Ida dried her eyes, and with the more alacrity forasmuch as an approaching step crunched the gravel outside. It was Priestley, a bullock driver who had drawn up to the store on the previous-evening; a decent sort of vulgarian, but altogether too industrious to get any further forward than the extreme tail-end of his profession.

Some carriers never learn the great lesson, that to everything there is a time and a season--a time for work, and a time for repose--hence you find the industrious man's inveterately leg-weary set of frames in hopeless compet.i.tion with the judiciously lazy man's string of daisies. The contrast is sickening. Moreover, the same rule holds fairly well throughout the whole region of industry. But the Scotch-navigator can't see it.

He is too furiously busy for eighteen hours out of the twenty-four to notice that, even in the most literal sense, loafing has a more intimate connection with bread-winning than working can possibly have. Such a man finds himself born unto trouble, as the sparks fly in all directions; but he is merely aware of undergoing a chastening process, just as the tethered calf is aware that he always turns a flying somersault when he impetuously charges in any direction away from his peg; and this simply because the man knows as much about the Order of Things as the calf knows about Euclid's definition of a radial line. The fact is, that the Order of Things--rightly understood-- is not susceptible of any coercion whatever, and must be humoured in every possible way. In the race of life, my son, you must run cunning, reserving your sprint for the tactical moment. Priestley ran bull-headed.

In consequence of being always at work, he could get very little work done; and, being pursuantly in a chronic state of debt and dest.i.tution, he got only the work that intermittently slothful men would n't take at the price.

It is scarcely necessary to add that he had a wife and about thirteen small children, mostly girls.

"Mornin', chaps," said this plebeian, standing between the wind and our n.o.bility, with a hand on each door-post. "Hope you're enjoyin' yourselves.

Say, Moriarty; I'm waitin' to git that bit o' loadin' off."

"I'll be with you in two minutes," replied the young storekeeper. "I know you always want to get away."

"Say, chaps," continued the bullock driver, advancing into the room, and glancing confidentially round the table, "think there's any use o' me stickin' up the boss for leaf to take the buggy-track to Nalrookar? See, I could make the Fog-a-bolla Tank to-night; an' there's boun' to be a bit o' blue-bush, if not crows-foot, on them sand-hills. Then I'd fetch Nalrookar to-morrow, easy. I got two-ton-five for there; an' I'm thinkin' I'll have a job to deliver it, if I can't git through your run. What do you think, chaps?"

"Why didn't you take this into consideration when you loaded?"

demanded young Arblaster.

"Well, beggars ain't choosers," replied the apostle of brute force and ignorance. "Fact was, Arblaster, I bethought me what a lot o' work I'd done for Magomery, one time or another, an' what good friends me an' him always was; an' I says to myself, 'Well, I'll chance her--make a spoon, or spoil a horn.' That's the way I reasoned it out. See, if I got to turn roun', an' foller the main track back agen to the Cane-gra.s.s Swamp, an' take the Nalrookar track from there, I won't fetch the station much short o' fifty mile; an' there ain't a middlin' camp the whole road. Everythin'

et right into the ground. Starve a locust. 'Sides, I'm jubious about the Convincer Sand-hill, even with half a load. Bullocks too weak."

"Well, it's hardly likely the boss would let you cross the run," replied Arblaster. "He'd be a d----d fool if he did."

"I'm afraid there's no use asking him, Priestley," added Nelson. "He won't make a thoroughfare of the run, at any price. For instance, when Baxter and Donovan delivered that well-timber in the Quondong Paddock, the other day, they were n't five mile from the main road--and a gate to go through--but he made them come right back by the station; thirty mile of a roundabout; and their cheques were n't forthcoming till they did it. No, Priestley; to ask Montgomery is simply to get a refusal; and to argue with him is simply to get insulted."

"Well, I s'pose I must worry through, some road," said the bullock driver resignedly, as he turned and went out.

"Fifty miles instead of twenty-two," remarked Mooney. "Hard enough case."

"And yet it's necessary, in a sense," replied Nelson. "Same time, anybody except the like of Montgomery would spring a bit in a season like this.

I couldn't crush a poor, decent, hard-working devil like that. I'd give him a thorough good blackguarding for calculating upon crossing the run; and then, as a matter of form, I'd send a man with him, to see him across. Well, I suppose we must go and get our mot d' ordre, boys."

So we left the breakfast-room to Ida. The four narangies, with the practical M'Murdo, went to the veranda of the boss's house for their day's orders; Moriarty, with a ring of keys in his hand, sauntered across to the store; and I managed to drag myself out to a seat built against the south side of the barracks, whence I torpidly surveyed the scene around, whilst listening to my vitality whistling out through four million yawning pores.

In an open shed, near the store--where two tribesmen were now a.s.sisting Priestley to unload--a travelling saddler and Salvationist, named (without a word of a lie) Joey Possum, was at work on the horse-furniture of the station; his tilted wagonette, blazoned with his name and t.i.tle, JOSEPH PAWSOME, SADDLER, standing close by. Watching these lewd fellows of the baser sort at their sordid toil, my mind reverted to certain incidents of the preceding night, and so drifted into a speculation on the peculiar kind of difficulties which at certain times beset certain sojourners on the rind of this third primary orb. The incidents, of course, have nothing to do with my story.

But as the mere mention of them may have whetted the reader's curiosity, I suppose it is only fair to satisfy him.

The night in question seemed, from an astrological point of view, to be peculiarly favourable to the ascendancy of baleful influences. The moon hung above the western horizon, in her most formidable phase--just past the semicircle, with her gibbous edge malignantly feathered. Being now in the House of Taurus, she had overborne the benignant sway of Aldebaran, and was pressing hard on Castor and Pollux (in the House of Gemini). Also, her horizontal att.i.tude was so full of menace that Rigel and Betelgeux (in Orion) seemed to wilt under her sinister supremacy. Sirius (in Canis Major), strongest and most malevolent of the astral powers, hung southwest of the zenith, reinforcing the evil bias of the time, and thus, from his commanding position, overruling the guardianship of Canopus (in Argo), south-west of the same point. Lower still, toward the south, Achernar seemed to reserve his gracious prestige, whilst, across the invisible Pole, the beneficent constellations of Crux and Centaurus exhibited the very paralysis of hopelessness. Worst of all, Jupiter and Mars both held aloof, whilst ascendant Saturn mourned in the House of Cancer.

Such was the wretched aspect of the heavens to my debilitated intelligence, as I slunk home from the swimming-hole, toward midnight. I was somewhat comforted to observe in Procyon a firmness which I attributed to the evident support of Regulus (in the House of Leo); but the most rea.s.suring element in an extremely baleful horoscope was Spica (in the House of Virgo), scarcely affected by the moon's interference, and now ascending confidently from the eastern horizon.

Still, to my washed-out mind, there was something so hopeless in the lunar and stellar outlook that, for comfort, I turned my eyes toward the station cemetery, which was dimly in view.

There several shapeless forms, some white, and others of neutral hue, seemed to be moving slowly and silently amongst the dwellings of the dead, as if holding what you could scarcely call a carnival, in their own sombre way.

The time, the place, the supermundane conditions, acting together on a half-drowned mind, gave to the whole scene a weird reality which writing cannot convey; so, after pinching myself to make sure I was awake, and doing a small sum in mental arithmetic to verify my sanity, I advanced toward the perturbed spirits, got them against the sky, and identified them as cattle, greedily stevedoring the long, dry gra.s.s.

It seemed a pity to turn the poor hungry animals out; yet I knew that somebody would have to suffer for it if Montgomery knew of anything trespa.s.sing here. But how had they got in, through seven wires--the upper one barbed--with rabbit-netting along the bottom?----

"Evenin', Collins."

"Evening, Priestley. Working the oracle?"

"Inclinin' that road. Dangerous--ain't it? Good job it's on'y you.

n.o.body else stirrin'?"

"Not a soul. They 're as regular as clockwork on this station.

How did you get in?"

"Took the hinges off o' the gate with my monkey-wrench. I'll leave that all straight. Course, they'll see the tracks by-'n'-by, an' know who to blame; but I'll be clear by that time; an' I must guard agen comin'

in contract with Runnymede till the st-nk blows off o' this transaction.

Natural enough, Magomery'll buck; but the ration-padd.i.c.k's as bare as a stockyard; an' I can't ast the bullocks to die o' starvation.

"Certainly not, Priestley. Mind, it's only four hours till daylight.

Good night."

"Good night, ole man."

My way led me past a small, isolated stable, used exclusively for the boss's buggy-horses. Nearing this building, I heard a suppressed commotion inside, followed by soothing gibberish, in a very low voice.

This was bad. Priestley's bullocks were within easy view; and Jerry, the groom, was a notorious master's man. I must have a friendly yarn with him.

"What's up with you this hour of the night, Jerry?" I asked, looking through the latticed upper-wall. "Uneasy conscience, I bet." Whilst speaking the last words, I distinguished Montgomery's pair of greys, tied, one in each back corner of the stable, whilst Pawsome's horses--a white and a piebald-- were occupying the two stalls, and voraciously tearing down mouthfuls of good Victorian hay from the rack above the manger. Pawsome, silently caressing one of the greys, moved to the lattice on hearing my voice.

"Sleight-of-hand work?" I suggested, in a whisper.

"Sort of attempt," replied the wizard, in the same key. "You gev me a start.

All the lights was out two hours ago, an' I med sure everybody was safe."

"So they are. I've only been down for a swim. Good-night, Possum."

"I say, Collins--don't split!"

"Is thy servant a dog, that he should do this great thing?"

"Second Kings," whispered the poor necromancer, in eager fellowship, and displaying a knowledge of the Bible rare amongst his sect. "G.o.d bless you, Collins! may we meet in a better world!"

"It won't be difficult to do that," I replied dejectedly, as I withdrew to enjoy my unearned slumber.

Now the night, replete with such sphere-music, was past, and the cares that infest the day had returned to everyone on the station, except myself and two or three equally clean, useless, and aristocratic loafers in the boss's house. Toby, the half-caste, was cantering away toward Clarke's, for the weekly mail. Priestley, at his wagon, was bullocking even more desperately than usual, with a view to getting out of sight of the station as soon as possible. Pawsome, repairing a side-saddle, on his extemporised bench, was softly crooning a familiar hymn, the sentiment of which seemed appropriate to himself, whilst the language breathed the very aroma of his social atmosphere:--

Must I be carried to the skies On flowery beds of ease, While others fought to gain the prize, And sail'd through (adj.) seas?

In the veranda of the house, Mr. Folkestone, a young English gentleman of not less than two hundred-weight, lolled on a hammock, smoking a chibouque, and reading a magazine; while straight between us two aristocratic loafers, Vandemonian Jack, aged about a century, was mechanically sawing firewood in the hot, sickly sunshine. This is one of the jobs that it takes a man of four or five score years to perform ungrudgingly; and, to any illuminated mind, the secret of these old fellows' greatness is very plain. Bathing, though an ancient heresy, has been of strictly local prevalence, and, for the best of reasons, of transient continuance. Our relapse belongs to the present generation. Though our better-cla.s.s grandsires understood no science unconnected with the gloves, a marvellous instinct taught them the unwholesomeness of sluicing away that panoply of dirt which is Nature's own defence against the microbe of imbecility, and which, indeed, was the only armour worn by the formidable Berserkers, from whom some of them claimed descent. We have done it however (at least, we say so), whilst our social inferiors have held on to the old-time religion (at least, we say so, here again); wherefore----

"I say, Mr. Collins," faltered Ida, breaking in on my reflections, "I picked up this little buckle aside o' your b-d; it's come off o' the back o' your tr----rs. I'll sew it on for you any time, for I notice you're bothered with them slippin' down. O, Mr. Collins!"--and the poor unlovely face was suddenly distorted with anguish and wet with tears--"ain't Mrs. Bodyzart wicked to put a slur on me like that? There ain't one word o' truth in it; I'd say the same if I was to die to-night; an' you may believe me or believe me not, but I'm tellin' the truth. Far be it, indeed!"

"Hush! Stop crying, Ida! Don't look round--Mrs. Beaudesart's watching you from the window, over there. You poor thing! you should n't trouble yourself over what anybody says. Did you feed Pup this morning?"

"I give him a whole milk-dish full o' sc.r.a.ps; but if people tells the truth, there's n.o.body in the world can say black is the white o' my eye; an' you may believe me or believe me not"----

"You'll need to give Pup a drink, Ida."