My Tropic Isle by Edmund James Banfield (phonics story books txt) 📖

the pool in which the "mil-gar" is submerged the heavier and more continuous the downpour; but as heavy rain is not liked, only vindictive boys who have some spite to work off indulge in such wanton interference with the ordinary course of the wet season.

The submerged bark which attracts the rain Tom calls "mil-gar," and the suspended bottle (a saucer-shaped piece of bark is generally used) serves to catch PAL-BI (hailstones), which, being, uncommon, are considered weird and are eaten in a dare-devil sort of spirit. In this case PAL-BI had but the remotest chance of getting into the bottle, and for that reason (according: to Tom) none tried. "Subpose I bin put bark all asame plate--look out plenty!"

Many natural phenomena are associated in the folklore of the blacks with untoward events. The rainbow (AM-AN-EE) is not regarded by them as a covenant that the waters shall no more become a flood to destroy all flesh, but as an evil omen, a cause of sorrow, for to whomsoever shall bathe in the sea when the bow is seen in the cloud evil is certain to befall.

Unprotesting Nelly is assured of this by her own sad experience. In tones of deep conviction, which permit of no manner of doubt, she tells me that AM-AN-EE caused the death of her infant--"brother belonga Jimmy." She had bogied at Toorgey-Toorgey, when to her dismay the harbinger of disaster appeared to spring out from the sea. In a week the child was born-dead.

Both father and mother have the tenderest thoughts of that breathless image in bronze. I saw it. Its features were refined, the nose sharp and symmetrical, and the mouth a perfect Cupid's bow. Its expectant repose thrilled me, for it was the realisation of that which Dickens said of little Nell--"a creature waiting for the breath of life."

No marvel they mourned, that Nelly cut her arms with splinters of glass, that she still regards the lovely rainbow with resentment tempered by fear.

Tom does not respond to cross-examination. He thinks his own thoughts and says but little. When he is communicative his veracity is the less to be trusted. Many a time have I sought his opinions on the serious import of life--to find that he has none. His thoughts are concentrated on things which affect the immediate moment. Since he is mentally incapable of denying himself the most trivial recreations upon which his wishes have dwelt, restraint is succeeded by despairing, uncontrollable moroseness pathetic in its genuineness. How could such a temperament reflect upon the future? He is no doctrinaire; he does not credit existence after death--"When you dead, you finish!"

"But," I suggested, "plenty of your country men think about another place when you die--finish."

"Yes, some boy he say when you dead you go long another place. L-o-n-g way. More better place, plenty tucker, no work, sit-down, play about all day. When you come alonga that place father, mother, brother, sit-down--no more can die!"

Then I put a customary question: "Yes, what all go alonga that place like when you die? You father old man when he die. He old man now alonga that good place? Little Jinny young when she die. That fella young along that place? That piccaninny belonga Nelly--piccaninny alonga that place?"

"Yes, all asame when you die you along that place."

"Good boy and bad boy-rogue, all go one place?

"Yes. Rogue he got one heaby spear right through. Go in here (indicating the middle of his chest), come out alonga back. Sore fella. That spear fight em inside. My word! Carn pull em out. He no die. Too much sore fella!"


DEAD--FINISH

Since the foregoing was penned Tom has realised the supreme fact of existence. He is dead, and is buried in dry, hot ground away from the moist green country which he knew so well, and was wont to love so ardently.

Although he was "only a black fellow," yet was he an Australian by the purest lineage and birth--one whose physique was example of the class that tropical Queensland is capable of producing, a man of brains, a student of Nature who had stored his mind with first-hand knowledge unprinted and now unprintable, a hunter of renown, and in certain respects "a citizen impossible to replace."

Given protection from the disastrous contact with the raw, unclean edge of civilisation, he and others, his fellows, might have lived for a score of years longer, and in the meantime possibly the public conscience of Australia might have been aroused, and his and their last days made wholesome, peaceable, and pleasant.

There is something more to be said about Tom in order that the attempt to show what manner of man he was may be as complete as the inexorable regulation of death permits.

Strong and substantially built, so framed that he looked taller than the limit of his inches, broad-chested, big-limbed, coarse-handed, Tom's figure differed essentially from that of the ordinary type, and as his figure so his style and mental capacity. Serene in the face of perils of the sea, with all of which he is familiar, he was afraid of no man in daylight, though a child might scare him after dark.

Tom was not as other blacks, for he loved sport. It was not all a question of pot-hunting with him. Apart from the all-compelling force of hunger, he was influenced by the passion of the chase. Therefore was he patient, resourceful, determined, shrewd, observant, and alert. His knowledge of the ways of fish and of the most successful methods of alluring them to his hook often astonished me. He saw turtle in the sea when quite beyond visual range of the white man. Many a time and oft has he hurled his harpoon at what to me was nothingness, and the rush of the line has indicated that the aim was true. He would say when fifty yards of line were out the particular part of the body in which the barbed point was sticking. If it had pierced the shell, then he must play with the game cautiously until it was exhausted and he could get in another point in better holding locality. If the point had entered the shoulder, or below the carapace to the rear, or one of the flippers, he would haul away, knowing that the barb would hold until cut out. When restrained from the sea for a few days he became petulant and as sulky as a spoilt child, for, in common with others of the race, he was morally incapable of self-denial. Big and strong and manly as he was, he became as an infant when circumstances compelled him to forego an anticipated excursion by water, and rather than stay in comfort and safety on dry land would--if he had so set his mind--venture over six miles of stormy sea in a flattie little more commodious than a coffin. He was, on such an occasion, wont to say, "No matter. Subpose boat drowned, I swim along shore, tie em Nelly along a string," meaning that in case of a capsize he would swim to dry land, towing his dutiful, trustful spouse.

Although by nature a true lover of the sea, his knowledge of the plant life of the coast was remarkable. Among his mental accomplishments was a specific title for each plant and tree. His almanac was floral. By the flowering of trees and shrubs so he noted the time of the year, and he knew many stars by name and could tell when such and such a one would be visible. Yet, though I tried to teach him the alphabet, he never got beyond "F," which he always pronounced "if." Perhaps his collapse in literature may have been due to persistent efforts to teach him the difference between "F" and "if" vocalised. He may have reasoned that so finicking an accomplishment was not worth acquiring. In his own tongue he counted thus:--

Yungl One Bli Two Yacka
Any number in excess of two--a great many.

But in English he did not lose himself until he had passed sixty--at least, he was wont to boast of being able to comprehend that number.

Tom was a bit of a dandy in his way, fond of loud colours and proud of his manly figure. When the flour-bag began to sprinkle his moustache he plucked out one by one the tell-tale hairs until his upper lip became almost barren, but remorseless Time was never made to pause. Though many a white hair was extirpated, Tom was as much at fault as most of us who seek for the secret of perpetual youth, or to evade the buffets of old Father Time.

Opium and rum lured Tom away during the last four years of his life. He was sadly degenerated when I saw him for the last time, and several months after, in a mainland camp, he quarrelled with his half-brother Willie--the same Willie who many years ago in honourable encounter cut a liberal nick out of one of Tom's ears with a razor. Willie probed Tom between the ribs with a spear. While he lay helpless and suffering representatives of the police force visited the spot and the sick man was taken by steamer to a hospital, where he passed away--peradventure, in antagonism to his own personal belief, to that "good place" fancied by some of his countrymen, where tucker is plentiful and opium and rum unprocurable. And unless in that "good place" there are fish to be caught and turtle and dugong, and sting-rays to be harpooned, and other sport of the salt sea available, and dim jungles through which a man may wander at will, and all unclad, to chop squirming grubs out of decayed wood and rob the rubbish mounds of scrub fowls of huge white eggs, and forest country where he may rifle "bees' nests," Tom will not be quite happy there. He was ever a free man, given to the habit of roaming. If there are bounds to that "good place," he will discover them, and will peer over the barricades longingly and very often.


CHAPTER XXVII



"DEBILS-DEBILS"

"As, however, there is no necessity whatever why we should posit the existence of devils, why, then, should they be posited?"


Some of the blacks of my acquaintance are ardent believers in ghosts and do posit the existence of personal "debils-debils." Seldom is a good word to be said of the phantoms, which depend almost entirely for "local habitation and a name" upon the chronicles of old men steeped to the lips in the accumulated lore of the camps. Many an old man who talks shudderingly of the "debil-debil" has lived in daily expectation of meeting some hostile and vindictive personage endowed with fearsome malice, and a body which may be killed and destroyed. Therefore, when the old man ventures into the dim spaces of the jungle he is invariably specially armed and his perceptive faculties strained to concert pitch, while the unseen glides always at his elbow providing unutterable thrills, lacking which life would be far less real and earnest.

Only one record has come to my knowledge of the presence of a benign "debil-debil." All the other stories have been saturated with awesomeness and fear. A very intelligent but excessively superstitious boy now living on the Palm Islands was wont to entertain me with graphic descriptions of the one species of "debil-debil" which he feared, and of the most effective plan for its capture. He was under the belief that a live "debil-debil" would be worth more as a curio than "two fella white cockatoo." He imagined that if a "young