Читать книгу Half Crown Bob and Tales of the Riverine - Price Warung - Страница 15

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The next down-stream trip from Echuca, Mate Nell was mate of the Lizzie no longer. She was "bargeman" of the Lizzie's barge, Wombat, and the old bargeman had taken her place on the steamer. And aft on the barge, in a newly-built compartment, went--a passenger.

Nell wouldn't say the word that would have released Dick from his fate, and he wouldn't let her remain with him. To leave him alone was to leave him to madness. So in the dead of the night, before the Lizzie next cleared the Customs for Hay, a tottering spectre, sheeted in greyish cloths, stole from out of the shadows down by the path through George Air's shipyard on to the punt, and thence to the Wombat's cabin.

The men wondered at first that they had not seen Capt'n Dick come aboard, but their delicacy forbade a syllable of surprise to reach the ears of Mate Nell. And then Killen dropped a word here and there in mysterious accents, how he had seen Capt'n Dick, "An' he'd take his oath Dick was a gone looney."

Down to Hay, and then to stations below for late wool; up to Echuca again; up to Tocumwal for a short timber trip, and back to the port once more to fill up with stores and wire for which the big 'Bidgee stations were ravenous, went the Lizzie and the Wombat. Another quick run would have followed with the first-clipping of the new wool, and back again to race the Victoria for the Burrabogie and Hunthawang clips. First come first to load, was the rule of the two crack stations, and their freight carried an extra pound per ton of "greasy," and thirty shillings for "washed," for balance of the Lusitania's cargo-room was booked for their wool, and, filled or not, the ocean freight would have to be paid. Up to Burrabogie, beating McCulloch's boat by half-a-day, and back to Hay, there to top up with Hunthawang bales, and thence home for Christmas. This was the plan.

Golden trips in golden weather, all these passages! Every hundred revolutions of the Lizzie's paddles minted a sovereign as the leper calculated on his slate. If the water would hold up till January or February they could then sell the crafts, and, with the proceeds added to the season's earnings, bid the rivers farewell. They would seek thereafter some distant home--and wait calmly for the end! This was Capt'n Dick's notion, for once back on the rivers the swish of the floats as they carried the water, and the throbbings of the pistons, imparted something of their restless vigour to his enfeebled system, and thoughts were struck out of him as masterful and bold as in the old days.

"We shall have a happy Christmas after all, Nell," he wrote on his slate, and passed it through the partition to his wife's hands, just before they left Pollard's wharf, at Hay, on the last trip of the year.

"God grant it, dear!" she whispered as she went out to trim her barge.

The wharf-loungers cheered the little woman as the barge drew by, and wished her the best of good-luck, and the happiest of Christmases, and the speediest of recoveries to the old man. For a moment the cloud lifted, and against hope she hoped and believed their hearty wishes would come true. As Skipper Jim sounded the last whistle, she turned and kissed her finger--tips to the throng. It became a tradition, that kiss. The glory of the river--trade has departed, but the memory of Mate Nell's farewell lingers yet in nooks and corners of the Riverine country.

For Hay never welcomed Mate Nell again.

The craft had reached Canoon when the river fell suddenly. That very morn the sun had risen fiery red, and as he ran his course he trailed behind him scorching blasts and steaming mists that wanted only a solitary spark to link the heavens to earth in a chain of flame.

And the spark fell!

In the great reach, fifteen miles below Canoon, Morris found he had to run a gauntlet of fire. Magnificent eucalypti bordered the sorrowing stream with spires of flame, and the tangled undergrowth spread the lurid contagion from clump to clump with an unquenchable rapidity. For miles in their front, miles on either side, and miles to their rear, the torrent of fire rolled on, roasting boat-hands with its heat, barring return with mammoth trunks that fell hissing into the stream, and threatening to stop their egress from the furnace with like impediments.

Every eye on the steamer was strained with a forward gaze, and none noticed that the piles of wool on the barge ignited. The bales had not been tarpaulined, and a fiery shower from a thicket of ti-trees had set the packs ablaze. Nell was the first to see the fire from the barge-bridge, where she held the wheel, and she cried for help.

Some of the steamer hands rushed to save her, but at the moment the Wombat reeled and shuddered as she struck bottom. Drawing two feet more than the steamer, she was aground.

Morris put full towage-way on the Lizzie. The paddles lashed the cindery current into foam, and the great shaft seemed as though it would burst from its bearings with its Titanic strokes. But this effort had the most fatal of results, for it severed the tow-rope. As a bird freed from a cage, the Lizzie sprang forward and left the Wombat aground and wrapt in her cerements of smoke and flame.

There was no returning. The shoaling water threatened the Lizzie with the same fate if she delayed her advance. Morris lingered until death had nearly completed his leaguer around him and his men also, and then, then, went on--leaving Capt'n Dick and his Mate Nell on their funeral pyre.

Perhaps it was fancy, perhaps not, but Morris, looking back, thought he saw a woman's hand project itself from the smoke as if waving a kiss. "For little Kate," Morris whispered. "For little Kate!"