Denis Dent Part 10

"Ten guineas, mister."

"Ten guineas! More than half the wages you drew from the station, for a second-hand revolver? He didn't say it was first-hand, did he?"

"No, but he said it was worth more."

Denis sprang impatiently to his feet.

"Well, it may save our lives, and then it will be," said he. "But I like your notion of a lift for love!"

CHAPTER IX

THE CANVAS CITY

The travelers had been variously advised as to their best road to Melbourne from a certain point; but what they did (by pure accident) was to come out on the Williamstown promontory and get a second lift (by sheer luck) in a boat just leaving for the Sandridge side. They were even luckier than they knew. The gain in mileage was very considerable.

And there was sun enough still upon the waters for them to see with their own eyes the derelict sail of all nations and of every rig, swinging forlornly with the turning tide, their blistered timbers cracking for some paint, and all hands at the diggings.

But the sun was sinking when the two friends landed at Liardet's Jetty, and came at once by the Sandridge Road to the first thin sprinkling of the tents which formed the Melbourne of those days. The track ran in ruts through sand and dust as fine as tooth-powder; they trudged beside it over scanty gra.s.s, with here and there a star-shaped flower without the slightest scent. Gum-trees of many kinds, some with the white bark peeling from their trunks, others smooth and leafless as gigantic bones, made amends with their peculiar aroma. There was a shrill twittering of the most unmusical birds, the croak of bullfrogs from a neighbouring lagoon, a more familiar buzz of flies, a tinfoil rustle of brown gra.s.s at every step. Once the gra.s.s rustled before Denis's foot came down, and in a second he had stamped the life out of his first snake--a long black fellow with a white waistcoat and pink stripes. Doherty held it up in horror.

"That's not the way to kill a snake," said he. "Jump out of the road if you haven't a stick. It's lucky for you that you came down on his right end, or he'd have been up your leg like a lamplighter, and in a few minutes you'd 'a' been as stiff as him. Poisonous? I believe you, mister! You thank your stars, and don't do it again."

And Denis went on with a cold coating to an active skin, but without a syllable until Doherty drew his attention to a marquee under the trees, with a bra.s.s plate st.i.tched to the canvas; and when they got near enough to read the legend it was ESTABLISHMENT FOR YOUNG LADIES, in tremendous capitals; there was even a blackboard nailed to a blue gum, with benches fixed to stumps, and every accessory but the young ladies themselves.

Denis was prepared to meet them two-and-two in the next glade, but the multiplication of tents soon put this one out of his head, and their infinite variety became apparent as they drew together into streets.

There were canvas cones, canvas polygons, canvas in every figure defined by Euclid and in more that baffle definition. A cricket tent had a publican's sign swinging from an overhanging branch. A red lamp surmounted the nearer of two uprights which carried a pole with a sheet stretched across it; the doctor crawled out of this his surgery, and lit up with a brawny arm, as the travelers pa.s.sed. Denis thought it still quite light, but when they came to the first bricks and mortar, as it seemed but a few yards further, there was just enough rose in the dusk for good eyes to glean from the notice-board in front of the house that its three rooms and its strip of yard were to let at 400. And in another minute it was night.

An unpleasant feature of these canvas streets was that slops and refuse were hurled into the middle of them, while cast-off clothing literally lined the sides; but as a light twinkled at one tent, and a fire blazed up outside the next, the picturesque contrasts afforded by the firelit faces, the inconceivable jumble of grades and races, blinded Denis to all else. Now it was a drayman with a single eye-gla.s.s, now a gentle face at the wash-tub and a diamond flas.h.i.+ng through the suds. The peoples might have been shot by the shovelful from their respective soils; yellow Yankee, gross German, suspicious Spaniard, sunny Italian, burly Dane and murderous Malay, there they all were, so many separate ingredients newly flung into the pot. A noticeable link was the hook-nosed Jew who spoke every language and hailed from every clime.

And either there were more Chinamen even than Europeans, or their blue breeches and their beehive hats brought them oftener to the eye. But the usually drunken blackfellow and his invariably degenerate gin were already becoming scarce in their own land.

Denis and Jim drifted with this cosmopolitan crowd across a bridge, into a region of fewer tents, better lights, more weather-board walls, and not a few of bricks and mortar. A veranda where a free fight was raging turned out to be that of the General Post Office; the flag flying over it celebrated the arrival of an English mail, and it was for their letters that the poor folk fought. One shook himself clear with his letter in his hand, and an indescribable look of happiness on his face, as Denis looked on enviously. In an innkeeper's yard hard by, the horses of a bullock-team scratched the panels of a resplendent brougham; and though this was evidently the fas.h.i.+onable quarter, judging by the numbers of regular shops, the gutters were swollen to such rivers that in places drays acted as ferry-boats across them. In some of the shop windows the things were marked VERY DEAR to tempt the plutocratic plebeian; but in nearly all there was a legend which went to one head at least--the legend of GOLD BOUGHT IN ANY QUANt.i.tY.

"There must be plenty going after all," said Denis, "or you wouldn't see that at every turn."

Doherty agreed without enthusiasm; it was what he had always held; but the surface excitement of his years was not proof against a ravenous appet.i.te, whereas Denis could have gone on and on without a bite. Yet they were really in search of modest fare, and were actually reconnoitring a large and flaring shanty, which rather chilled the frugal blood in Denis, when a choice harangue was poured into them from the veranda; and there sat a gorilla of a man, his s.h.i.+rt half-hidden by his beard, dipping a pannikin in a bucket between his knees, and spilling the contents as he waved it to the pair.

"Come in, ye cripples!" roared he. "Come and have a pannikin o'

champagne with ole Bullocky, or by the hokey you'll be stretched out stiff!"

And with that the true gorilla fell to pelting them with the empty champagne bottles that surrounded him, until Denis cried a truce and led the way in, laughing, under a storm of drunken banter from the successful digger and his friends.

"A new chum, I see!" said Bullocky, rolling an unsteady eye over Denis when he had handed him the pannikin. "Another blessed 'Jack ash.o.r.e,' by the cut of ye; deserting orf'cer, I shouldn't wonder! All the more reason listen me: none of your d.a.m.n quarter-deck airs here, you know.

There ain't no blessed orf'cers aboard this little craft. We're all in the cuddy or afore the mast--w'ich you please--so you can just sweat all the notions you ever had. And if you don't empty that there pannikin down your own gullet----"

A huge fist finished the sentence with a terrifying shake, as Denis was in the act of handing the tin mug to the open-mouthed Doherty.

"We haven't had our supper yet," he explained. "It's dangerous stuff on empty stomachs."

"Not had your suppers?" thundered Bullocky; a lurch took him to the tap-room door, where he gave the order in a roar. "Now you drink up," he went on, with ferocious hospitality, as another lurch brought him back.

"It cost five pounds a bottle, and if it ain't good enough for sc.u.m like you, I'll stretch the two of ye stiff till your grub's ready."

And the genial brute bellowed with laughter until the veranda shook, and flinging off a wideawake garnished with an ostrich feather, stuck his great head into the bucket of champagne and drank like his betters of the field. As a result, Denis and Jim had their meal in peace, for it was but lukewarm mutton and sodden duff, and while they ate, one of his friends informed them that "Bullocky" was the short for Bullock Creek, Bendigo, of which the great man was patron sinner, having made several fortunes there that year, and spent them in the way they saw. "Which isn't so bad," added his friend, who did discredit to a better cla.s.s, "for a gentleman from over the way."

Denis asked him what he meant.

"An old hand from Van Diemen's Land," the man answered in a despicable undertone. And Denis felt inclined to tell the old hand, who now returned to crown his hospitality by forcing a nugget apiece upon the two beginners.

"But it must be worth fifty pounds!" exclaimed Denis, in vain protest, as he handled his.

"Fifty smacks in the mouth!" thundered Bullocky preparing to administer them. "You ain't on your dam' quarter-deck now!"

"Very well," said Denis, "we'll keep them for luck, rather than come to blows about it; and we really must thank you----"

"You dare!" interrupted Bullocky, with another flourish of his hairy fist. "It's no more'n wot I'd do for any other sc.u.m with all their troubles ahead on 'em. I ain't got no troubles fore nor aft; I'm Lord G.o.d o' Bullock Creek, I am, and I ain't done with you yet; you come along o' me."

So saying, he led the way toward certain sounds of revelry which had begun to fill the lulls between his detonations. And in a marquee crowded with diggers, and reeking with the fumes from pipe and pot, the trio were in time for the last lines of a song from a buffoon on the platform at one end:

"And when you think it's all serene-- Pop goes the weasel!"

It was the latest song from England, and was vociferously encored; but not for the first time, it seemed, and the mountebank would only bow and sc.r.a.pe. In an instant the rank air was yellow with flying orange-peel.

But Bullocky handed Jim a nugget to throw for him, which Mr. Doherty discharged with such effect that it hit the performer on one leg and sent him hopping round the stage on the other, until the nature of the projectile was discovered, and the song given yet again. At its close the plutocrat's party were accorded a table in front, and more drink ordered to Denis's embarra.s.sment. "Careful, Jimmy," he contrived to whisper, and received a rea.s.suring kick under the table by way of reply.

A poor painted girl, with a voice that had some little sweetness left, and a pathos all its own, came next with a song just old enough to have a.s.sociations for some of those who heard. It was, however, a sweet song in itself, and in a few bars a hush had fallen on the audience; even Bullocky sat back in his chair, his huge beard leveled at the singer.

"You are going far away, far away from poor Jeannette; There's no one left to love me now, and you too will forget; But my heart will be with you wherever you may go-- Can you look me in the face and say the same, Jeannot?

When you wear the jacket red, and the beautiful c.o.c.kade, Oh! I fear you will forget all the promises you made.

With a gun upon your shoulder and a bayonet by your side, You'll be taking some proud lady and be making her your bride-- You'll be taking some proud lady and be making her your bride!"

So it ran; and Denis caught himself pressing his dear new amulet to his heart. He was so saddened that he did not see Bullocky until he heard him roar, "No, he won't, my dear! I'll stretch him stiff and stark if he do!" at which one behind gave a laugh, and so brought that formidable fist within an inch of his nose, while with the other paw the gorilla dashed away a tear that ought to have filled a winegla.s.s. Denis lost half the next verse in watching him. Bullocky was now sprawling across the table, his great face hidden in the hirsute folds of his powerful arms.

"Oh! if I were King of France, or still better Pope of Rome, I'd have no fighting men abroad, no weeping maids at home.

All the world should be at peace, or, if kings must show their might, Why, let them who make the quarrel be the only ones to fight-- Yes, let them who make the quarrel be the only ones to fight!"

Bullocky's shoulders were heaving with vinous sobs. He did not join in the tempest of applause, and before the last verse had been repeated his emotions reached their anti-climax in a sounding snore. Denis gave Doherty a nod, and they deserted under cover of the final furore.

Near the exit of the marquee a degenerate sailor reeled into them; and it shocked Denis slowly to identify the blurred features of his late s.h.i.+pmate, the chief officer of the _North Foreland_. It was but a week since he had given evidence as clear as it was creditable at the inquest in Mr. Kitto's wool-shed.

"Seen you come in," said the mate. "Thought you was in blue water by this time."

"How so?" asked Denis.

"Homeward bound," hiccoughed the mate.

"I'm not going home yet," said Denis. "I'm going to try my luck on the diggings first."

The chief swayed incredulous. "Thought that was all plain sailin'?" said he. "Thought you was to go home with 'em, an' marry her at t' other end if not at this? Well, well, you might just as well have taken my advice!"

"What advice?" asked Denis, coldly.