Capricornia. Xavier Herbert

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       SIGNIFICANCE OF A BURNT CORK

      IF Mark and his companions had had the energy to execute the plans with which they went to Flying Fox they might have turned the fair place into a township and themselves into bumbles. They planned to build houses, stores, curing-sheds for the trepang they intended to bring in by the shipload, and a jetty, and a tramway, and a reservoir, and—this was inventive Mark’s idea—a dam across the mouth of the saltwater creek and a plant connected with it for drawing electric power from the tide. They did nothing much more in the way of building than to erect a number of crazy humpies of such materials as bark and kerosene-cans, into which they retired with lubras to keep house for them. Mark built for himself by far the best house, and furnished it very neatly. The lubra he selected was a young girl named Marowallua, who, after he had wasted much time in trying to teach her to keep house to suit his finicking taste, he found was with child. He sent her away, refusing to believe that the child was his, and took another girl. It was Krater who caused him to disbelieve Marowallua. Krater said that several times he himself had been tricked into coddling lubras in the belief that they were carrying children of his, to find at last that he had been made cuckold by blackfellows. Marowallua went off to the mainland with her people.

      The humpies were set up on the isthmus between the creek and the sea, among a grove of fine old mango trees and skinny coconuts that Krater had planted. In these trees lived a multitude of the great black bats called flying foxes, the coming of which when the mangoes began to bear was responsible for the renaming of the island. Back some little distance from the settlement lay a large billabong, screened by a jungle of pandanuses and other palms and giant paper-barks and native fig trees. The billabong provided much of the food of the inhabitants. Yams and lily-roots grew there in abundance; and it was the haunt of duck and geese, and a drinking-place of the marsupials with which, thanks to Krater’s good sense in helping the natives to preserve the game, the island abounded. More food was to be got from the mainland, where now there were to be found wild hog and water-buffalo, beasts descended from imported stock that had escaped from domesticity. And still more food was to be got from the sea, which abounded in turtle and dugong and fish. The whitemen left the hunting to the natives. It was not long before the settlement became self-supporting in the matter of its supplies of alcoholic liquor as well, thanks to Chook Henn, who discovered that a pleasant and potent spirit could be distilled from a compound of yams and mangoes.

      The months passed, while still the trepanging-industry remained in much the same state as it had throughout all the years of Krater’s careless handling of it. It was not long before Krater showed that he resented the intrusion of the others. Thereafter, Mark and Chook and the other young men fished for themselves.

      Wet Season came. The Yurracumbungas returned in force to their Gift of the Sea. Wet Season was drawing to a close, when one violent night the lubra Marowallua gave birth to her child. A storm of the type called Cockeye Bob in Capricornia, which had been threatening from sundown, burst over Flying Fox in the middle of the night, beginning with a lusty gust of wind that ravaged the sea and sent sand hissing through the trees. Then lightning, like a mighty skinny quivering hand, shot out of the black heavens and struck the earth—CRASH! The wind became a hurricane. Grass was crushed flat. Leaves were stripped from trees in sheets. Palms bent like wire. Flash fell upon flash and crash upon crash, blinding, deafening. Out of nothing the settlement leapt and lived for a second at a time like a vision of madness. Misshapen houses reeled among vegetation that lay on the ground with great leaves waving like frantically supplicating hands. Rain stretched down like silver wires from heaven of pitch to earth of seething mud. Rain poured through the roof of Mark’s house and spilled on him. He rose from his damp bed, donned a loin-cloth, and went to the open door.

      As suddenly as it had come the storm was over. The full moon, rain-washed and brilliant, struggled out of a net of cloud, and stared at the dripping world as though in curiosity. The air was sweet. For a while the ravaged earth was silent. Then gradually the things that lived, goannas, flying foxes, snakes, men, frogs, and trees, revived, began to stir, to murmur, to resume the interrupted business of the night. From a gunyah in the native camp came the plaint of one whose business had only just begun.

      Mark returned to bed. He was not feeling well. Of late he had been drinking too much of Chook’s potent grog. He lay behind the musty-smelling mosquito-net, smoking, and listening idly to a medley of sounds. Water was dripping from the roof; a gecko lizard was crying in the kitchen; mosquitoes were droning round the net; frogs were singing a happy chorus on the back veranda.

      The silhouette of a human form appeared in the doorway. It was a lubra. Another joined her. Two for sure, since two is dear company at night in a land of devil-devils. They stood whispering. Mark thought that they were come to sell their favours for tobacco or grog. When one stole in to him he growled, “Get to hell!”

      The lubra bent over, plucked at the net, said softly, “Marowallua bin droppim piccanin, Boss.”

      After a pause Mark breathed as he slowly raised himself, “Eh?”

      “Piccanin, Boss—lil boy.”

      He asked quickly, “What name—blackfeller?”

      “No-more—lil yeller-feller—belonga you, Boss.”

      Mark sat staring. The lubra murmured something, then turned away. He sat staring for minutes. Then hastily he searched the bed for his loincloth, found it, donned it, and slipped out. At the door he stopped. What was he doing? Was the child his? Should he ignore it? Better see. But first put on trousers. A whiteman must keep up his dignity.

      He went back for his trousers. Now his hands were trembling. Holy Smoke! A father? Surely not! He felt half ashamed, half elated. What should he do? What should he do? What if people found out? What if Oscar—? A half-caste—a yeller-feller! But—gosh! Must tell Chook and the others. Old Ned—old Ned would be jealous. He had been trying to beget yeller-fellers for years. Not that he had not been successful in the past—according to his boasts. Boasts? Yes—they all boasted if they could beget a yeller-feller——

      He fumbled for the lantern, lit it, then got out a bottle that was roughly labelled Henn’s Ambrosia, and drank a peg—and then another—consuming excitement! Gosh! A father!

      He took up the lantern and hurried out.

      He found Marowallua in a gunyah, lying on bark and shivering as with cold. But for her he had no eyes. On a downy sheet of paper-bark beside her lay a tiny bit of squealing squirming honey-coloured flesh. Flesh of his own flesh. He set down the lantern, bent over his son. Flesh of his own flesh—exquisite thing! He knelt. He touched the tiny heaving belly with a fore-finger. Oh keenest sensibility of touch!

      After a while he whispered, “Lil man—lil man!”

      He prodded the tiny belly very gently. The flesh of it was the colour of the cigarette-stain on his finger. But flesh of his own flesh—squirming in life apart from him—Oh most exquisite thing!

      Smiling foolishly, he said with gentle passion, “Oh my lil man!”

      The two lubras who had called him stood at the open end of the gunyah. Beside Marowallua, fanning her with a goose-wing, watching Mark with glittering beady eyes, sat the midwife, whose hair was as white СКАЧАТЬ