Best Australian Short Stories by Douglas Stewart, Beatrice Davis Page B

wall in front of us, and then just as we touched it the vessel would fly off at a tangent and make a sudden burst for the bank, and when it got there the bank would somehow prove to be absent, and we would puff unconcernedly over a stretch of dead black water until it was time to make another break and bolt madly for a tree standing out on the extreme end of a low headland. But the tree would also melt away mysteriously, and the headland would vanish, and after that all would go well till we started to perform some more callisthenics, and make a fresh jump for destruction. Then we would steer uneasily round some more corners, and the escape-pipe would blow forth a note of shrill derision, and next we would graze a ketch loaded with pumpkins, and the captain would blaspheme from the deck and ask us, with an anguished cry, where we supposed we were going to. No one took any notice of him, however; the captain of a ketch doesn’t amount to anything.
    The steamer was old and slow. The saloon was small, and the cabins were stuffly. The bath-house was on deck, but for some unexplained reason when the crew started to wash the deck the water-supply in the bath immediately gave out, and the crew washed the deck incessantly. I had only one fellow-passenger, and she was a stout lady with a dog attached to a short string. Unfortunately, I trod on the dog early in the voyage, and from that moment the fount of sympathy dried up, and I found myself alone, and my only remaining amusement consisted in gazing at the monotonous bank, and getting out of the path of the cook when that artizan in boiled mutton fled along the deck with a large dish in his hand. But there was no thrill in either of these dissipations, and so a feeling of deep and holy joy filled my soul when our vessel coughed up to a wharf, and I scrambled ashore.
    There was a steep clay bank behind the wharf, and on top of it the last earthly possibility in the way of a hotel loomed up against the stars. It seemed to have been built mainly of old boards and disused gin-cases, but the materials could not be very well defined in the darkness—there was merely a prevailing aspect of jaggedness that belonged to no recognized order of architecture, and beyond it there was a hazy and undefined street which appeared to have fallen down dead while only half grown. The street ran parallel to the river, and consequently there was mud at one side and real estate at the other—the mud being much the more numerous of the two. As for the population, it had only one visible representative—a small, fat, old man, who stood at the door of the hotel with a candle, awaiting the course of events. He was a confidential old man, too, and when he had conducted me into a bedroom with two windows and one solitary chair and a stuffed cat in it, he leaned up against the wall and conversed affably, while I hung my hat on the bedpost and listened, with one boot in my hand and my senses buried in partial oblivion.
    His daughter had eloped that morning, it appeared, with a gentleman in the paving-stone and road-repairing industry, and his wife had been upset in her finer feelings and had gone to bed. She had remained there all day, and it had been found necessary to apply stimulants to keep her up, and in consequence of this disaster he had been compelled to run the hotel himself, and wash up the dishes, and perform other menial duties. For his own part, he had never looked, with a favourable eye on the gentleman who repaired roads, and he was inclined to think that, as a son-in-law, he would prove a failure. He had a dull far-away sound as he related these circumstances, and a thick haze seemed to gather round him, and by and by his sentences appeared to fall to pieces and I fell asleep in a sitting position and dreamed that his voice was a rushing river somewhere—and then I awoke with a sudden wrench which seemed to tear all my joints asunder, and found him still talking. The candle had burnt low and the