Missing Friends

CHAPTER VII.

LEAVING THE HERBERT—RAVENSWOOD

I had again no particular idea as to where I would go, further than that I wanted to regain my health. But oh, for the sweetness of liberty and money! I needed not to say anything about money to my old travelling companions in the boat; they knew I must have a good cheque, and their attentions were in proportion! Perhaps I wrong them. Perhaps they would have been just as careful to my wants if they had known me to be penniless. At any rate, a sort of bed was made for me in the stern of the boat, and offers to procure for me anything I wanted from the stores on the plantations were profuse. But I wanted for nothing more than to lie as easily as I might, because I really was very sick. There had been a public-house built somewhere a mile from the river-bank since I had passed that way before, and when we came to the place where a track led from the water up to it, my two oarsmen proposed to go up to have some refreshment, and promised to be back directly. Of course I could not go with them. When they were gone some time a little pig which they had in a bag in the boat began to find its way out. I thought it a pity to allow it to escape, and yet I had not strength to get up, but without calculating the consequences I rolled myself over until I lay on the top of it. Never shall I forget the howling of that pig in my ears, for I believe over an hour, until the men came back. The bag had somehow got mixed in my clothing, and I could not either free myself or the pig, else I would gladly have let it go. At last the men came back and got us separated.

When I came to Cardwell I thoroughly enjoyed, although I was sick, the luxury of lying in a clean bed with white sheets, and mosquito curtains all around me, and to have one of the servants at the hotel coming to my door all day long asking if she could do anything for me. There was neither doctor nor chemist in the place, but one of the storekeepers came and looked at me, and sold me some medicine which in a short time drove the fearful "shakings" I had away. Meanwhile, as there was no other communication with the outer world than "the schooner," which ran between Cardwell and Townsville, I had inquired when the schooner would be in as I had decided to go to Townsville again. On the same day that the ague had for the first time left me, I was told that the schooner would be ready to run out at eleven o'clock at night. I was then so careless of myself, or so foolish, that I, at that hour of the night, for the first time in a fortnight, got out of my bed and went on board the craft. It was only a sort of fishing smack, rowed by two men, who had a small enclosure somewhere on board where they could be dry. For passengers there was no accommodation whatever. In the hold, which was open, was nothing but some old sails, rusty chains, empty boxes, and the like. Two or three more passengers came on board, who at once secured the best places in the hold, while I, who for the first time for many weeks felt remarkably well, sat up on the deck enjoying the strong breeze, and even tried to smoke a pipe. But any North Queenslander will tell you that when one has had fever he has to be extra careful of not catching cold. I did not know that just then, but in a very short time I did. I got a fearful toothache. My enervated system did not feel able to hold up against this new affliction, and so I threw myself down among the ropes and boxes in the hold. There I lay, while the pain gradually increased. The wind was against us, and it took eight or nine days before we reached Townsville. During that time my agony grew more acute every day. I had neither strength nor energy enough to stand on my feet. My head swelled up to a fearful extent. My mouth was in such a state that I could not swallow, and I gradually lost power to open my mouth or to speak. When we had been two days out I raised myself on my elbow to try to drink some tea and eat some mashed bananas, which some one gave me in a pint pot. I could not swallow, so I laid myself down again and did not after that touch food. I heard them speak about me on deck, and say that they ought to have found out my name, because I should scarcely last out unless the wind changed. I heard this distinctly, and laughed to myself, because I knew I was not going to die just yet. Still to all their inquiries I could not reply. One day I heard a Dane speaking in my ear; where he came from, or where he went to, I do not know, but he asked me, "Are you a Dane?" I grunted. Then he said, "What is your name?" I tried to stutter it out from between my teeth time after time, but he could not understand, and kept on, "Say it again." At last he gave it up. Then he asked me if there was anything he could do for me? what ship I had come out in, and so on. But I was so disgusted with my own inability to use my tongue, that otherwise so ready a friend of mine, that I made no further attempt to speak, and my countryman disappeared again. There was now only one thought that possessed my mind, viz., to get to Townsville, and when there to have all my teeth pulled out. Of course it was more a relapse from the fever that was wrong with me than toothache, but I did not know it. I lay in a daze day after day, every time the boat gave a lurch my head would strike against something, and the agony I suffered cannot be described. At last the skipper took hold of me and cried, "Well, stranger, here we are in Townsville; where shall we take you to?"

It came on me so unexpectedly that it seemed again to send the life-blood through me. I stared around me and saw that we were lying close to the wharf.

Up I jumped, to the great surprise of the skipper, and leaving my swag behind me, and holding on with both hands to my head, I staggered ashore. It was about eight o'clock in the morning when I landed. I knew it because I heard all the breakfast bells ringing from the hotels, and although I did not feel hungry, yet it reminded me that I had eaten nothing for two weeks. On I staggered like a drunken man. People seemed to look surprised at me, and to go out of their way for me. I came to a chemist's shop. He also looked at me in a disgusted sort of way. I took up a pen and wrote to him that I wanted all my teeth pulled out. He felt my pulse. "My friend," said he, "I think you had better go to a doctor."

I gave him to understand that I was tired, and did not know where the doctor lived.

"Wait," cried he, "I will get a man to go with you."

Then he went out of the shop. As I turned round I saw a very large mirror, in which I beheld my own image from head to foot. At first I did not realize it was myself as I stared at it. Would my own mother have known the picture? I hope not. Unkempt, unwashed for nearly a fortnight, my hair hung in matted knots about my face. My whole head was swollen to such an extent that to describe it as I saw it would seem exaggeration. Add to this a graveyard complexion in the face, and an emaciated form, dressed in an old crimean shirt, dirty moleskin trousers and blucher boots, and you have the picture I beheld of myself as I stood looking. I felt my knees giving way under me, made a grab at the counter and fell. The next thing I remember was that I was lying on a nice bed, in a room which proved to be in the adjoining hotel, and that a doctor was there. With consciousness my agony returned, and I again preferred my request in writing that he should pull all my teeth out. "Yes, that is all very well," said he, "but we must first try to break your mouth open. You must go to the hospital. I will give you a ticket. What is your name? Have you no money?"

I took out all I had got, my one hundred pounds' cheque and some change, and laid it on the table. At the same time I wrote to him on a paper and asked him to take charge of it and give me the balance when I asked for it. I also asked him to order anything I wanted and to spare no expense. Then the doctor suggested to call in a colleague that they might consult, and when the next doctor arrived they agreed to give me chloroform, but after great preparations had been made and a sponge held to my nose for a minute or two without having any effect on me, they again decided that I was too weak for chloroform, but as I, half crying, beckoned to them to do in my case what had to be done, one of them, with his knee on my chest, put an instrument between my teeth while the other held my head back and somebody else sat behind my chair and held my arms. My mouth came open. I will not unnecessarily prolong the agony, only to state that I felt relieved shortly after and that somebody with the utmost tenderness was bathing my head. I had now nothing to do but to allow people to wait on me. I stayed in the hotel for two days, when the doctor's own buggy came for me and I was driven to the hospital. So that the reader may not be under the impression that I wear false teeth, I would like to say that not a tooth was pulled or any other surgical operation performed. I now got better rapidly. It seemed impossible to feel sick in that hospital. I had a large private room and broad verandahs outside. From my bed I could lie and watch the ocean all day and try to count the islands. My friend, the doctor, came also every day, and any extra comfort I wanted was quickly procured. As I grew better I would sit and bask in the sun down among the rocks by the shore in that half-unconscious but blissful condition which I believe is common to all convalescents, or a couple of hours before meal-time I would lie on my bed watching the sun and its shadows on the floor so that I might be prepared and lose no time the moment the man came with the dinner. Oh, for the ravenous hunger with which I could eat! Although I had double the ordinary allowance, yet after a month's stay in the hospital, I had to leave it for very hunger's sake. I then settled my bill with the doctor, who charged me very moderately, and went to live in a hotel in town. When I was perfectly cured and myself again I could easily have obtained work in town at my trade for four pounds per week, but I had a sort of dislike to the place, which decided me to go up to the gold-diggings and try my luck there. The nearest diggings were at Ravenswood, some hundred and thirty miles inland. Other diggings were scattered behind that place, but to reach them I understood I had to go to Ravenswood first, and that it was as good a place as any. I bought two horses, with all necessary appendages, such as saddle, pack-saddle, bridles, &c. They cost me about thirty pounds. I put thirty pounds more into the bank as a sort of reserve fund in case of accident, and after paying my way so far, and buying a few necessary clothes, I had only some nine or ten pounds left. So one morning I packed the one horse with my swag, containing clothes and blanket, in the large saddle-bags. I had small bags containing flour, tea, sugar, and other necessary things for a journey through the bush, because, although the road I had now to travel was a beaten track, yet it is a Queensland custom on all occasions to be as independent as possible. Besides, when one sets out for a ramble, there is no saying where one is going to pull up, and it seems so pleasant to know that one is all-sufficient in his own resources, without requiring any aid from wayside inns. So at least did I think as I rode out of the town; and as this was my first experience of what we in Queensland call going on the "wallaby track," I enjoyed it immensely.

The way a man acts when travelling like this, is just to please himself. When a fair day's journey is done, one begins to look out for a likely spot for grass and water, and having found that, you get off the horses and hobble them out—that is, having freed them of their load, their forefeet are tied together with a pair of strong leather straps in such a way that they can only totter slowly about. Having done that a fire is made, the billy is slung on for tea, and when supper is over, a smoke, a yarn—if there is a mate—and then a roll in the blanket with a saddle for a pillow.

There is often a lot of argument about what is a fair day's journey on horseback. Of course it is a matter which never can be decided, because so much depends upon the horses, the road, what the horses get to eat, &c., but I do not believe many careful travellers will take their horses more than twenty miles a day for a long journey, and then rest them occasionally, but to hear some people talk one would think their horses could go a hundred miles every day. In Queensland travellers have sometimes to ride forty or fifty miles between watering-places. Most horses can do it, if taken care of, but not every day. When travellers meet on a Queensland road their first question after greeting is, "How far is it to water?" and the distance between watering-places is practically what decides a day's journey. In times of drought these water-holes get scarce or dry up completely; rivers stop running; then it behoves the traveller to look out where he goes. If misfortune happens, or he has not calculated rightly the endurance of his horse, or the water-hole on which he depends should be dried up when he arrives there, then he is likely to perish! As for myself, I have on more than one occasion arrived in a parched condition at a water-hole, only to find a lot of dead cattle bogged in the soft mud, and still have been compelled to drink the pint or two of putrefied water that might be left. The reader will therefore see that travelling in the Queensland bush is not exactly a perpetual picnic.

Nothing of importance happened to me on this road, unless I were to mention that when I was about half-way I met a swag's-man, that is, one who carries his swag on his own back and has no horses. This fellow asked to let him put his burden on my horse, which I let him do. I then, by talking to him as we went along, found out that he had neither money nor rations, and as we were only a few miles from Hugton Hotel I promised to pay for dinner at that place for us both. Arrived at the hotel, I ordered a first-class dinner for two; it was five shillings. The table was laid for us with a big roast of beef and a plum-pudding. After we both had eaten what we wanted, my fellow-traveller put nearly all the remaining food into his bags and decamped, in spite of my protestations. I remember well how scandalized I felt! Otherwise the road was not lonely; every day I passed waggons hauled by sixteen or eighteen bullocks each and filled with merchandise for the diggings. There were also other travellers, both on foot and on horseback, but I did not go myself in company with any, and so at last, one forenoon, I saw the township of Ravenswood lying before me. I stopped the horses to have a good look.

At last I was on a gold-field. What a magic spell there seemed to me in the words. All the old fallacious ideas connected with the word crowded into my mind. Runaway nuns dressed in men's clothes, princes working like labourers, and labourers living like princes—"looking for gold!" Had I not better begin at once?

As I came nearer I saw what seemed to me wells on all sides and tents near the wells. Then as I looked at the ground again I became fearfully excited. Big nuggets of shining gold were lying all around on the road. Was it possible? Surely I knew gold when I saw it. I got off the horse and picked it up. Not pure gold, though. But surely half of it was gold. It glittered all over. I picked pieces up as I went along and fairly howled with joy as I filled my bags. Think of those fools coming behind with their flour-bags and of all the empty waggons I had met going down, while I was finding a fortune before I reached the diggings! At the place where I had now come, they could have loaded all the waggons quickly. I could not carry more as I went further, ruminating over the matter. Now the whole ground right and left was glittering all the way into town. I threw the stuff all away again. It could not be gold! Then, with a voice shaking between hope and fear, I asked a man who came by, what that was. He told me at once it was "rubbish." "Did you think it was gold?" asked he.

"No; but I thought there might be gold in it."

"Yes," said he, "so there was, but it did not pay to extract it."

In this way somewhat sobered, I rode further and arrived in town, where the next day I pitched a tent I had bought somewhere handy to the other tents, put the horses in a paddock and looked about me.

I will not attempt a long description of this the first gold-field I was ever on. There was an ordinary street composed of hotels, boarding-houses, and stores, on both sides of the road. Behind the street were tents in which the diggers principally lived. Everywhere were earth-mounds where some one was or had been busy rooting the ground about. The reefs were each surmounted by an ordinary windlass, where a man would stand hauling up the quartz all day long. Such was the picture presented at a superficial glance at Ravenswood, and I think the description answers for all other Queensland gold-diggings. Nearly all the people boarded in two boarding-houses kept by Chinamen, one on each side of the street. I think there must have been two or three hundred boarders in each. They were both alike, two large bark-houses, no floor, only two immense tables with forms on each side. On these tables were at meal-times every conceivable delicacy in season, and up and down between the tables an army of Chinamen would run round waiting on their guests. During my various fortunes in Queensland, I have often paid two or three pounds per week for board in hotels, and I have paid half-a-guinea for a ticket to a public feast, but it has always been my impression that nowhere was such good or luxurious food served out as in these boarding-houses. It would simply be impossible to compete with them. The charge was one pound per week, payment beforehand, and those of their customers who wanted sleeping accommodation might, without extra charge, fix themselves up as they liked in some sheds behind. There were also many hotels in town, but, as far as I could see from the outside, their "takings" were more across the bar than otherwise, as the Chinamen seemed to monopolize the boarding-house trade. All over Australia, but especially in Queensland, there is a bitter feeling against Chinamen. People say that they ought to be forbidden to come to the country, because they work too hard and too cheaply, and eat too little at the same time; consequently we shall all go to the dogs. How is this? Surely "there is something rotten in the state of Denmark." A white man is always praised if he is hard-working and frugal. It seems a contradiction to abuse one for what is commended in another! This is an awful world. Some people say we are poor because we work too much, and run ourselves out of work. Others say we do not work half enough, and that that is the reason. Some say that Protection is a panacea for poverty, others swear by Free Trade. In Australia they want to turn out the Chinamen because they work too much; in China they want to turn out the whites, I suppose for the same reason. Of all countries, I believe, Australia certainly included the greatest majority of the people living in different degrees of poverty, and work is getting to be as scarce here where the population does not count one to the square mile, as it is in Denmark where there are four hundred inhabitants to the square mile. Of late years one more theory has sprung up, and its disciples aver that all our poverty, despite our hard work and frugal fare, is due to the fact that the earth on which we live is sold in large or small parcels in the open market like tea and sugar, and that the owners of the earth can in the shape of rent extract the greatest part of our earnings. I ask the reader's pardon for this little digression, but it seems to me to be an interesting question, and it would at least be desirable if we all could agree whether it is Chinamen, Free Trade, or Protection, or what not, whom we really want, because there is "something rotten in the state of Denmark."

I took my board, like everybody else, with the Chinamen and lived in my tent not far away. I occupied myself in prospecting, or learning how to prospect, but what little gold-dust I could find was not worth coming all the way for. I soon got tired of that, and one day I went and asked for a job of carpenter's work in a large Government building I saw going up.

Before I proceed further I must explain that a certain fixed scale of wages existed here for most occupations, and this scale was very jealously guarded by the people. It was three pounds per week for miners in dry claims, three pounds ten shillings in wet claims, bricklayers sixteen shillings per day for eight hours, carpenters fifteen shillings, &c. I had heard this but I had not believed it. I took it that those figures represented what men would like to get rather than what they actually got, and while I worked for a master I always preferred to put my pride in earning what I got, rather than, perhaps, getting what I did not earn. I understand the importance now of keeping up wages, but at that time I did not, and when the carpenter said he would give me twelve shillings a day and find tools not only did I think myself well paid, but I had no idea or care whether others got more or less.

Beside myself there was an American negro employed as carpenter. He seemed a very morose sort of individual, but I took no notice of him and was hopping about all day, giving as I thought as much satisfaction to others as to myself. I often heard the "boss" grumble at the negro, and occasionally I would be set to put him right about what he was working at. This happened one afternoon as the "boss" went away shortly before five o'clock, and I was consequently explaining to him out of my wisdom, when he suddenly asked what wages I was getting. I told him with great pride I was getting twelve shillings a day.

Squash came a stick down over my head, then he flew at my throat and kicked and belaboured me in a terrible way. At last he flung me with awful violence out on the verandah, got hold of me again and threw me outside. He was two or three times as big a man as I, and I could not at all defend myself against him, nor had I any idea why he had thus maltreated me; but as there was no one to appeal to, I, in a terrible rage, ran home to my tent for the gun. It stood there loaded, and I took it up and started back again along the main street. The blood was running down my face, and I howled to myself with rage as I ran. I meant to shoot him as dead as a herring.

"Halloa!" cried the people, "there is a fellow running amuck," and soon there was a whole crowd behind me, intent on watching the sport.

But I must now go back in time a little. There was at that period in Ravenswood a Danish digger, whom I had met and who had been very friendly to me, and both because he plays an important part in the next few pages I have to write, and because I have entitled this book "Missing Friends," I think he deserves mention, as he indeed had been, and is no doubt yet, "a missing friend." He had been a farmer in Denmark, what we in Danish call a yardsman, who owned his own freehold. When the war with Germany in 1864 broke out, he was called on to serve in the artillery. He was married then, had two children, and was, like all Danish farmers, in extremely good circumstances. During the war he was taken prisoner by the Germans, but was by some mistake reported dead by the Danish authorities. He told me that he wrote home as soon as he could, but the letter never reached his wife. Shortly after he tried to escape from the Germans, and, being caught, defended himself desperately. For this offence he was condemned to three years' hard labour on the fortifications of some place in the south of Germany. For one reason and another he did not write from there. Partly he was not much of a writer, partly he objected to the enemy reading his efforts, and as he knew his wife had plenty to live on, and that his neighbours at home would help her to run the farm, he neglected writing, and as the time went on pictured to himself in rosy colours the happy surprise he would give his wife and them all at home when he did return. At last the time arrived when he was set free, and started for home. Meanwhile his wife had bemoaned him as dead, and what little hope his friends might have had for him died when he did not return at the end of the war. It did not take long before one suitor after the other presented themselves, and a couple of years later the wife got married again, with the full consent and approval of all concerned.