of the ability to masticate his food; that he presented a repulsive, yet affecting, sight when he strove to appease his hunger; for was he not driven to throw scraps and fragments into his cavernous mouth and gulp them?

Poor Billy Too-gal may have been cheeky to the nervous and suspicious white man who had invaded his country; but his punishment did not fit his fault. It was excessive. It was cruel. Not only did it inflict lifelong anguish, sentence him to insatiable hunger, but it also ruined his temper. Behold him, thenceforward, a fierce-eyed man, tall and very lean, with a strut that would have been ludicrous on the stage, a wide-open, slobbering mouth, with portions of a frayed and dangling jaw.

His ghost retained, as ghosts should, the disfigurements of life—so the wise old men proclaimed with voices of authority that brooked no question. Those who were coeval with him had good cause to recollect his singularities, his eccentricities, his passionate and explosive moments. Not an infant in many a camp who did not recognize his phantom when the sages gathered together to discuss affairs of moment, for prying piccaninnies were kept in check by threats of the return to life of Billy Too-gal, with his fearsome, mobile head and the strut that swung his body to the right at every step. Billy was a “bidg-eroo” (malignant “debil-debil”), that would still the squeakiest piccaninny, and make her hide her eyes against her mother’s side or on the mangy coat of the pup she happened to be cuddling.

Boys might assume a tremulous air of bravado; but did ever one of them venture out on to the beach after dark, where, their elders declared, Billy of the Leg was wont to spend impatient nights spearing Too-gan? No; the boys, defiant in a crowd in daylight, cowered in camp after dark, for Billy’s strut as he slid along the beach gave him the faculty of glaring sideways with paralysing potency. They knew, too, that from the bark band across his forehead was slung a dilly-bag big enough to hold a captured piccaninny for breakfast, if the sleepy Too-gan failed to waver within range of his spear. For these reasons, the bold-at-daylight boys kept in the background after dark, glad of the muffling blankets teeming with fleas.

Old, old men had often told of Billy’s pitiful destiny. It was his to strut tracklessly along the beach every dark night, from the lonesome camp on the edge of the mangroves at Wongaling Creek to the intrusive rocks, there to stand, in a furious temper, waiting the never-to-be-granted chance of spearing a sleepy fish, his body the while swinging to and fro, and the big dilly-bag swaying uneasily from shoulder to shoulder.

If, said they, he was ever lucky enough to snap up a plump piccaninny—girl preferred—he would cut her to pieces with a shell-knife and use her for bait. Then he would be certain to catch a sleepy fish, and when he had eaten it his hunger would be appeased, and he would walk the beach no more.

Never was any piccaninny bold enough to think of Billy Too-gal as other than a terrifying phantom with a yearning for bait of most distressing kind, until You-an-linga—a dreamy little girl—dreamt a strange dream.

All the kiddies of all the camps knew that even the long-legged, light-footed little birds that ran trippingly over the sand at the edge of the blue sea made distinct tracks. You-an-linga dreamt that she saw Billy Too-gal lurching along the beach, with swinging head and gaping mouth. So vivid was the dream that she did not regard it as one. She firmly believed that she had seen the piccaninny-scaring man in the very flesh, and being, as some dreamers are, quite practical, she thought of following his tracks under the assurance and protection of the morning’s sun.

Being intuitive by nature, she concluded that Billy Too-gal would be certain to make a distinctive track, though no one had ever seen the records in the sand of his passing to and fro. She knew the track of every one of the denizens of the camps, and read into each never-failing characteristics. Though she might not have seen a group straggle off aimlessly along the beach, she could tell by a glance at the tracks the individuals of the party, where they had gone, why, and make good guess at what they were doing at the fleeting moment.

You-an-linga was able so to do because she had a gift. All enjoyed it in varying degrees; but in her case it was developed so remarkably and applied so vividly—recollect that intuition was also hers—that some of the crude folks believed her to be “ba-bah” (cranky). Could she not track the big “Oo-boo-boo”—the long-legged wolf-spider—and tell where it would be found next day hugging its dilly-bag?

Being thus quite out of the ordinary, You-an-linga was looked upon despitefully by others of her age, so that she was often lonely and occupied herself with affairs that had but slight interest to the swarms of piccaninnies. She likened the dilly-bag (egg-capsule) of “Oo-boo-boo” to a “chillen,” and got one from an interested white man as a reward for the aptness of the similitude. It was then that she told the visitor of the passing the previous night along the beach of Billy Toogal, whose head was loose “all asame Yam-boo” (praying mantis). She had not seen Billy Too-gal after the sun came up, but last night she saw him, and he was no good:

“Me no lik’m that fella. Might be that fella kill’m piccaninny. Me look out proper. What for that fella no mak’m track?”

You-an-linga’s father and mother stood by and smiled. Their smiles were not quite honest. Did they not implicitly believe that Billy Too-gal was a snapper-up of such trifles as piccaninnies at large on the beach after dark? And since, in their way, they loved You-an-linga, they sought to terrify her with stories of the nocturnal savage with huge mouth, and were afraid when she did not betray the slightest apprehension, but rather was eager for investigation.

The wise-heads in the camps looked upon Billy Too-gal’s phantom as the best item of an excellent stock-in-trade of mysteries, and would not, without harsh forms of protest, submit to it being set at naught by a piccaninny. You-an-linga was beginning to talk about their pet ghost in a familiar strain, and they plotted to get rid of her, so that their reputation as sorcerers and their rights as custodians of the mysteries might be strengthened.

Secretly they debated a situation boding little good, and decided that for three nights in succession Billy Too-gal’s ghost should parade the beach, and that all the camps should have the chance of witnessing the coming and the passing of the apparition. On the third night You-an-linga would be picked up and disappear from the camp forever. Then in a quiet spot they would eat the piccaninny’s vital parts and so assimilate some of the rare qualities which she had displayed. They would thus confirm their renown, rid the camp of a disturbing element, and secure for themselves the singular powers which had been hers.

Too-bee (The Maggot), played the part of the restless phantom on the first night. More than one quaking individual saw the lop-sided head, the appalling mouth, the huge dilly-bag dancing from shoulder to shoulder. You-an-linga heard early of the nerve-shocking apparition, and sat and shivered, wrapped in her father’s blanket. When the sun rose, she scrambled out and raced with others to the beach. Never before had Billy Toogal made tracks. His footprints were plain to be seen, and the children huddled up and scampered back.

You-an-linga had seen enough. She knew Toobee’s tracks as surely as she knew her own father’s. and her gift of intuition caused her to conclude that he was making a fool. of them all; nor was she wise enough to keep her own counsel.

Naturally, the old men were vexed, and Too-bee indulged in demonstrations towards You-an-linga with a weighty waddy. Innocent enough of any thought of defiance, she boldly said that Too-bee had been “Play about, all asame gammon; me no ‘frait.”

Billy Too-gal was next represented by Oon-narra (The Cloud), and with such realistic effects that the camp buzzed for the rest of the night. None could now deny the existence of the ghost. Brave would be the man or woman or piccaninny who would trust to the beach when it had been announced by the mystery-men that it was reserved for the ghost. The envious crowd flattered the old men., renewed their demonstrations of deference, and contributed all sorts of fat things, from oysters to scrub-turkey eggs, to their fires.

Again You-an-linga satisfied herself from the best of all evidence that, light-footed as The Cloud might be, he had merely mimicked Billy Too-gal; but she kept her opinion to herself until the evening when she took her diffident father and mother into her confidence. She proposed that they should wait on the beach for Billy Too-gal, and that when he appeared her father should spear him, and then kill him alonga head with a tomahawk—“dead finis”—and take his dilly-bag and long fishing-line for his own. The proposal was decidedly obnoxious to Mur-juri (The Cicada), You-an-linga’s father, who being quite commonplace, had never questioned the authenticity of any ghost; but having only the fag-end of a fishing-line, and entirely lacking a dilly-bag, he was tempted. The mother’s repugnance was also overcome by the thought of the huge dilly-bag her husband had actually seen and described.

* * * * *

The trio stole quietly out and snuggled into depressions in the still warm sand.

Nor had they to wait long. The night was cloudy, with a fresh south-east breeze bearing in from the sea a mist that seemed to be luminous. The crests of the rustling breakers, blown ashore, mingled with the mist, making a thin margin of vapour, which blurred, yet exaggerated, the form of Kurran-doola (the Millepede), the wiliest and most resourceful of the mystery-men who imitated Billy Too-gal’s lurching gait on the third night.

You-an-linga’s mother screeched when the substantial phantom came abreast of the lair, but at the same moment Murjuri hurled his dugong spear. The range was short; the aim true. Down went the phantom with a grunt, and one blow of the tomahawk silenced him for ever.

Morning revealed naught. The undertow had taken charge of the bleeding body and the current conducted it out to sea—a feast for sharks.

But what had become of Kurran-doola, the oldest of the old men. the most mysterious of the mystics? No questions were asked. The other mystery-men knew that they had been trapped by a piccaninny, and were sage enough to keep silent.

Years afterwards, You-an-linga was wont to smile capaciously as she told that she really had seen Billy Too-gal, and that he made tracks “all asame” Too-bee, Oon-narra, and Kurran-doola!

In time the old men, taking up the cue, laid it down authoritatively that You-an-linga was quite right; and that her discovery proved that Billy Too-gal still walked the beach on cloudy nights. Mystery-men, of whatever complexion, are ever artful in explaining awkward complications by added mystification.

But what became of the hasty white man whose deed had provoked Billy Too-gal’s ghost hungrily to strut the wholesome beach? Billy Too-gal never actually said; but the old men had so vividly interpreted his gestures that the younger, in their love of movement and display, in time embodied them as one of the most frequent themes of their corroborees. What did this crudest of dramas, with its beggarly array of sticks and slips of barks as stage properties, reveal?

A solitary tent. Billy Too-gal, his wound still raw, creeps from a background of cycads, noiselessly as dew, tomahawk in hand. He enters. A pause. A thud. A grunt. Several groans. Silence. Billy Too-gal gropes his way out, carrying a rifle. He looks round. Putting down the rifle, he picks up two thin sticks and squats, and holding one with his toes, twirls the other between his palms. Presently a faint blue smoke arises. A glow appears like a ruby in a black setting, and is gently flicked on to a leaf. Tenderly he breathes on it, waves it to and fro, and it flames. With a torch of grass he fires the tent and watches, and gathers dry cycad fronds to ignite the smouldering blankets. He seizes the rifle nervously, carries it to the brink of the lagoon, and, leaning over so that his footsteps may not impair the muddy margin, drops it so gently that neither lily leaf nor bud wavers, and—without once looking back—slowly disappears. After an interval he reappears with wide-open, slobbering mouth and a hooked stick, fishes for the rifle, and with it—exit!

Thus, though Billy Too-gal does not nightly walk the beach in ungovernable, voiceless rage, the camp clatters and chuckles over the mimicry of his revengeful deed.

THE PASSING OF SAM

Sam was ever a masterful man. Big and strong, hasty, passionate to a direful degree when aroused; gentle to his chubby children; corrective to those whom he deemed to be wrongdoers, he had some of the essential qualities of the schoolmaster and no little of the persuasive eloquence of the preacher. It boots not to dwell on his defects, for Nature has claimed her final penalty; but it may not be possible to understand his character aright if the popularly-believed reason for his banishment from his native isle be not referred to.

He was born on one of the islands of Torres Straits which has benefited by Papuan influence in many respects. There the type is far more intelligent than that of the mainland of Australia. Men and women learn some of the advantages of civilization more readily, and under judicious training become in some cases quite worthy of exercising certain of the privileges of self-government. The late Sir William MacGregor testified to this, and has given instances of the wisdom and moderation with which the “Councillors” of the Straits Islands exercise their administrative and judicial functions.

Born of such a race, it was natural that a big, strong, lusty man should have opinions of his own, and should be given to expressing them. Though no positive statement has come to my ears, it is said that in a fit of justifiable wrath he inflicted punishment so violent on his wife that she died. He knew something of the scriptures, and perhaps interpreted all too dreadfully that injunction to pluck out the offending right eye and cast it away. Sam’s punishment for so wicked an offence against the laws of humanity was lifelong banishment from the island he called home.

He married again, and had a family of four round-eyed, happy children, and at the Settlement his was the first hut to show regard for the decencies, if not the niceties, of life. He began his garden with sweet potatoes and taro. The flowers and shrubs that followed bloom for others. Thanks to the good policy of the State in respect of the population of the Straits Islands, Sam was early able to read and write. Several of his pencilled notes prove that he spelled correctly and wrote neatly.

Being thus, generally, so much superior to the great majority at the Settlement in type and attainments, Sam became an unofficial leader—a tutor and a pastor. He established a night-school in which the children were taught their alphabet and rudimentary spelling. He delivered addresses, read the Bible, taught the singing of hymns, and in other matters endeavoured to persuade young and old to live decently and in order. His Sunday services became, for a time, an institution.

Under his directions, and with his thick-voiced., solemn words, the dead were buried at that spot where, as one epigrammatic native of the locality said, “Boy he sit down altogether!” They had been wont to strap their dead, knees to chin, and so to p