Читать книгу Half Crown Bob and Tales of the Riverine - Price Warung - Страница 12

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There had been the very devil to pay on the rivers when Capt'n Kingsley--who, after running one season under McCulloch's flag and another under Whyte Counsel's--had, in the third year, purchased the Little Lizzie with her barge Wombat, and put his wife to the wheel. It was done as a joke at first, the mates and deck-hands thought, and they entered into the spirit of the freak. They cheered the little woman as she piloted the craft in and out of shoaling channels, by snaggy gullets, and over treacherous reefs. And they "put their money on her" and the Lizzie, when it came to racing the Princess or the stately Cumberoona, for what the more powerful boat gained in steaming, the little 'un more than won back by the deft way she was handled. And they worked with new vigour when wrought upon by the kindly criticism of her glance.

When, however, in the beginning of Capt'n Kingsley's fourth river-season it was made apparent that he was shipping no mate, but that his pretty, youthful wife, a mere slip of a girl she was then, was going to take turn and turn with her husband, the skipper, there was open rebellion on the part of the Lizzie's crew, and the deadly antagonism, covert and overt, from the hands of other boats. Men whom the event directly concerned, men whom by the widest stretch of imagination it could not be conceived to concern, joined in the row. The whole river population--from Albury to Goolwa, from Wakool Junction to Wagga, and from Wentworth to Wilcannia--were in agitation. The mate whom Mrs. Kingsley had displaced had almost as much to say on the matter as Sooty Bill the loafer, who never had a wash except when he was thrown into the river in a squabble, and who never did an honest day's work out of gaol.

Unto Captain Richard Kingsley came Captain Freeman, inspector for the Melbourne Underwriters.

"You're frightened of the insurances, are you, Mr. Freeman?" politely inquired the former. "Now, my wife doesn't get drunk. And tell me how many down cargoes come to grief and a river's bottom through a drunken mate at the wheel."

Captain Freeman walked away.

Unto the captain came a deputation of the skippers.

"Lookee here, gentlemen," he said, "I've a little girl down in Melbourne. She can't live with us on the river in Echuca--the weather'd kill her. My wife does a mate's duty, saves a mate's wages, and we keep that child where she has a chance for life. It's my wife's own wish, not mine, and as I haven't paid for this boat and barge yet, I don't intend to cross her."

Upon the heels of the skippers' deputation there came a number of deck--hands.

"Men," said Kingsley, "I'm skipper of my own boat!" They persisted. "Men," he said, "if you don't like my service, clear!"

And they did so. Not that they were afraid of trusting themselves to the "mate's" skill, but the idea of being bossed by a woman galled their manhood. And, as no other men would fill the revolters' billets, Kingsley filled up the vacancies with Chinese. He could not see that in enlisting nine or ten odorous Ah Fats, and Ah Leans, and Moy Sins on his wages sheet, he was placing the axe to the root of his life and his fortunes.

They served him and the "missie matie" admirably. Whatever the pagan was put regularly to do he did with the unerring instinct of imitation, in which consists his intelligence. As deck-hand and rouseabout, as stoker, as cook and steward, as lumper of wood-bales on river-banks, cutter-up of firewood and stower of cargo, John was active and untiring. But when initiative and readiness of wit were required he was almost as miserable a failure as a "new chum," who berthed on a river-boat to earn tucker "till his remittances arrived."

Capt'n Dick stuck a sounding-pole in Ah Ling's hands one afternoon on an up-river trip.

"Ah Ling, you put stick in water, and when water comes to this mark you call--'By the mark--three. And to this mark--four, and to this mark--five, and to this mark--six. You savee?"

After half-an-hour's patient instruction, Ah Ling "saveed," and the skipper relieved his wife at the wheel. They were in a long, deep reach where the ten-foot pole should not touch bottom. Dick thought he'd test his pupil.

"Sound, Ah Ling!" shouted the captain. "Sound!"

With a coolness that indicated a mastery of his business, the Chow dropped in the pole and boldly sent forth the awe-inspiring cry of "By-y'--mark--Fwee!"

"Three! Heaven!" There was no shallow ridge or bottom thereabouts, but a great snag must have shifted into the boat's course--and the Wombat was down with produce seven feet! In a second the skipper had his wheel hard down, and the engine-room telegraph had been signalled "full speed astern," and the bargeman shriekingly ordered to "stop way." Dick recovered from the fear of seeing his crafts snagged in mid-stream just in time to hear Ah Ling repeat the last words of his lesson--"By-y'-mark--six"--and to hear his mate, Nell, who had rushed forward, laugh, with a laugh that was half a sob--"Go ahead, Dick, it's over the pole. This gaudy old parrot doesn't know any better!"

Another day Andy McBean, the Lizzie's engineer, and the only white man who had remained on board after the Chinese invasion, told his stoker, Sun Lee, to watch the steam-gauge, while he, Mac, made up, by a short nap, for the loss of sleep during the night when they had been running during the small hours.

"Water get down here, Sun," said Mac, pointing to a safe point on the tube, "you come and shake me."

Mac coiled himself in the shade of his woodpile, and slept the sleep of the just man and the tired engineer for a couple of hours. Then he was awakened by the hiss and the bite of scalding steam. Sun Lee had been relieved on the night-watch, but if his boss slept in the day-time why shouldn't he? So he allowed his silky eyelids to droop over the almond orifices through which his soul looked out on the world, and he too slumbered sweetly while the steamer plodded along the Twenty-mile Reach, and the water in the boiler evaporated, and the tell-tale in the gauge got lower and lower. Sun Lee and his brother heathens were nearer heaven at the moment Mac woke up than they were ever likely to be again, unless some other steamer's boiler blew up. "The closest shave I ever knew," breathed Andy to himself, as he flung open valves and cocks with trembling fingers, which did not lose their tremulousness until they had encircled Sun Lee's dreamy eyes with grimy rings of puffy flesh.

A close shave indeed! So close a shave that the skipper and mate henceforth had to do double duty because they could not trust any single pagan further than they could see him. For the mechanical routine which an educated donkey would have gone through with ease John was invaluable, but as to all else he wasn't worth his ration of rice. Kingsley would have thrown the individual and collective Chinese overboard but for the "missie matie."