The Book of the Bush - George Dunderdale (life books to read txt) 📗

said:

"I want someone to teach in a school; if there is anyone here willing to do so, I should like to see him after Mass."

I was looking round for Philip among the crowd when he came up, eager and excited.

"I am thinking of going in to speak to the priest about that school," he said. "Would you have any objection? You know we are doing no good in the gully, but I won't leave itif you think I had better not."

Philip was honourable; he would not dissolve our short partnership, and leave me alone unless I was quite willing to let him go.

"Have you ever kept school before?"

"No, never. But I don't think the teaching will give me much trouble. There can't be many children around here, and I can surely teach them A B C and the Catechism."

Although I thought he had not given fortune a fair chance to bless us, he looked so wistful and anxious that I had not the heart to say no. Philip went into the tent, spoke to the priest, and became a schoolmaster. I was then a solitary "hatter."

Next day a man came up the gully with a sack on his back with something in it which he had found in a shaft. He thought the shaft had not been dug down to the bedrock, and he would bottom it. He bottomed on a corpse. The claim had been worked during the previous summer by two men. One morning there was only one man on it; he said his mate had gone to Melbourne, but he had in fact killed him during the night, and dropped him down the hole. The police never hunted out that murderer; they were too busy hunting us.

I was not long alone. A beggarly looking young man came a few days later, and said:

"I hear you have lost your mate Philip, and my mates have all gone away and taken the tent with them; so I want to ask you to let me stay in your tent until I can look round a bit."

This young man's name was David Beswick, but he was known simply as "Bez." He was a harmonious tailor from Manchester; he played the violoncello, also the violin; had a good tenor voice, and a talent for the drama. He, and a man named Santley from Liverpool, had taken leading parts in our plays and concerts on shipboard. Scott, the artist, admired Bez; he said he had the head, the features, and the talent of a Shakespeare. He had a sketch of Bez in his portfolio, which he was filling with crooked trees, common diggers, and ugly blackamoors. I could see no Shakespeare in Bez; he was nothing but a dissipated tailor who had come out in the steerage, while I had voyaged in the house on deck. I was, therefore, a superior person, and looked down on the young man, who was seated on a log near the fire, one leg crossed over the other, and slowly stroking his Elizabethan beard. I said:

"Yes, Philip has left me, but I don't want any partner. I understand you are a tailor by trade, and I don't think much of a tailor."

"Well," replied Bez, "I don't think much of him myself, so I have dropped the business. I am now a sailor. You know yourself I sailed from Liverpool to Melbourne, and, anyhow, there's only the difference of a letter between a tailor and a sailor."

There was a flaw somewhere in the argument, but I only said, "'Valeat quantum valere potest.'" Bez looked solemn; a little Latin goes a long way with some people. He was an object of charity, and I made him feel it.

"In the first place this tent is teetotal. No grog is to come inside it. There is to be no mining partnership. You can keep all the gold you get, and I shall do the same. You must keep all trade secrets, and never confess you are a tailor. I could never hold up my head among the diggers if they should discover that my mate was only the ninth part of a man. You must carry to the tent a quantity of clay and rocks sufficient to build a chimney, of which I shall be the architect. You will also pay for your own tucker, chop wood, make the fire, fetch water, and boil the billy." Bez promised solemnly to abide by these conditions, and then I allowed him to deposit his swag in the tent.

The chimney was built in three days, and we could then defy the weather, and dispense with the umbrella. Bez performed his part of the contract well. He adopted a rolling gait and the frown of a pirate; he swore naval oaths strong enough to still a hurricane. Among his digging outfit was a huge pick; it was a two-man pick, and he carried it on his shoulder to suggest his enormous strength. He threw tailordom to the winds; when a rent appeared in his trousers he closed it with pins, disdaining the use of the needle, until he became so ragged that I ordered him into dock for repairs.

One day in passing Philip's school I peeped in at the flap of the tent. He had already acquired the awe-inspiring look of the schoolmaster. He was teaching a class of little boys, whose wandering eyes were soon fixed on my face, and then Philip saw me. He smiled and blushed, and came outside. He said he was getting along capitally, and did not want to try digging any more. He had obtained a small treatise called "The Twelve Virtues of a Good Master," and he was studying it daily in order to qualify himself for his new calling. He had undertaken to demonstrate one of Euclid's propositions every night by way of exercising his reasoning faculties. He was also making new acquaintances amongst men who were not diggers-doctors, storekeepers, and the useful blacksmiths who pointed our picks with steel. He had also two or three friends at the Governmnt camp, and I felt inclined to look upon him as a traitor to the diggers' cause but although he had been a member of the party of Young Irelanders, he was the most innocent traitor and the poorest conspirator I ever heard of. He could keep nothing from me. If he had been a member of some secret society, he would have burst up the secret, or the secret would have burst him.

He had some friends among the diggers. The big gum tree in front of the church tent soon became a kind of trysting place on Sundays, at which men could meet with old acquaintances and shipmates, and convicts could find old pals. Amongst the crowd one Sunday were five men belonging to a party of six from Nyalong; the sixth man was at home guarding the tent. Four of the six were Irish Catholics, and they came regularly to Mass every Sunday; the other two were Englishmen, both convicts, of no particular religion, but they had married Catholic immigrants, and sometimes went to church, but more out of pastime than piety. One of these men, known as John Barton- he had another name in the indents-stood under the gum tree, but not praying; I don't think he ever thought of praying except the need of it was extreme. He was of medium height, had a broad face, snub nose, stood erect like a soldier, and was strongly built. His small ferrety eyes were glancing quickly among the faces around him until they were arrested by another pair of eyes at a short distance. The owner of the second pair of eyes nudged two other men standing by, and then three pairs of eyes were fixed on Barton. He was not a coward, but something in the expression of the three men cowed him completely. He turned his head and lowered it, and began to push his way among the crowd to hide himself. After Mass, Philip found him in his tent, and suspecting that he was a thief put his hand on a medium-sized Colt's revolver, which he had exchanged for his duelling pistols, and said:

"Well, my friend, and what are you doing here?"

"For God's sake speak low," whispered Barton. "I came in here to hide. There are three men outside who want to kill me."

"Three men who want to kill you, eh? Do you expect me to believe that anybody among the crowd there would murder you in broad daylight? My impression is, my friend, that you are a sneaking thief, and that you came here to look for gold. I'll send a man to the police to come and fetch you, and if you stir a step I'll shoot you."

"For goodness' sake, mate, keep quiet. I am not a burglar, not now at any rate. I'll tell you the truth. I was a Government flagellator, a flogger, you know, on the Sydney side, and I flogged those three men. Couldn't help it, it was my business to do it. I know they are looking for me, and they will follow me and take the first chance to murder me. They are most desperate characters. One of them was insubordinate when he was assigned servant to a squatter, and the squatter, who was on horseback, gave him a cut with his stockwhip. Then this man jumped at his master, pulled him off his horse, dragged him to the wood-heap, held his head on the block, seized the axe, and was just going to chop his master's head off, when another man stopped him. That is what I had to flog him for, and then he was sent back to Sydney. So you can just think what a man like that would do. When my time was up I went as a trooper to the Nyalong district under Captain Foster, the Commissioner, and after a while I settled down and married an immigrant woman from Tipperary, a Catholic. That's the way I happened to be here at Mass with my mates, who are Catholics; but I'll never do it again; it's as much as my life is worth. I daresay there are lots of men about Bendigo whom I flogged while I was in the business, and every single man-jack of them would kill me if he got the chance. And so for goodness' sake let me stay here till dark. I suppose you are an honest man; you look like it anyway, and you would not want to see me murdered, now, would you?"

Barton was, in fact, as great a liar and rogue as you would meet with anywhere, but in extreme cases he would tell the truth, and the present case was an extreme one. Philip was merciful; he allowed Barton to remain in his tent all day, and gave him his dinner. When darkness came he escorted him to the tent of the men from Nyalong, and was introduced to them by his new friend. Their names were Gleeson, Poynton, Lyons, and two brothers McCarthy. One of these men was brother-in-law to Barton, and had been a fellow-trooper with him under Captain Foster. Barton had entered into family relations