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“But he still governed with resistless hand, |
WHEN Jack got back he was rather shocked at the altered aspect of the run. There had been no rain, except in inconsiderable quantity, during his absence, and the herbage generally showed signs of a deficiency of moisture. The river flats, which were so lush and heavily cropped with green herbage that your horse’s feet made a “swish-swashing” noise as you rode through it, now were very parched up, dry, and bare, or else burned off altogether.
On mentioning this to Mr. M‘Nab, he said—
“Well, the fact is that the grass got very dry, and some fellow put a fire-stick into it. Then we have had a great number of travelling sheep through lately, and they have fed their mile pretty bare. The season has been very dry so far. I sincerely trust we shall get rain soon.”
“We may,” said Jack. “But when once these dry years set in, they say you never know when it may rain again. But how do the sheep look?”
“Couldn’t possibly look better,” answered M‘Nab, decisively. “There is any quantity of feed and water at the back, and I have not troubled the frontage much. I am glad ye sent the wire up. We were nearly stopped, as it came just as the posts were in. I have got one line of the lambing paddock nearly finished, and we shall have that part of the play over before long. No more shepherds and ‘motherers’ to pay in that humbugging way next year.”
“And how are the other things getting on?” inquired Jack.
“Well, the cottage is nearly fit to go into. Your bedroom is finished and ready for you. I had a garden fenced in, and put on a Chinaman with a pump to grow some vegetables—for we were all half-way to a little scurvy. The wool-shed is getting along, though the carpenters went on the spree at Bochara for a fortnight. In fact, all is doing well generally, and I think you’ll say the sheep are improved.”
Jack lost no time in establishing himself in his bedroom in the new cottage, which he had judiciously caused to be built of “pise,” or rammed earth, by this means saving the cartage of material, for the soil was dug out immediately in front of the building, and securing coolness, solidity, and thickness of wall, none of which conditions are to be found in weather-board or slab buildings. Brick or stone was not, of course, to be thought of, owing to the absence of lime, and the tremendous expense of such materials. The heat was terrific. But when Jack found himself the tenant of a cool, spacious apartment, with his books, a writing-table, and a little decent furniture, the rest of the cottage including a fair-sized sitting-room, with walls of reasonable altitude, he did not despair of being able to support life for the few years required for the process of making a fortune. The river, fringed by the graceful though dark-hued casuarinas, was pleasant enough to look on, as it rippled on over pools and sandy shallows, immediately below his verandah. And beyond all expression was it glorious to bathe in by early morn or sultry eve.
The garden, though far, far different from the lost Eden of Marshmead, with its crowding crops, glossy shrubs, and heavily-laden fruit trees, was still a source of interest and pleasure. Under the unwearied labour and water-carrying of Ah Sing, rows of vegetables appeared, grateful to the eye, and were ravenously devoured by the employés of the station, whom a constant course of mutton, damper, and tea—tea, damper, and mutton—had led to, as M‘Nab said truly, the border-land of one of the most awful diseases that scourge humanity. Never before had a cabbage been grown at Gondaree, and the older residents looked with a kind of awe at Ah Sing as he watered his rows of succulent vegetables, toilsomely and regularly, in the long hot mornings and breezeless afternoons.
“My word, John,” said Jingaree, who had ridden over from Jook-jook one day on no particular business, but to look at the wonderful improvements which afforded the staple subject of conversation that summer on the Warroo, “you’re working this garden-racket fust chop. I’ve been here eight year, and never see a green thing except marsh-mallers and Warrigal cabbage. How ever do you make ’em come like that?”
“Plenty water, plenty dung, plenty work, welly good cabbagee,” said Ah Sing, sententiously. “Why you not grow melon, tater, ladishee?”
“I don’t say we mightn’t,” said Jingaree, half soliloquizing, “but it’s too hot in these parts to be carrying water all day long like a Chow. Give us one of them cabbages, John.”
“You takee two,” quoth the liberal celestial. “Mr. Mackinab, he say, give um shepherdy all about. You shepherdy?”
“You be hanged!” growled the insulted stockman. “Do I look like a slouchin’, ’possum-eating, billy-carrying crawler of a shepherd? I’ve had a horse under me ever since I was big enough to know Jingaree mountain from a haystack, and a horse I’ll have as long as I can carry a stock-whip. However, I don’t suppose you meant any offence, John. Hand over the cabbages. Blest if I couldn’t eat ’em raw without a mossel of salt.”
“Here tomala—welly good tomala,” said the pacific Chinaman, appalled at the unexpected wrath of the stranger. “Welly good cabbagee, good-bye.”
Jack being comfortably placed in his cottage, took a leisurely look through his accounts. He was rather astonished, and a little shocked, to find what a sum he had got through for all the various necessaries of his position.—Stores, wages, contract payments, wire, blacksmith, carpenters, sawyers, bricklayers (for the wash-pen and the cottage chimneys).—Cheque, cheque, there seemed no end to the outflow of cash—and a good deal more was to come, or rather to go, before next lambing, washing, and shearing were concluded. He mentioned his ideas on the subject to Mr. M‘Nab.
That financier frankly admitted that the outlay was large, positively but not relatively. “You understand, sir,” he said, “that much of this money will not have to be spent twice. Once have your fences up, and breed up, or buy, till you have stocked your run, and you are at the point where the largest amount of profit, the wool and the surplus sheep, is met by the minimum of expenditure. No labour will be wanted but three or four boundary riders. The wool, I think, will be well got up, and ought to sell well.”
“I dare say,” said Jack, “I dare say. It’s no use stopping half way, but really, the money does seem to run out as from a sieve. However, it will be as cheap to shear 40,000 sheep as twenty. So I shall decide to stock up as soon as the fences are finished.”
This point being settled, Mr. M‘Nab pushed on his projects and operations with unflagging energy. He worked all day and half the night, and seemed to know neither weariness nor fatigue of mind or body. He had all the calculations of all the different contracts at his fingers’ ends, and never permitted to cool any of the multifarious irons which he had in the fire.
He kept the different parties of teamsters, fencers, splitters, carpenters, sawyers, dam-makers, well-sinkers, all in hand, going smoothly and without delay, hitch, or dissatisfaction. He provided for their rations being taken to them, kept all the accounts accurately, and if there was so much as a sheepskin not returned, as per agreement, the defaulter was regularly charged with it. Incidentally, and besides all this work, sufficient for two ordinary men, he administered the shepherds and their charge—now amounting to nearly 30,000 sheep. Jack’s admiration of his manager did not slacken or change. “By Jove!” he said to himself, occasionally, “that fellow M‘Nab is fit to be a general of division. He never leaves anything to chance, and he seems to foresee everything and to arrange the cure before the ailment is announced.”
The cottage being now finished, Jack began to find life not only endurable, but almost enjoyable. He had got up a remnant of his library, and with some English papers, and the excellent weeklies of the colonies, he found that he had quite as much mental pabulum as he had leisure to consume. The sheep were looking famously well. The lambs were nearly as big in appearance as their mothers. The store sheep had fattened, and would be fit for the butcher as soon as their fleeces were off. The shepherds, for a wonder, gave no trouble, the ground being open, and their flocks strong; all was going well. The wool-shed was progressing towards completion; the wash-pen would follow suit, and be ready for the spouts, with all the latest improvements, which were even now on the road. Unto Jack, as he smoked in the verandah at night, gazing on the bright blue starry sky, listening to the rippling river, came freshly once more the beatific vision of a completely-fenced and fully-stocked run, paying splendidly, and ultimately taken off his hands at a profit, which should satisfy pride and compensate privation.
He and Mr. M‘Nab had also become accustomed to the ways of the population. “I thought at first,” said Jack, “that I never set eyes on such a set of duffers and loafers as the men at the Warroo generally. But I have had to change my opinion. They only want management, and I have seen some of the best working men among them I ever saw anywhere. One requires a good deal of patience in a new country.”
“They want a dash of ill temper now and then,” rejoined M‘Nab. “It’s very hard, when work is waiting for want of men, to see a gang of stout, lazy fellows going on, refusing a pound and five-and-twenty shillings a week, because the work is not to their taste.”
“But do they?” inquired Jack.
“There were five men refused work from one of the fence contractors at that price yesterday,” said M‘Nab, wrathfully. “They wouldn’t do the bullocking and only get shepherds’ wages, was the answer. I had the travellers’ hut locked up, and not a bit of meat or flour will any traveller get till we get men.”
“That doesn’t seem unjust,” said Jack. “I don’t see that we are called upon to maintain a strike against our own rate of wages, which we do in effect by feeding all the idle fellows who elect to march on. But don’t be hard on them. They can do us harm enough if they try.”
“I don’t see that, sir. The salt-bush won’t burn, and they would never think of anything else. They must be taught in this part of the world that they will not be encouraged to refuse fair wages. Now we are talking about rates—seventeen and sixpence is quite enough to give a hundred for shearing. We must have an understanding with the other sheep-owners, and try and fix it this year.”
Whether intimidated by the determined attitude of Mr. M‘Nab, or because men differ in their aspirations, on the Warroo as in other places, the next party of travellers thankfully accepted the contractors’ work and wages, and buckled to at once. They were, in fact, a party of navvies just set free from a long piece of contract, and this putting up posts, pretty hard work, was just what they wanted.
M‘Nab fully believed it was owing to him, and mentally vowed to act with similar decision in the next case of mutiny. A steady enforcement of your own rules is what the people here look for, thought he.
The seasons glided on. Month after month of Jack’s life, and of all our lives, fleeted past, and once again shearing became imminent. The time did not hang heavily on his hands; he rose at daylight, and after a plunge in the river the various work of each day asserted its claims, and our merino-multiplier found himself wending his way home at eve as weary as Gray’s ploughman, only fit for the consumption of dinner and an early retreat to his bedroom. A more pretentious and certainly more neatly-arrayed artist—indeed, a cordon bleu, unable to withstand the temptations of town life—had succeeded Bob the cook. Now that the cottage was completed, and reasonable comfort and coolness were attainable, Jack told himself that it was not such a bad life after all. A decent neighbour or two had turned up within visiting distance—that is under fifty miles. The constant labour sweetened his mental health, while the “great expectations” of the flawless perfection of the new wool-shed, the highly improved wash-pen, and the generally triumphant success of the coming clip, lent ardour to his soul and exultation to his general bearing. M‘Nab, as usual, worked, and planned, and calculated, and organized with the tireless regularity of an engine. Chiefly by his exertions and a large emission of circulars, the Warroo sheep-holders had been roused to a determination to reduce the price of shearing per hundred from twenty shillings to seventeen and sixpence. This reduced rate, in spite of some grumbling, they were enabled to carry out, chiefly owing to an unusual abundance of the particular class of workmen concerned. The men, after a few partial strikes, capitulated. But they knew from whence the movement had emanated, and were not inclined altogether to forget the fact. Indeed, of late M‘Nab, from overwork and concentration of thought, had lost his originally imperturbable manner. He had got into a habit of “driving” his men, and bore himself more nearly akin to the demeanour of the second mate on board a Yankee merchantman than the superintendent of the somewhat free and independent workmen of an Australian colony.
“He’s going too fast, that new boss,” said one of the wash-pen hands one day, as Mr. M‘Nab, unusually chafed at the laziness of one of the men who were helping to fit a boiler, had, in requital of some insolent rejoinder, knocked him down, and discharged him on the spot. “He’ll get a rough turn yet, if he don’t look out—there’s some very queer characters on the Warroo.”
And now the last week of July had arrived. The season promised to be early. The grasses were unusually forward, while the burr-clover, matted and luxuriant, made it evident that rather less than the ordinary term of sunshine would suffice to harden its myriads of aggressively injurious seed-cylinders. The warning was not unnoticed by the ever-watchful eye of M‘Nab.
“There will be a bad time with any sheds that are unlucky enough to be late this year,” he said, as Jack and he were inspecting the dam and lately-placed spouts of the wash-pen; “that’s why I’ve been carrying a full head of steam lately, to get all in order this month. Thank goodness, the shed will be finished on Saturday, and I’m ready for a start on the first of August.”
Of a certainty, every one capable of being acted upon by the contagion of a very uncommon degree of energy had been working at high pressure for the last two months. Paddocks had been completed; huts were ready for the washers and shearers. The great plant, including a steam-engine, had been strongly and efficiently fitted at the wash-pen, where a dam sent back the water for a mile, to the great astonishment of Jingaree and his friends, who occasionally rode over, as a species of holiday, to inspect the work.
“My word,” said this representative of the Arcadian, or perhaps Saturnian, period. “I wonder what old Morgan would say to all this here tiddley-winkin’, with steam-engine, and wire-fences, and knock-about men at a pound a week, as plenty as the black fellows when he first came on the ground. They’ll have a Christy pallis yet, and minstrels too, I’ll be bound. They’ve fenced us off from our Long Camp, too, with that cussed wire. Said our cattle went over our boundary. Boundaries be blowed! I’ve seen every herd mixed from here to Bochara, after a dry season. Took men as knew their work to draft ’em again, I can tell you. If these here fences is to be run up all along the river, any Jackaroo can go stock-keeping. The country’s going to mischief.”
Winding up with this decided statement of disapproval, Mr. Jingaree thus delivered himself at a cattle muster at one of the old-fashioned stations, where the ancient manners and customs of the land were still preserved in an uncorrupted state. The other gentlemen, Mr. Billy the Bay, from Durgah, Mr. Long Jem, from Deep Creek, Mr. Flash Jack, from Banda Murranul, and a dozen other representatives of the spur and stock-whip, listened with evident approbation to Jingaree’s peroration. “The blessed country’s a blessed sight too full,” said Mr. Long Jem. “I mind the time when, if a cove wanted a fresh hand, he had to ride to Bochara and stay there a couple of days, till some feller had finished knockin’ down his cheque. Now they can stay at home, and pick and choose among the travellers at their ease. It’s these blessed immigrants and diggers as spoils our market. What right have they got to the country, I’d like to know?”
This natural but highly protective view of the labour question found general acquiescence, and nothing but the absurd latter-day theories of the necessity of population, and the freedom of the individual, prevented, in their opinion, a return of the good old times, when each man fixed the rate of his own remuneration.
Meanwhile Mr. M‘Nab’s daring innovations progressed and prospered at the much-changed and highly-improved Gondaree. On Saturday afternoon Redgrave and his manager surveyed, with no little pride, the completed and indeed admirable wool-shed. Nothing on the Warroo had ever been seen like it. Jack felt honestly proud of his new possession, as he walked up and down the long building. The shearing floor was neatly, even ornamentally, laid with the boards of the delicately-tinted Australian pine. The long pens which delivered the sheep to the operator were battened on a new principle, applied by the ever-inventive genius of M‘Nab. There were separate back yards and accurately divided portions of the floor for twenty shearers. The roof was neatly shingled. All the appliances for saving labour were of the most modern description, and as different from the old-world contrivances in vogue among the wool-sheds of the Warroo as a threshing-machine from a pair of flails. The wool-press alone had cost more as it stood ready for work than many a shed, wash-pen, huts, and yards of the old days.