Capricornia. Xavier Herbert

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СКАЧАТЬ for Chook to earn more money. At last he told Oscar that he would like to try his hand at pearl-fishing first, and vowed that if he made a profit he would invest it in Red Ochre. On the strength of that Mark tried to sell Oscar the hydro-electric power plant that he had erected at much expense and for little purpose at Flying Fox. Oscar would not buy, in spite of the attractive picture, which imaginative Mark drew for him, of Red Ochre electrified free of cost by the waters of the Caroline River. However, when Mark was leaving, Oscar lent him £20 and refrained from mentioning the £30 Mark owed him on account of the debt.

      Mark was tired of Flying Fox and trepang. It was his plan to set up a new camp on Chineri Island in the Tikkalalla Group and to fish for pearl-shell on the shallow banks that lay between there and the Dutch East Indies. This was the result of his having lately made the acquaintance of Japanese pearlers from the Van Diemen Islands, from whom he had learnt something of the art of diving, which had brought him to believe that the Silver Sea was floored with mother-o’-pearl. It was for the purpose of raising money to buy a diving-outfit that he was trying to sell the electric power plant.

      He was beginning to despair of ever being able to sell the plant, when he met a man named Jock Driver, who owned a cattle-station called Gunamiah, situated on the Melisande River. Jock Driver was a North-country Englishman and very mean. His reason for being interested in the machine, as he confessed, was only that he hated to see the waters of the Melisande running to waste. He was deeply interested in the machine from the moment he heard of it, but did not show that he was more than casually so, because he wished to make a bargain of the purchase. An ordinary Australian of the locality would have taken Mark’s word for what he said about the machine, and would have said Yes or No to the price asked, and, as a preliminary to doing business, would have stood the needy seller treat. Mark had to stand treat himself, and had to take Jock out to inspect the plant.

      Thus it happened that one quiet afternoon in the early part of the Wet Season of that eventful year, little Nawnim, now aged six, while playing in Mark’s house, taking advantage of Mark’s absence in town and Yeller Jewty’s in the native camp, heard the splash of the anchor and the rattle of a chain. For a moment he stood bewildered, then crept to the front door and peeped out, to be confronted with the sight of Mark and Chook and Jock landing from the dinghy. They had set out for the shore before the ship dropped anchor.

      Nawnim ran to the back door, intending to flee. But flight was put out of the question by the sight of heavy-handed Jewty running home. For a moment he hesitated, gathering his little wits, then drew back, and, after making a wild survey of his surroundings, rushed into hiding in the bedroom. Jewty was rushing home to get her infant daughter Diana, whom she had left asleep on Mark’s white-sheeted bed. Diana was a black quadroon, her father being a blackfellow. Mark forbade Jewty to have the child in the house.

      Mark’s house consisted of one large room, with a kitchen built under the back veranda and connected with the room by a curtained doorway. The room itself was large and high. Two-thirds of it served as a living-room, the rest, screened off by canvas curtains prettily stencilled by the finicking hand of Mark, as the bedroom. Nawnim rushed into the bedroom so precipitately that he nearly crashed into the bed. He woke Diana. She was naked like himself, but chocolate-coloured, not copperish as he was. She did not see him. He darted under the bed.

      The whitemen came up the beach, roaring Black Alice. Jewty flew in through the back door, took a peep from the front. The whitemen were within a few yards now. She drew back, hesitated for a moment, then darted into the bedroom.

      Nawnim could see into the living-room through a gap in the loose-drawn curtain. He saw the whitemen enter, as did Jewty, who was crouching by the gap. The whitemen stopped in the middle of the room and shouted their song to conclusion, then laughed, hugged each other, and sat down. Jock asked for a drink. Mark said that they must wait till the crew brought the things from the ship. Then Chook said that he would like Jock to try his Ambrosia, and rose and went off to his house to get some. Soon Mark rose, went to the front door and looked to see what the crew were doing, then, seeing that the boys were idling, went out to hurry them.

      Jock rose and walked about the neatly-appointed room, examining it. Nawnim could see his face, which was one such as he had never seen before. It frightened him. Jock was, in fact, quite a good-looking fellow. What troubled Nawnim was his colouring. His mouth was as red as fresh raw meat, and thick-lipped and wide and constantly writhing. Nawnim was used to lean-faced, brown-faced, thin-lipped, small-eyed whitemen. Jock’s face was as red as a boiled crayfish, even redder than it usually was in this climate in which it was as foreign as a gumtree would be in his native fogs, because it had lately been put under the blood-rousing influences of salt-wind and grog. The redness of his face set off the blueness of his bulging English eyes and the blackness of his hair and the whiteness of his large prominent teeth. His teeth looked like a shark’s to Nawnim, his eyes like a crab’s. When he approached the bedroom Nawnim turned sick with fright. Jewty must have been given a turn too. She rushed to the bed and snatched up her baby and trod on Nawnim’s little hand. Nawnim yelped, heaved away, struck his head on the underneath of the bed, and rolled into view bawling. Diana screamed and clutched at her mother’s hair.

      Jock looked in. The children’s cries died in their mouths. All three stared at him. “Hellaw!” he cried. “What’s this—the fahmily, eh?”

      Still the trio stared. Jock looked them over, grinning, then said to Jewty, “You Mark’s missus?”

      She blinked.

      “Eh?” he asked.

      “Yu-i,” she muttered.

      “These his piccanins?”

      She nodded to Nawnim and muttered, “Dat one belong Mark.”

      “Not this one?” he asked, stepping up to look at Diana.

      Jewty shrank back, with Diana shrinking in her arms.

      “Eh?” asked Jock.

      “Him belong him blackfella,” she muttered; then, as Jock put out a hand to touch the child, she cried sharply, “No-more!” and struck his hand back with her own.

      Jock’s eyes blazed. “You bitch!” he hissed.

      Jewty stood rigid, with hand upraised to strike again.

      Then Mark and Chook came in. Jock turned, looked round the curtain, and said to Mark with a grin, “Joost introdoocin’ meself to your fahmily. I didn’t knaw ye had one.”

      “Eh?” murmured Mark, approaching. He stopped at the doorway and gaped. Nawnim shrank back to the wall.

      Jock chuckled. Mark swallowed, looked from one to another of the group, then said thickly to Jewty, “What the hell you doin’ here with those brats?”

      She frowned, hugged Diana to her, and answered sulkily, “Him two-fella come himself.”

      After a moment Mark grunted, “Get out!”

      She slunk past him, eyeing him sideways. Nawnim still shrank against the wall. Mark growled at him, “Come out of that—come on now!” Nawnim shrank more.

      “That your kid, eh?” said Jock with a grin.

      Mark glanced at him sourly.

      “The lassie tawl me he wuz,” said jock, and chuckled deeply.

      Mark stepped up to Nawnim. As he put out a hand to seize him, Nawnim shot from the wall, collided with the bed, stumbled, dashed to the door. Jock grabbed him. He СКАЧАТЬ