Tropic Days - Edmund James Banfield (book club reads .TXT) 📗

endearing tunes on which so many of us were brought up?

Long may "Jimmy" cook and wear blue shoes a modestly supplicate "For those in Peril on the Sea"! That he may smile to the last would be a superfluous prayer. He cannot do else.


UP AND AWAY



"Man is the merriest species of creation; all above and below him are serious."--ADDISON.


"Let's up and away, Bill," said Breezy Jim, as he started to his feet. "I'm dog tired of this game. We're just working for tucker for the boys and nothing--not even a smoke--for ourselves."

"Don't be in such a flurry. We might drop on a patch yet. I vote we stay for another week. The anchorage is all right, and the season's young. The little bit of fish we've got ain't too stinking. It'll pay expenses." Placid and patient, the half-caste Solomon Islander, Billy Boolah, kept cheek on his impetuous partner, whose restless disposition forbade him to continue long in one stay unless circumstances were essentially favourable.

Certainly fish were not too plentiful, but the aboriginal crew worked well, and were lighthearted almost to a fault. They had had no credit to pledge for the season's stores. They had merely to pick up inert and unresisting beche-de-mer from among the coral five fathoms down, where the deceptive sea looked no more than ten feet deep under the squalid flatties; to smoke and jabber in idle moments; to eat and to sleep, and to listen to Mammerroo's version of the opening phrases of "The Last Rose of Summer" on a mouth-organ worn with inveterate usage to the bold brass. The tune was not quite beyond recognition, and no musician was ever more in earnest, ever more soul-tied to an elusive, unwritten air than the black boy who wore little else than his own unwashed complexion and a strip of red Turkey twill. For long months he had pursued it with all the fervour of his simple soul, and though it said him nay, still did he hope and woo. Out of his scanty earnings he bought mouth-organs by the dozen, for he believed that owing to some defect on the part of such instruments the tune was impossible save to one. Would he ever obtain that prize? The organ which could play that tune as he had once heard it when his boss took him to a concert at Cairns had to be discovered, and to earn money to buy it Mammerroo shipped on these detestable beche-de-mer cruises. In the meantime he would play with all his energies and with endless repetition the halting, nerve-disturbing notes he knew to be incorrect.

"That boy will drive me mad. He bought ten mouth-organs at Cooktown, and he hasn't got the one that plays the tune yet. Does this smell like 'The Last Rose of Summer'? Why, you can hear those fish of yours humming! What with hardly any fish, the stink of the whole boat, and that maddening mouth-organ, I feel almost inclined to jump overboard and marry a mermaid. Let's chuck it."

"It's you as got the bad breath, Jim. Every man when he gets nasty temper he gets bad breath. That tune it's little bit close up. He can play right up to the 'left blooming alone' sometimes."

"He's taken four months to get up to the 'left blooming alone'! At that rate it will be years before he gets to the finish. I'll be mad if he stays on this hooker another month. I'll chuck the three of them--organ, boy, and tune--overboard."

"If you make yourself a fool like that, no more work from that boy. Don't be a fool and spoil this game. We're out till November. Let's make the best of it."

It was not clean work. The reek of the fish-raw, cooked, smoked, and drying in the sun-saturated everything, even the damper. The brown, shrivelled things were scattered in orderly profusion wherever the sun could catch them to top them off prior to bagging. The bitter, eye-searing smoke from the red mangrove fire in the hold, where the meagre catch of yesterday was lying on a couple of trays, stung the nostrils. The odour was as interminable as the half-accomplished tune, and Breezy Bill writhed. He was not new to the game, but bad luck had been the portion of the ship from the start, and small things irritated him, rasping his far from sensitive soul.

"I think you are going to catch fever, Jim. That's what's the matter with you. At the mission I used to read about that bird you call the brain-fever bird. It just keeps on whistling the same old thing, and white men go mad. That 'Last Rose of Summer,' it's got hold of you. Don't be a fool! It's only a good tune half done. It won't kill anybody--at any rate, a tough old shell-back like you!"

"Oh, bother! Stinks and rotten 'Last Rose of Summer' are driving me mad. I could stand lots of both if we were doing well. They might be forty overproof and played by forty bands, and every darned piccolo of them out of tune, if only we were making money. Come, let's up stick and away. We can't do worse and we might do better on that bit of 'reef Mammerroo talks about. Here, Mammerroo, stop that blasted corroboree! Come and tell us where that little fella reef sit down."

Mammerroo shuffled down to the hatchway covering and traced a chart of the locality with a grimy forefinger.

"That fella reef sit down 'nother side Red Hill alongside mainlan'. No deep water. Plenty mangrove--my word full up pigeon. Reef him little fella. Full up tit fish, calla-calla, mainlan' black. Fill'um up boat. Take'm alonga Thors'dilan'. Come back. Fill'm up one time more. Too much. Full up."

"The same old yarn. I've been all over that ground. There's no reef there, and if there had been it would have been found and skinned years ago," said dogmatic Billy, with a sneer.

"I see," said Jim; "the season's over as far as you are concerned. You can go where you like. I'm sick of it now."


TROPIC DAYS

The next morning saw the NAUTILUS scudding before a strong south-east breeze, Jim, true to his name, sulky as a toad-fish. The good wind harped on the rigging as Mammerroo tirelessly lagged after the ever evasive tune. Jim heard him not. Billy, in a rage, was inclined to bundle the boy and his battered instrument overboard, for he saw in the race north nothing but a waste of time.

Three days later the NAUTILUS anchored to the north of Red Hill under the lee of a low mangrove island uproarious with nutmeg pigeons.

All hands turned out to prospect, with Mammerroo as pilot. He was not long in locating the reef--a forgotten and neglected patch that teemed with fish. Beche-de-mer lay in shallow water, thick and big, by the ton.. The reef, with its clear sandy patches, seemed to be the gathering-ground, the metropolis, the parliament of the curious creature which makes feeble eddies with its distended gills, moves with infinite and mysterious deliberation, and which, though it may be two feet long and three inches thick, can pass through a half-inch space, constricting its bulging body during the progress.

The mangroves of the islet provided the best of fuels for the preservative smoke. The fortnightly steamer passed not so very far out, so that it would be possible to send away a couple of tons at a time without leaving the locality or suspending work for more than an hour or two.

With cheerfulness and enthusiastic haste all started to work. No irritating odour, no vexing tune, was perceptible or audible. Boys brought in such quantities of fish that the mates could hardly cook and cure them. Money was being coined, and the making of money begat dreams. Seamen do not invariably build castles in the air. They devise aerial fleets. They build bigger, better, and faster boats to sail on bluer seas into more prosperous and happy havens than belong to this too substantial world. Each sketches out the boat of his desire, and fits her with wondrous comfort and conveniences. He glances, approving head thrown back, up her tall, tapering, well-oiled masts, silver-topped with golden trucks. He paints her in rival colours, rigs her with silken sails, names her after a sweetheart, and sails away to lands fairer than any of the isles of the Pacific--those isles of dreams where in coral groves the gold-lip is embarrassed with pearls of ineffable lustre and of excessive size.

As they day-dreamed they gathered in actual riches, for the lazy fish were big and almost overlying each other in their crowded spaces.

Never was there a happier beche-de-mer cruise, for the prospects of good wages soon and a quick return to accustomed camps overladen with the spoils of the Cooktown stores made each boy as joyful as a cherub and as industrious as a scrub hen. Mammerroo saw visions of mouth-organs, one of which was sure to contain the coveted tune. Little deaf Antony thought of tobacco unlimited, a silver-mounted pipe, and plenty of unforbidden rum. Indeed, most of the boys contented themselves with these ingredients to fill the cup of happiness. But big lazy Johnnie's fancy went to a small jockey's cap of red and yellow, to be worn with a football jersey of orange and green in stripes, and blue trousers. This gorgeous costume was to compensate for present pains and humiliation, for he had nothing but a scanty and dirty loin-cloth, a necklace of grass beads, and a chip of lustrous black-lip pearl-shell stuck in one ear. As they worked they let their fancies range, and thus was the toil eased and the bags of dried fish safely stowed in the hold. With twenty-eight bags in prime condition, the NAULITUS sailed out to intercept the steamer--the LAVA KAVA. The honest stuff was sent off to the agent at the Island post, and back the stout little vessel went to the reef.

"As good as a gold-mine," said Breezy Jim, who every day became breezier, so that he threatened to develop into a gale of good humour.

"Better than splitting coco-nuts at the Mission Station," said Billy Boolah.

"Do you ever feel like chucking Mammerroo overboard now?"

Another fortnight saw another big load on the way to the agents. Mammerroo poured out his soul in fervency over the limping phrases of his besetting tune, and even Boisterous Jim applauded his persistency.

"That boy will catch 'The Last Rose of Summer' some day if the mouth-organ market holds out. I'll give him the best to be got in Cooktown, and I'm bothered if I don't teach him the tune!"

Late one afternoon a strange sail came into view. Slowly the big cutter made for the anchorage, for the wind, busy elsewhere, could spare only a few idle puffs for her business.

"That's a dago, I bet," said Bill. "And I know who it is! Why, it's that humbug, Black Charley!"

"We'll have to be pretty spry, or he'll have some of this patch. We'll head him off, and ship what we've got to-morrow."

A flattie slid over the side of the cutter and plopped into the water, and Black Charley, with a couple of downcast boys, came alongside the NAUTILUS.

"Hullo, Bill! Hullo, Jim! How's yous getting on? Yous drop on good place. I see yous boys picking up fish like a hen picking up corn."

"Not much," replied Jim. "It was pretty thick, but it was only a small patch, and we've pretty well cleaned it up. Sent away half a dozen bags, mostly