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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of Three Elephant Power and Other Stories
+by Andrew Barton `Banjo' Paterson
+[Australian Poet & Reporter -- 1864-1941.]
+
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+Three Elephant Power, by Andrew Barton `Banjo' Paterson
+
+August, 1995  [Etext #307]
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+
+
+Three Elephant Power and Other Stories
+
+by Andrew Barton `Banjo' Paterson [Australian Poet, Reporter -- 1864-1941.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+[Note on text: Italicized words or phrases are capitalized.
+Some obvious errors have been corrected.]
+
+[This etext is transcribed from the original edition of 1917,
+which was published in Sydney.]
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Three Elephant Power and Other Stories
+By A. B. Paterson, Author of The Man from Snowy River, Rio Grande,
+Saltbush Bill, J.P., An Outback Marriage, Etc.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+These stories appeared originally in several Australian journals.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+
+
+Three Elephant Power
+The Oracle
+The Cast-iron Canvasser
+The Merino Sheep
+The Bullock
+White-when-he's-wanted
+The Downfall of Mulligan's
+The Amateur Gardener
+Thirsty Island
+Dan Fitzgerald Explains
+The Cat
+Sitting in Judgment
+The Dog
+The Dog -- as a Sportsman
+Concerning a Steeplechase Rider
+Victor Second
+Concerning a Dog-fight
+His Masterpiece
+Done for the Double
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Three Elephant Power
+
+
+
+"Them things," said Alfred the chauffeur, tapping the speed indicator
+with his fingers, "them things are all right for the police.  But, Lord,
+you can fix 'em up if you want to.  Did you ever hear about Henery,
+that used to drive for old John Bull -- about Henery and the elephant?"
+
+Alfred was chauffeur to a friend of mine who owned a very powerful car.
+Alfred was part of that car.  Weirdly intelligent, of poor physique,
+he might have been any age from fifteen to eighty.  His education had been
+somewhat hurried, but there was no doubt as to his mechanical ability.
+He took to a car like a young duck to water.  He talked motor,
+thought motor, and would have accepted -- I won't say with enthusiasm,
+for Alfred's motto was `Nil admirari' -- but without hesitation,
+an offer to drive in the greatest race in the world.
+He could drive really well, too; as for belief in himself,
+after six months' apprenticeship in a garage he was prepared
+to vivisect a six-cylinder engine with the confidence of
+a diplomaed bachelor of engineering.
+
+Barring a tendency to flash driving, and a delight in persecuting slow cars
+by driving just in front of them and letting them come up
+and enjoy his dust, and then shooting away again,
+he was a respectable member of society.  When his boss was in the car
+he cloaked the natural ferocity of his instincts; but this day,
+with only myself on board, and a clear run of a hundred and twenty miles
+up to the station before him, he let her loose, confident that
+if any trouble occurred I would be held morally responsible.
+
+As we flew past a somnolent bush pub, Alfred, whistling softly,
+leant forward and turned on a little more oil.
+
+"You never heard about Henery and the elephant?" he said.
+"It was dead funny.  Henery was a bushwacker, but clean mad on motorin'.
+He was wood and water joey at some squatter's place until he seen
+a motor-car go past one day, the first that ever they had in the districk.
+
+"`That's my game,' says Henery; `no more wood and water joey for me.'
+
+"So he comes to town and gets a job off Miles that had that garage
+at the back of Allison's.  An old cove that they called John Bull
+-- I don't know his right name, he was a fat old cove --
+he used to come there to hire cars, and Henery used to drive him.
+And this old John Bull he had lots of stuff, so at last he reckons
+he's going to get a car for himself, and he promises Henery a job
+to drive it.  A queer cove this Henery was -- half mad, I think,
+but the best hand with a car ever I see."
+
+While he had been talking we topped a hill, and opened up a new stretch
+of blue-grey granite-like road.  Down at the foot of the hill
+was a teamster's waggon in camp; the horses in their harness munching at
+their nose-bags, while the teamster and a mate were boiling a billy
+a little off to the side of the road.  There was a turn in the road
+just below the waggon which looked a bit sharp, so of course
+Alfred bore down on it like a whirlwind.  The big stupid team-horses
+huddled together and pushed each other awkwardly as we passed.
+A dog that had been sleeping in the shade of the waggon sprang out
+right in front of the car, and was exterminated without ever knowing
+what struck him.
+
+There was just room to clear the tail of the waggon and negotiate the turn.
+Alfred, with the calm decision of a Napoleon, swung round the bend
+to find that the teamster's hack, fast asleep, was tied to the tail
+of the waggon.  Nothing but a lightning-like twist of the steering-wheel
+prevented our scooping the old animal up, and taking him on board
+as a passenger.  As it was, we carried off most of his tail as a trophy
+on the brass of the lamp.  The old steed, thus rudely awakened,
+lashed out good and hard, but by that time we were gone,
+and he missed the car by a quarter of a mile.
+
+During this strenuous episode Alfred never relaxed
+his professional stolidity, and, when we were clear, went on with his story
+in the tone of a man who found life wanting in animation.
+
+"Well, at fust, the old man would only buy one of these little
+eight-horse rubby-dubbys that go strugglin' up 'ills with a death-rattle
+in its throat, and all the people in buggies passin' it.
+O' course that didn't suit Henery.  He used to get that spiked
+when a car passed him, he'd nearly go mad.  And one day he nearly
+got the sack for dodgin' about up a steep 'ill in front of one o' them
+big twenty-four Darracqs, full of 'owlin' toffs, and not lettin' 'em
+get a chance to go past till they got to the top.  But at last he persuaded
+old John Bull to let him go to England and buy a car for him.
+He was to do a year in the shops, and pick up all the wrinkles,
+and get a car for the old man.  Bit better than wood and water joeying,
+wasn't it?"
+
+Our progress here was barred by our rounding a corner right on to a flock
+of sheep, that at once packed together into a solid mass in front of us,
+blocking the whole road from fence to fence.
+
+"Silly cows o' things, ain't they?" said Alfred, putting on his
+emergency brake, and skidding up till the car came softly to rest against
+the cushion-like mass -- a much quicker stop than any horse-drawn vehicle
+could have made.  A few sheep were crushed somewhat, but it is well known
+that a sheep is practically indestructible by violence.
+Whatever Alfred's faults were, he certainly could drive.
+
+"Well," he went on, lighting a cigarette, unheeding the growls
+of the drovers, who were trying to get the sheep to pass the car,
+"well, as I was sayin', Henery went to England, and he got a car.
+Do you know wot he got?"
+
+"No, I don't."
+
+"'E got a ninety," said Alfred slowly, giving time for the words
+to soak in.
+
+"A ninety!  What do you mean?"
+
+"'E got a ninety -- a ninety-horse-power racin' engine wot was made
+for some American millionaire and wasn't as fast as wot
+some other millionaire had, so he sold it for the price of the iron,
+and Henery got it, and had a body built for it, and he comes out here
+and tells us all it's a twenty mongrel -- you know, one of them cars
+that's made part in one place and part in another, the body here
+and the engine there, and the radiator another place.
+There's lots of cheap cars made like that.
+
+"So Henery he says that this is a twenty mongrel --
+only a four-cylinder engine; and nobody drops to what she is
+till Henery goes out one Sunday and waits for the big Napier
+that Scotty used to drive -- it belonged to the same bloke wot owned
+that big racehorse wot won all the races.  So Henery and Scotty
+they have a fair go round the park while both their bosses is at church,
+and Henery beat him out o' sight -- fair lost him -- and so Henery
+was reckoned the boss of the road.  No one would take him on after that."
+
+A nasty creek-crossing here required Alfred's attention.  A little girl,
+carrying a billy-can of water, stood by the stepping stones,
+and smiled shyly as we passed.  Alfred waved her a salute quite as though
+he were an ordinary human being.  I felt comforted.  He had his moments
+of relaxation evidently, and his affections like other people.
+
+"What happened to Henry and the ninety-horse machine?" I asked.
+"And where does the elephant come in?"
+
+Alfred smiled pityingly.
+
+"Ain't I tellin' yer," he said.  "You wouldn't understand if I didn't
+tell yer how he got the car and all that.  So here's Henery," he went on,
+"with old John Bull goin' about in the fastest car in Australia,
+and old John, he's a quiet old geezer, that wouldn't drive faster
+than the regulations for anything, and that short-sighted he can't see
+to the side of the road.  So what does Henery do?  He fixes up
+the speed-indicator -- puts a new face on it, so that when the car
+is doing thirty, the indicator only shows fifteen, and twenty for forty,
+and so on.  So out they'd go, and if Henery knew there was a big car
+in front of him, he'd let out to forty-five, and the pace would very near
+blow the whiskers off old John; and every now and again he'd look
+at the indicator, and it'd be showin' twenty-two and a half, and he'd say:
+
+"`Better be careful, Henery, you're slightly exceedin' the speed limit;
+twenty miles an hour, you know, Henery, should be fast enough for anybody,
+and you're doing over twenty-two.'
+
+"Well, one day, Henery told me, he was tryin' to catch up a big car
+that just came out from France, and it had a half-hour start of him,
+and he was just fairly flyin', and there was a lot of cars on the road,
+and he flies past 'em so fast the old man says, `It's very strange,
+Henery,' he says, `that all the cars that are out to-day are comin'
+this way,' he says.  You see he was passin' 'em so fast he thought
+they were all comin' towards him.
+
+"And Henery sees a mate of his comin', so he lets out a notch or two,
+and the two cars flew by each other like chain lightnin'.  They were each
+doin' about forty, and the old man, he says, `There's a driver
+must be travellin' a hundred miles an hour,' he says.  `I never see a car
+go by so fast in my life,' he says.  `If I could find out who he is,
+I'd report him,' he says.  `Did you know the car, Henery?'
+But of course Henery, he doesn't know, so on they goes.
+
+"The owner of the big French car thinks he has the fastest car
+in Australia, and when he sees Henery and the old man coming, he tells
+his driver to let her out a little; but Henery gives the ninety-horse
+the full of the lever, and whips up alongside in one jump.  And then
+he keeps there just half a length ahead of him, tormentin' him like.
+And the owner of the French car he yells out to old John Bull,
+`You're going a nice pace for an old 'un,' he says.  Old John has a blink
+down at the indicator.  `We're doing twenty-five,' he yells out.
+`Twenty-five grandmothers,' says the bloke; but Henery he put on
+his accelerator, and left him.  It wouldn't do to let the old man
+get wise to it, you know."
+
+We topped a big hill, and Alfred cut off the engine and let the car swoop,
+as swiftly and noiselessly as an eagle, down to the flat country below.
+
+"You're a long while coming to the elephant, Alfred," I said.
+
+"Well, now, I'll tell you about the elephant," said Alfred,
+letting his clutch in again, and taking up the story to the accompaniment
+of the rhythmic throb of the engine.
+
+"One day Henery and the old man were going out a long trip
+over the mountain, and down the Kangaroo Valley Road that's all cut out
+of the side of the 'ill.  And after they's gone a mile or two,
+Henery sees a track in the road -- the track of the biggest car
+he ever seen or 'eard of.  An' the more he looks at it, the more he reckons
+he must ketch that car and see what she's made of.  So he slows down
+passin' two yokels on the road, and he says, `Did you see a big car
+along 'ere?'
+
+"`Yes, we did,' they says.
+
+"`How big is she?' says Henery.
+
+"`Biggest car ever we see,' says the yokels, and they laughed
+that silly way these yokels always does.
+
+"`How many horse-power do you think she was?' says Henery.
+
+"`Horse-power,' they says; `elephant-power, you mean!
+She was three elephant-power,' they says; and they goes `Haw, haw!'
+and Henery drops his clutch in, and off he goes after that car."
+
+Alfred lit another cigarette as a preliminary to the climax.
+
+"So they run for miles, and all the time there's the track ahead of 'em,
+and Henery keeps lettin' her out, thinkin' that he'll never ketch that car.
+They went through a town so fast, the old man he says, `What house was that
+we just passed,' he says.  At last they come to the top of the big 'ill,
+and there's the tracks of the big car goin' straight down ahead of 'em.
+
+"D'you know that road?  It's all cut out of the side of the mountain,
+and there's places where if she was to side-slip you'd go down
+'undreds of thousands of feet.  And there's sharp turns, too;
+but the surface is good, so Henery he lets her out, and down they go,
+whizzin' round the turns and skatin' out near the edge,
+and the old cove sittin' there enjoyin' it, never knowin' the danger.
+And comin' to one turn Henery gives a toot on the 'orn,
+and then he heard somethin' go `toot, toot' right away down the mountain.
+
+"'Bout a mile ahead it seemed to be, and Henery reckoned he'd go
+another four miles before he'd ketch it, so he chances them turns
+more than ever.  And she was pretty hot, too; but he kept her at it,
+and he hadn't gone a full mile till he come round a turn
+about forty miles an hour, and before he could stop he run right into it,
+and wot do you think it was?"
+
+I hadn't the faintest idea.
+
+"A circus.  One of them travellin' circuses, goin' down the coast;
+and one of the elephants had sore feet, so they put him in a big waggon,
+and another elephant pulled in front and one pushed behind.
+Three elephant-power it was, right enough.  That was the waggon wot made
+the big track.  Well, it was all done so sudden.  Before Henery could stop,
+he runs the radiator -- very near boiling she was -- up against the
+elephant's tail, and prints the pattern of the latest honeycomb radiator
+on the elephant as clear as if you done it with a stencil.
+
+"The elephant, he lets a roar out of him like one of them bulls bellerin',
+and he puts out his nose and ketches Henery round the neck,
+and yanks him out of the car, and chucks him right clean over the cliff,
+'bout a thousand feet.  But he never done nothin' to the old bloke."
+
+"Good gracious!"
+
+"Well, it finished Henery, killed him stone dead, of course,
+and the old man he was terrible cut up over losin' such a steady,
+trustworthy man.  `Never get another like him,' he says."
+
+We were nearly at our journey's end, and we turned through a gate
+into the home paddocks.  Some young stock, both horses and cattle,
+came frisking and cantering after the car, and the rough bush track
+took all Alfred's attention.  We crossed a creek, the water swishing
+from the wheels, and began the long pull up to the homestead.
+Over the clamour of the little-used second speed, Alfred concluded
+his narrative.
+
+"The old bloke advertised," he said, "for another driver, a steady,
+reliable man to drive a twenty horse-power, four-cylinder touring car.
+Every driver in Sydney put in for it.  Nothing like a fast car
+to fetch 'em, you know.  And Scotty got it.  Him wot used to drive
+the Napier I was tellin' you about."
+
+"And what did the old man say when he found he'd been running
+a racing car?"
+
+"He don't know now.  Scotty never told 'im.  Why should he?
+He's drivin' about the country now, the boss of the roads,
+but he won't chance her near a circus.  Thinks he might bump
+the same elephant.  And that elephant, every time he smells a car
+passin' in the road, he goes near mad with fright.  If he ever sees
+that car again, do you think he'd know it?"
+
+Not being used to elephants, I could not offer an opinion.
+
+
+
+
+The Oracle
+
+
+
+No tram ever goes to Randwick races without him; he is always fat,
+hairy, and assertive; he is generally one of a party,
+and takes the centre of the stage all the time --
+collects and hands over the fares, adjusts the change,
+chaffs the conductor, crushes the thin, apologetic stranger next him
+into a pulp, and talks to the whole compartment as if they had asked
+for his opinion.
+
+He knows all the trainers and owners, or takes care to give the impression
+that he does.  He slowly and pompously hauls out his race book,
+and one of his satellites opens the ball by saying, in a deferential way:
+
+"What do you like for the 'urdles, Charley?"
+
+The Oracle looks at the book and breathes heavily; no one else
+ventures to speak.
+
+"Well," he says, at last, "of course there's only one in it --
+if he's wanted.  But that's it -- will they spin him?  I don't think
+they will.  They's only a lot o' cuddies, any'ow."
+
+No one likes to expose his own ignorance by asking which horse he refers to
+as the "only one in it"; and the Oracle goes on to deal out
+some more wisdom in a loud voice.
+
+"Billy K---- told me" (he probably hardly knows Billy K---- by sight)
+"Billy K---- told me that that bay 'orse ran the best mile-an'-a-half
+ever done on Randwick yesterday; but I don't give him a chance,
+for all that; that's the worst of these trainers.  They don't know
+when their horses are well -- half of 'em."
+
+Then a voice comes from behind him.  It is that of the thin man,
+who is crushed out of sight by the bulk of the Oracle.
+
+"I think," says the thin man, "that that horse of Flannery's
+ought to run well in the Handicap."
+
+The Oracle can't stand this sort of thing at all.  He gives a snort,
+wheels half-round and looks at the speaker.  Then he turns back
+to the compartment full of people, and says:  "No 'ope."
+
+The thin man makes a last effort.  "Well, they backed him last night,
+anyhow."
+
+"Who backed 'im?" says the Oracle.
+
+"In Tattersall's," says the thin man.
+
+"I'm sure," says the Oracle; and the thin man collapses.
+
+On arrival at the course, the Oracle is in great form.  Attended by his
+string of satellites, he plods from stall to stall staring at the horses.
+Their names are printed in big letters on the stalls, but the Oracle
+doesn't let that stop his display of knowledge.
+
+"'Ere's Blue Fire," he says, stopping at that animal's stall,
+and swinging his race book.  "Good old Blue Fire!" he goes on loudly,
+as a little court collects.  "Jimmy B----" (mentioning a popular jockey)
+"told me he couldn't have lost on Saturday week if he had only
+been ridden different.  I had a good stake on him, too, that day.
+Lor', the races that has been chucked away on this horse.
+They will not ride him right."
+
+A trainer who is standing by, civilly interposes.  "This isn't Blue Fire,"
+he says.  "Blue Fire's out walking about.  This is a two-year-old filly
+that's in the stall ----"
+
+"Well, I can see that, can't I," says the Oracle, crushingly.
+"You don't suppose I thought Blue Fire was a mare, did you?"
+and he moves off hurriedly.
+
+"Now, look here, you chaps," he says to his followers at last.
+"You wait here.  I want to go and see a few of the talent, and it don't do
+to have a crowd with you.  There's Jimmy M---- over there now"
+(pointing to a leading trainer).  "I'll get hold of him in a minute.
+He couldn't tell me anything with so many about.  Just you wait here."
+
+He crushes into a crowd that has gathered round the favourite's stall,
+and overhears one hard-faced racing man say to another, "What do you like?"
+to which the other answers, "Well, either this or Royal Scot.
+I think I'll put a bit on Royal Scot."  This is enough for the Oracle.
+He doesn't know either of the men from Adam, or either of the horses
+from the great original pachyderm, but the information will do
+to go on with.  He rejoins his followers, and looks very mysterious.
+
+"Well, did you hear anything?" they say.
+
+The Oracle talks low and confidentially.
+
+"The crowd that have got the favourite tell me they're not afraid
+of anything but Royal Scot," he says.  "I think we'd better put
+a bit on both."
+
+"What did the Royal Scot crowd say?" asks an admirer deferentially.
+
+"Oh, they're going to try and win.  I saw the stable commissioner,
+and he told me they were going to put a hundred on him.  Of course,
+you needn't say I told you, 'cause I promised him I wouldn't tell."
+And the satellites beam with admiration of the Oracle, and think
+what a privilege it is to go to the races with such a knowing man.
+
+They contribute their mites to the general fund, some putting in a pound,
+others half a sovereign, and the Oracle takes it into the ring to invest,
+half on the favourite and half on Royal Scot.  He finds that the favourite
+is at two to one, and Royal Scot at threes, eight to one being offered
+against anything else.  As he ploughs through the ring, a Whisperer
+(one of those broken-down followers of the turf who get their living
+in various mysterious ways, but partly by giving "tips" to backers)
+pulls his sleeve.
+
+"What are you backing?" he says.
+
+"Favourite and Royal Scot," says the Oracle.
+
+"Put a pound on Bendemeer," says the tipster.  "It's a certainty.
+Meet me here if it comes off, and I'll tell you something
+for the next race.  Don't miss it now.  Get on quick!"
+
+The Oracle is humble enough before the hanger-on of the turf.
+A bookmaker roars "10 to 1 Bendemeer;" he suddenly fishes out a sovereign
+of his own -- and he hasn't money to spare, for all his knowingness --
+and puts it on Bendemeer.  His friends' money he puts on the favourite
+and Royal Scot as arranged.  Then they all go round to watch the race.
+
+The horses are at the post; a distant cluster of crowded animals
+with little dots of colour on their backs.  Green, blue, yellow, purple,
+French grey, and old gold, they change about in a bewildering manner,
+and though the Oracle has a cheap pair of glasses, he can't make out
+where Bendemeer has got to.  Royal Scot and the favourite
+he has lost interest in, and secretly hopes that they will be
+left at the post or break their necks; but he does not confide
+his sentiment to his companions.
+
+They're off!  The long line of colours across the track
+becomes a shapeless clump and then draws out into a long string.
+"What's that in front?" yells someone at the rails.
+"Oh, that thing of Hart's," says someone else.  But the Oracle
+hears them not; he is looking in the mass of colour
+for a purple cap and grey jacket, with black arm bands.
+He cannot see it anywhere, and the confused and confusing mass
+swings round the turn into the straight.
+
+Then there is a babel of voices, and suddenly a shout of "Bendemeer!
+Bendemeer!" and the Oracle, without knowing which is Bendemeer,
+takes up the cry feverishly.  "Bendemeer! Bendemeer!" he yells,
+waggling his glasses about, trying to see where the animal is.
+
+"Where's Royal Scot, Charley?  Where's Royal Scot?" screams one
+of his friends, in agony.  "'Ow's he doin'?"
+
+"No 'ope!" says the Oracle, with fiendish glee.  "Bendemeer! Bendemeer!"
+
+The horses are at the Leger stand now, whips are out, and three horses
+seem to be nearly abreast; in fact, to the Oracle there seem to be
+a dozen nearly abreast.  Then a big chestnut sticks his head in front
+of the others, and a small man at the Oracle's side emits
+a deafening series of yells right by the Oracle's ear:
+
+"Go on, Jimmy!  Rub it into him!  Belt him!  It's a cake-walk!
+A cake-walk!  The big chestnut, in a dogged sort of way,
+seems to stick his body clear of his opponents, and passes the post
+a winner by a length.  The Oracle doesn't know what has won, but fumbles
+with his book.  The number on the saddle-cloth catches his eye -- No. 7;
+he looks hurriedly down the page.  No. 7 -- Royal Scot.  Second is No. 24
+-- Bendemeer.  Favourite nowhere.
+
+Hardly has he realised it, before his friends are cheering and clapping him
+on the back.  "By George, Charley, it takes you to pick 'em."
+"Come and 'ave a wet!"  "You 'ad a quid in, didn't you, Charley?"
+The Oracle feels very sick at having missed the winner, but he dies game.
+"Yes, rather; I had a quid on," he says.  "And" (here he nerves himself
+to smile) "I had a saver on the second, too."
+
+His comrades gasp with astonishment.  "D'you hear that, eh?  Charley backed
+first and second.  That's pickin' 'em if you like."  They have a wet,
+and pour fulsome adulation on the Oracle when he collects their money.
+
+After the Oracle has collected the winnings for his friends
+he meets the Whisperer again.
+
+"It didn't win?" he says to the Whisperer in inquiring tones.
+
+"Didn't win," says the Whisperer, who has determined to brazen
+the matter out.  "How could he win?  Did you see the way he was ridden?
+That horse was stiffened just after I seen you, and he never tried a yard.
+Did you see the way he was pulled and hauled about at the turn?
+It'd make a man sick.  What was the stipendiary stewards doing, I wonder?"
+
+This fills the Oracle with a new idea.  All that he remembers of the race
+at the turn was a jumble of colours, a kaleidoscope of horses and of riders
+hanging on to the horses' necks.  But it wouldn't do to admit that he
+didn't see everything, and didn't know everything; so he plunges in boldly.
+
+"O' course I saw it," he says.  "And a blind man could see it.
+They ought to rub him out."
+
+"Course they ought," says the Whisperer.  "But, look here,
+put two quid on Tell-tale; you'll get it all back!"
+
+The Oracle does put on "two quid", and doesn't get it all back.
+Neither does he see any more of this race than he did of the last one --
+in fact, he cheers wildly when the wrong horse is coming in.
+But when the public begin to hoot he hoots as loudly as anybody --
+louder if anything; and all the way home in the tram he lays down the law
+about stiff running, and wants to know what the stipendiaries are doing.
+
+If you go into any barber's shop, you can hear him at it, and he flourishes
+in suburban railway carriages; but he has a tremendous local reputation,
+having picked first and second in the handicap, and it would be a bold man
+who would venture to question the Oracle's knowledge of racing
+and of all matters relating to it.
+
+
+
+
+The Cast-iron Canvasser
+
+
+
+The firm of Sloper and Dodge, publishers and printers,
+was in great distress.  These two enterprising individuals had worked up
+an enormous business in time-payment books, which they sold
+all over Australia by means of canvassers.  They had put
+all the money they had into the business; and now, just when everything
+was in thorough working order, the public had revolted against them.
+
+Their canvassers were molested by the country folk in divers
+strange bush ways.  One was made drunk, and then a two-horse harrow
+was run over him; another was decoyed into the ranges on pretence
+of being shown a gold-mine, and his guide galloped away
+and left him to freeze all night in the bush.  In mining localities
+the inhabitants were called together by beating a camp-oven lid
+with a pick, and the canvasser was given ten minutes in which
+to get out of the town alive.  If he disregarded the hint he would,
+as likely as not, fall accidentally down a disused shaft.
+
+The people of one district applied to their M.P. to have canvassers
+brought under the "Noxious Animals Act", and demanded that a reward
+should be offered for their scalps.  Reports appeared in the country press
+about strange, gigantic birds that appeared at remote selections
+and frightened the inhabitants to death -- these were Sloper and Dodge's
+sober and reliable agents, wearing neat, close-fitting suits
+of tar and feathers.
+
+In fact, it was altogether too hot for the canvassers,
+and they came in from North and West and South, crippled and disheartened,
+to tender their resignations.  To make matters worse, Sloper and Dodge had
+just got out a large Atlas of Australasia, and if they couldn't sell it,
+ruin stared them in the face; and how could they sell it
+without canvassers?
+
+The members of the firm sat in their private office.  Sloper was a long,
+sanctimonious individual, very religious and very bald.
+Dodge was a little, fat American, with bristly, black hair and beard,
+and quick, beady eyes.  He was eternally smoking a reeking black pipe,
+and puffing the smoke through his nose in great whiffs, like a locomotive
+on a steep grade.  Anybody walking into one of those whiffs
+was liable to get paralysis.
+
+Just as things were at their very blackest, something had turned up
+that promised to relieve all their difficulties.  An inventor had offered
+to supply them with a patent cast-iron canvasser -- a figure which
+(he said) when wound up would walk, talk, collect orders,
+and stand any amount of ill-usage and wear and tear.  If this could
+indeed be done, they were saved.  They had made an appointment
+with the genius; but he was half-an-hour late, and the partners
+were steeped in gloom.
+
+They had begun to despair of his appearing at all, when a cab rattled up
+to the door.  Sloper and Dodge rushed unanimously to the window.
+A young man, very badly dressed, stepped out of the cab,
+holding over his shoulder what looked like the upper half of a man's body.
+In his disengaged hand he held a pair of human legs
+with boots and trousers on.  Thus burdened he turned to ask his fare,
+but the cabman gave a yell of terror, whipped up his horse,
+and disappeared at a hand-gallop; and a woman who happened to be going by,
+ran down the street, howling that Jack the Ripper had come to town.
+The man bolted in at the door, and toiled up the dark stairs
+tramping heavily, the legs and feet, which he dragged after him,
+making an unearthly clatter.  He came in and put his burden down
+on the sofa.
+
+"There you are, gents," he said; "there's your canvasser."
+
+Sloper and Dodge recoiled in horror.  The upper part of the man
+had a waxy face, dull, fishy eyes, and dark hair; he lounged on the sofa
+like a corpse at ease, while his legs and feet stood by, leaning stiffly
+against the wall.  The partners gazed at him for a while in silence.
+
+"Fix him together, for God's sake," said Dodge.  "He looks awful."
+
+The Genius grinned, and fixed the legs on.
+
+"Now he looks better," said Dodge, poking about the figure --
+"looks as much like life as most -- ah, would you, you brute!"
+he exclaimed, springing back in alarm, for the figure had made
+a violent La Blanche swing at him.
+
+"That's all right," said the Inventor.  "It's no good having his face
+knocked about, you know -- lot of trouble to make that face.
+His head and body are full of springs, and if anybody hits him in the face,
+or in the pit of the stomach -- favourite places to hit canvassers,
+the pit of the stomach -- it sets a strong spring in motion,
+and he fetches his right hand round with a swipe that'll knock them into
+the middle of next week.  It's an awful hit.  Griffo couldn't dodge it,
+and Slavin couldn't stand up against it.  No fear of any man
+hitting HIM twice.
+
+"And he's dog-proof, too.  His legs are padded with tar and oakum,
+and if a dog bites a bit out of him, it will take that dog weeks
+to pick his teeth clean.  Never bite anybody again, that dog won't.
+And he'll talk, talk, talk, like a suffragist gone mad;
+his phonograph can be charged for 100,000 words, and all you've got to do
+is to speak into it what you want him to say, and he'll say it.
+He'll go on saying it till he talks his man silly, or gets an order.
+He has an order-form in his hand, and as soon as anyone signs it
+and gives it back to him, that sets another spring in motion,
+and he puts the order in his pocket, turns round, and walks away.
+Grand idea, isn't he?  Lor' bless you, I fairly love him."
+
+He beamed affectionately on his monster.
+
+"What about stairs?" said Dodge.
+
+"No stairs in the bush," said the Inventor, blowing a speck of dust
+off his apparition; "all ground-floor houses.  Anyhow, if there were stairs
+we could carry him up and let him fall down afterwards,
+or get flung down like any other canvasser."
+
+"Ha!  Let's see him walk," said Dodge.
+
+The figure walked all right, stiff and erect.
+
+"Now let's hear him yabber."
+
+The Genius touched a spring, and instantly, in a queer, tin-whistly voice,
+he began to sing, "Little Annie Rooney".
+
+"Good!" said Dodge; "he'll do.  We'll give you your price.
+Leave him here to-night, and come in to-morrow.  We'll send you off
+to the back country with him.  Ninemile would be a good place to start in.
+Have a cigar?"
+
+Mr. Dodge, much elated, sucked at his pipe, and blew through his nose
+a cloud of nearly solid smoke, through which the Genius sidled out.
+They could hear him sneezing and choking all the way down the stairs.
+
+Ninemile is a quiet little place, sleepy beyond description.
+When the mosquitoes in that town settle on anyone,
+they usually go to sleep, and forget to bite him.  The climate is so hot
+that the very grasshoppers crawl into the hotel parlours out of the sun,
+climb up the window curtains, and then go to sleep.  The Riot Act
+never had to be read in Ninemile.  The only thing that can arouse
+the inhabitants out of their lethargy is the prospect of a drink
+at somebody else's expense.
+
+For these reasons it had been decided to start the Cast-iron Canvasser
+there, and then move him on to more populous and active localities
+if he proved a success.  They sent up the Genius, and one of their men
+who knew the district well.  The Genius was to manage the automaton,
+and the other was to lay out the campaign, choose the victims,
+and collect the money, geniuses being notoriously unreliable
+and loose in their cash.  They got through a good deal of whisky
+on the way up, and when they arrived at Ninemile were in a cheerful mood,
+and disposed to take risks.
+
+"Who'll we begin on?" said the Genius.
+
+"Oh, hang it all," said the other, "let's make a start with Macpherson."
+
+Macpherson was a Land Agent, and the big bug of the place.
+He was a gigantic Scotchman, six feet four in his socks,
+and freckled all over with freckles as big as half-crowns.
+His eyebrows would have made decent-sized moustaches for a cavalryman,
+and his moustaches looked like horns.  He was a fighter from the ground up,
+and had a desperate "down" on canvassers generally,
+and on Sloper and Dodge's canvassers in particular.
+
+Sloper and Dodge had published a book called "Remarkable Colonials",
+and Macpherson had written out his own biography for it.  He was
+intensely proud of his pedigree and his relations, and in his narrative
+made out that he was descended from the original Fhairshon
+who swam round Noah's Ark with his title-deeds in his teeth.
+He showed how his people had fought under Alexander the Great and Timour,
+and had come over to Scotland some centuries before William the Conqueror
+landed in England.  He proved that he was related in a general way
+to one emperor, fifteen kings, twenty-five dukes, and earls and lords
+and viscounts innumerable.  And then, after all, the editor
+of "Remarkable Colonials" managed to mix him up with some other fellow,
+some low-bred Irish McPherson, born in Dublin of poor but honest parents.
+
+It was a terrible outrage.  Macpherson became president of
+the Western District Branch of the "Remarkable Colonials" Defence League,
+a fierce and homicidal association got up to resist, legally and otherwise,
+paying for the book.  He had further sworn by all he held sacred
+that every canvasser who came to harry him in future should die,
+and had put up a notice on his office-door, "Canvassers come in
+at their own risk."
+
+He had a dog of what he called the Hold'em breed, who could tell
+a canvasser by his walk, and would go for him on sight.
+The reader will understand, therefore, that, when the Genius and his mate
+proposed to start on Macpherson, they were laying out a capacious contract
+for the Cast-iron Canvasser, and could only have been inspired by a morbid
+craving for excitement, aided by the influence of backblock whisky.
+
+The Inventor wound the figure up in the back parlour of the pub.
+There were a frightful lot of screws to tighten before the thing
+would work, but at last he said it was ready, and they shambled off
+down the street, the figure marching stiffly between them.
+It had a book tucked under its arm and an order-form in its hand.
+When they arrived opposite Macpherson's office, the Genius started
+the phonograph working, pointed the figure straight at Macpherson's door,
+and set it going.  Then the two conspirators waited, like Guy Fawkes
+in his cellar.
+
+The automaton marched across the road and in at the open door,
+talking to itself loudly in a hoarse, unnatural voice.
+
+Macpherson was writing at his table, and looked up.
+
+The figure walked bang through a small collection of flower-pots,
+sent a chair flying, tramped heavily in the spittoon, and then brought up
+against the table with a loud crash and stood still.  It was talking
+all the time.
+
+"I have here," it said, "a most valuable work, an Atlas of Australia,
+which I desire to submit to your notice.  The large and increasing demand
+of bush residents for time-payment works has induced the publishers
+of this ----"
+
+"My God!" said Macpherson, "it's a canvasser.  Here, Tom Sayers,
+Tom Sayers!" and he whistled and called for his dog.  "Now," he said,
+"will you go out of this office quietly, or will you be thrown out?
+It's for yourself to decide, but you've only got while a duck wags his tail
+to decide in.  Which'll it be?"
+
+"---- works of modern ages," said the canvasser.  "Every person
+subscribing to this invaluable work will receive, in addition,
+a flat-iron, a railway pass for a year, and a pocket-compass.
+If you will please sign this order ----"
+
+Just here Tom Sayers came tearing through the office,
+and without waiting for orders hitched straight on to the canvasser's calf.
+To Macpherson's amazement the piece came clear away, and Tom Sayers
+rolled about on the floor with his mouth full of a sticky substance
+which seemed to surprise him badly.
+
+The long Scotchman paused awhile before this mystery, but at last
+he fancied he had got the solution.  "Got a cork leg, have you?" said he --
+"Well, let's see if your ribs are cork too," and he struck the canvasser
+an awful blow on the fifth button of the waistcoat.
+
+Quicker than lightning came that terrific right-hand cross-counter.
+Macpherson never even knew what happened to him.  The canvasser's
+right hand, which had been adjusted by his inventor for a high blow,
+had landed on the butt of Macpherson's ear and dropped him like a fowl.
+The gasping, terrified bull-dog fled the scene, and the canvasser
+stood over his fallen foe, still intoning the virtues of his publication.
+He had come there merely as a friend, he said, to give the inhabitants
+of Ninemile a chance to buy a book which had recently earned the approval
+of King O'Malley and His Excellency the Governor-General.
+
+The Genius and his mate watched this extraordinary drama
+through the window.  The stimulant habitually consumed by the Ninemilers
+had induced in them a state of superlative Dutch courage,
+and they looked upon the whole affair as a wildly hilarious joke.
+
+"By Gad! he's done him," said the Genius, as Macpherson went down,
+"done him in one hit.  If he don't pay as a canvasser I'll take him to town
+and back him to fight Les Darcy.  Look out for yourself;
+don't you handle him!" he continued as the other approached the figure.
+"Leave him to me.  As like as not, if you get fooling about him,
+he'll give you a clout that'll paralyse you."
+
+So saying, he guided the automaton out of the office and into the street,
+and walked straight into a policeman.
+
+By a common impulse the Genius and his mate ran rapidly away
+in different directions, leaving the figure alone with the officer.
+
+He was a fully-ordained sergeant -- by name Aloysius O'Grady; a squat,
+rosy little Irishman.  He hated violent arrests and all that sort of thing,
+and had a faculty of persuading drunks and disorderlies and other
+fractious persons to "go quietly along wid him," that was little short
+of marvellous.  Excited revellers, who were being carried by their mates,
+struggling violently, would break away to prance gaily along to the lock-up
+with the sergeant.  Obstinate drunks who had done nothing
+but lie on the ground and kick their feet in the air,
+would get up like birds, serpent-charmed, to go with him to durance vile.
+
+As soon as he saw the canvasser, and noted his fixed, unearthly stare,
+and listened to his hoarse, unnatural voice, the sergeant knew
+what was the matter; it was a man in the horrors, a common enough spectacle
+at Ninemile.  He resolved to decoy him into the lock-up, and accosted him
+in a friendly, free-and-easy way.
+
+"Good day t'ye," he said.
+
+"---- most magnificent volume ever published, jewelled in fourteen holes,
+working on a ruby roller, and in a glass case," said the book-canvasser.
+"The likenesses of the historical personages are so natural
+that the book must not be left open on the table, or the mosquitoes
+will ruin it by stinging the portraits."
+
+It then dawned on the sergeant that this was no mere case of the horrors --
+he was dealing with a book-canvasser.
+
+"Ah, sure," he said, "fwhat's the use uv tryin' to sell books at all,
+at all; folks does be peltin' them out into the street, and the nanny-goats
+lives on them these times.  Oi send the childer out to pick 'em up,
+and we have 'em at me place in barrow-loads.  Come along wid me now,
+and Oi'll make you nice and comfortable for the night,"
+and he laid his hand on the outstretched palm of the figure.
+
+It was a fatal mistake.  He had set in motion the machinery which operated
+the figure's left arm, and it moved that limb in towards its body,
+and hugged the sergeant to its breast, with a vice-like grip.
+Then it started in a faltering and uneven, but dogged, way
+to walk towards the river.
+
+"Immortial Saints!" gasped the sergeant, "he's squazin' the livin' breath
+out uv me.  Lave go now loike a dacent sowl, lave go.  And oh,
+for the love uv God, don't be shpakin' into me ear that way;"
+for the figure's mouth was pressed tight against the sergeant's ear,
+and its awful voice went through and through the little man's head,
+as it held forth about the volume.  The sergeant struggled violently,
+and by so doing set some more springs in motion, and the figure's right arm
+made terrific swipes in the air.  A following of boys and loafers
+had collected by this time.  "Blimey, how does he lash out!" was the remark
+they made.  But they didn't interfere, notwithstanding the sergeant's
+frantic appeals, and things were going hard with him when his subordinate,
+Constable Dooley, appeared on the scene.
+
+Dooley, better known as The Wombat because of his sleepy disposition,
+was a man of great strength.  He had originally been quartered at Sydney,
+and had fought many bitter battles with the notorious "pushes" of Bondi,
+Surry Hills and The Rocks.  After that, duty at Ninemile was child's play,
+and he never ran in fewer than two drunks at a time;
+it was beneath his dignity to be seen capturing a solitary inebriate.
+If they wouldn't come any other way, he would take them by the ankles
+and drag them after him.  When the Wombat saw the sergeant in the grasp
+of an inebriate he bore down on the fray full of fight.
+
+"I'll soon make him lave go, sergeant," he said, and he caught hold
+of the figure's right arm, to put on the "police twist".  Unfortunately,
+at that exact moment the sergeant touched one of the springs in
+the creature's breast.  With the suddenness and severity of a horse-kick,
+it lashed out with its right hand, catching the redoubtable Dooley
+a thud on the jaw, and sending him to grass as if he had been shot.
+
+For a few minutes he "lay as only dead men lie".  Then he got up
+bit by bit, wandered off home to the police-barracks,
+and mentioned casually to his wife that John L. Sullivan had come to town,
+and had taken the sergeant away to drown him.  After which,
+having given orders that anybody who called was to be told
+that he had gone fifteen miles out of town to serve a summons on a man
+for not registering a dog, he locked himself up in a cell
+for the rest of the day.
+
+Meanwhile, the Cast-iron Canvasser, still holding the sergeant
+tightly clutched to its breast, was marching straight towards the river.
+Something had disorganised its vocal arrangements, and it was now
+positively shrieking in the sergeant's ear, and, as it yelled,
+the little man yelled still louder.
+
+"Oi don't want yer accursed book.  Lave go uv me, Oi say!"
+He beat with his fists on its face, and kicked its shins without avail.
+A short, staggering rush, a wild shriek from the officer,
+and they both toppled over the steep bank and went souse into the depths
+of Ninemile Creek.
+
+That was the end of the matter.  The Genius and his mate
+returned to town hurriedly, and lay low, expecting to be indicted
+for murder.  Constable Dooley drew up a report for the Chief of Police
+which contained so many strange statements that the Police department
+concluded the sergeant must have got drunk and drowned himself,
+and that Dooley saw him do it, but was too drunk to pull him out.
+
+Anyone unacquainted with Ninemile might expect that a report
+of the occurrence would have reached the Sydney papers.
+As a matter of fact the storekeeper did think of writing one,
+but decided that it was too much trouble.  There was some idea
+of asking the Government to fish the two bodies out of the river;
+but about that time an agitation was started in Ninemile
+to have the Federal Capital located there, and nothing else mattered.
+
+The Genius discovered a pub in Sydney that kept the Ninemile brand
+of whisky, and drank himself to death; the Wombat became
+a Sub-Inspector of Police; Sloper entered the Christian ministry;
+Dodge was elected to the Federal Parliament; and a vague tradition about
+"a bloke who came up here in the horrors, and drownded poor old O'Grady,"
+is the only memory that remains of that wonderful creation,
+the Cast-iron Canvasser.
+
+
+
+
+The Merino Sheep
+
+
+
+People have got the impression that the merino is a gentle, bleating animal
+that gets its living without trouble to anybody, and comes up every year
+to be shorn with a pleased smile upon its amiable face.
+It is my purpose here to exhibit the merino sheep in its true light.
+
+First let us give him his due.  No one can accuse him of being
+a ferocious animal.  No one could ever say that a sheep attacked him
+without provocation; although there is an old bush story of a man
+who was discovered in the act of killing a neighbour's wether.
+
+"Hello!" said the neighbour, "What's this?  Killing my sheep!
+What have you got to say for yourself?"
+
+"Yes," said the man, with an air of virtuous indignation.
+"I AM killing your sheep.  I'll kill ANY man's sheep that bites ME!"
+
+But as a rule the merino refrains from using his teeth on people.
+He goes to work in another way.
+
+The truth is that he is a dangerous monomaniac, and his one idea
+is to ruin the man who owns him.  With this object in view
+he will display a talent for getting into trouble and a genius for dying
+that are almost incredible.
+
+If a mob of sheep see a bush fire closing round them, do they run away
+out of danger?  Not at all, they rush round and round in a ring
+till the fire burns them up.  If they are in a river-bed,
+with a howling flood coming down, they will stubbornly refuse
+to cross three inches of water to save themselves.  Dogs may bark
+and men may shriek, but the sheep won't move.  They will wait there
+till the flood comes and drowns them all, and then their corpses
+go down the river on their backs with their feet in the air.
+
+A mob will crawl along a road slowly enough to exasperate a snail,
+but let a lamb get away in a bit of rough country,
+and a racehorse can't head him back again.  If sheep are put into
+a big paddock with water in three corners of it, they will resolutely
+crowd into the fourth, and die of thirst.
+
+When being counted out at a gate, if a scrap of bark be left on the ground
+in the gateway, they will refuse to step over it until dogs and men
+have sweated and toiled and sworn and "heeled 'em up", and "spoke to 'em",
+and fairly jammed them at it.  At last one will gather courage,
+rush at the fancied obstacle, spring over it about six feet in the air,
+and dart away.  The next does exactly the same, but jumps a bit higher.
+Then comes a rush of them following one another in wild bounds
+like antelopes, until one overjumps himself and alights on his head.
+This frightens those still in the yard, and they stop running out.
+
+Then the dogging and shrieking and hustling and tearing have to be
+gone through all over again.  (This on a red-hot day, mind you,
+with clouds of blinding dust about, the yolk of wool irritating your eyes,
+and, perhaps, three or four thousand sheep to put through).
+The delay throws out the man who is counting, and he forgets whether
+he left off at 45 or 95.  The dogs, meanwhile, have taken the first chance
+to slip over the fence and hide in the shade somewhere, and then
+there are loud whistlings and oaths, and calls for Rover and Bluey.
+At last a dirt-begrimed man jumps over the fence, unearths Bluey,
+and hauls him back by the ear.  Bluey sets to work barking
+and heeling-'em up again, and pretends that he thoroughly enjoys it;
+but all the while he is looking out for another chance to "clear".
+And THIS time he won't be discovered in a hurry.
+
+There is a well-authenticated story of a ship-load of sheep that was lost
+because an old ram jumped overboard, and all the rest followed him.
+No doubt they did, and were proud to do it.  A sheep won't go through
+an open gate on his own responsibility, but he would gladly and proudly
+"follow the leader" through the red-hot portals of Hades:
+and it makes no difference whether the lead goes voluntarily,
+or is hauled struggling and kicking and fighting every inch of the way.
+
+For pure, sodden stupidity there is no animal like the merino.
+A lamb will follow a bullock-dray, drawn by sixteen bullocks
+and driven by a profane person with a whip, under the impression
+that the aggregate monstrosity is his mother.  A ewe never knows
+her own lamb by sight, and apparently has no sense of colour.
+She can recognise its voice half a mile off among a thousand other voices
+apparently exactly similar; but when she gets within five yards of it
+she starts to smell all the other lambs within reach,
+including the black ones -- though her own may be white.
+
+The fiendish resemblance which one sheep bears to another
+is a great advantage to them in their struggles with their owners.
+It makes it more difficult to draft them out of a strange flock,
+and much harder to tell when any are missing.
+
+Concerning this resemblance between sheep, there is a story told
+of a fat old Murrumbidgee squatter who gave a big price for a famous ram
+called Sir Oliver.  He took a friend out one day to inspect Sir Oliver,
+and overhauled that animal with a most impressive air of sheep-wisdom.
+
+"Look here," he said, "at the fineness of the wool.  See the serrations
+in each thread of it.  See the density of it.  Look at the way
+his legs and belly are clothed -- he's wool all over, that sheep.
+Grand animal, grand animal!"
+
+Then they went and had a drink, and the old squatter said, "Now,
+I'll show you the difference between a champion ram and a second-rater."
+So he caught a ram and pointed out his defects.  "See here -- not half
+the serrations that other sheep had.  No density of fleece to speak of.
+Bare-bellied as a pig, compared with Sir Oliver.  Not that this isn't
+a fair sheep, but he'd be dear at one-tenth Sir Oliver's price.
+By the way, Johnson" (to his overseer), "what ram IS this?"
+
+"That, sir," replied the astounded functionary -- "that IS Sir Oliver,
+sir!"
+
+There is another kind of sheep in Australia, as great a curse
+in his own way as the merino -- namely, the cross-bred,
+or half-merino-half-Leicester animal.  The cross-bred will get through,
+under, or over any fence you like to put in front of him.
+He is never satisfied with his owner's run, but always thinks
+other people's runs must be better, so he sets off to explore.
+He will strike a course, say, south-east, and so long as the fit takes him
+he will keep going south-east through all obstacles -- rivers, fences,
+growing crops, anything.  The merino relies on passive resistance
+for his success; the cross-bred carries the war into the enemy's camp,
+and becomes a living curse to his owner day and night.
+
+Once there was a man who was induced in a weak moment to buy
+twenty cross-bred rams.  From that hour the hand of Fate was upon him.
+They got into all the paddocks they shouldn't have been in.
+They scattered themselves over the run promiscuously.
+They visited the cultivation paddock and the vegetable-garden
+at their own sweet will.  And then they took to roving.  In a body
+they visited the neighbouring stations, and played havoc with the sheep
+all over the district.
+
+The wretched owner was constantly getting fiery letters
+from his neighbours:  "Your blanky rams are here.  Come and take them away
+at once," and he would have to go nine or ten miles to drive them home.
+Any man who has tried to drive rams on a hot day knows what purgatory is.
+He was threatened every week with actions for trespass.
+
+He tried shutting them up in the sheep-yard.  They got out and went back
+to the garden.  Then he gaoled them in the calf-pen.
+Out again and into a growing crop.  Then he set a boy to watch them;
+but the boy went to sleep, and they were four miles away across country
+before he got on to their tracks.
+
+At length, when they happened accidentally to be at home
+on their owner's run, there came a big flood.  His sheep, mostly merinos,
+had plenty of time to get on to high ground and save their lives;
+but, of course, they didn't, and were almost all drowned.  The owner sat
+on a rise above the waste of waters and watched the dead animals go by.
+He was a ruined man.  But he said, "Thank God, those cross-bred rams
+are drowned, anyhow."  Just as he spoke there was a splashing in the water,
+and the twenty rams solemnly swam ashore and ranged themselves in front
+of him.  They were the only survivors of his twenty thousand sheep.
+He broke down, and was taken to an asylum for insane paupers.
+The cross-breds had fulfilled their destiny.
+
+The cross-bred drives his owner out of his mind, but the merino
+ruins his man with greater celerity.  Nothing on earth
+will kill cross-breds; nothing will keep merinos alive.
+If they are put on dry salt-bush country they die of drought.
+If they are put on damp, well-watered country they die of worms, fluke,
+and foot-rot.  They die in the wet seasons and they die in the dry ones.
+
+The hard, resentful look on the faces of all bushmen comes from
+a long course of dealing with merino sheep.  The merino dominates the bush,
+and gives to Australian literature its melancholy tinge,
+its despairing pathos.  The poems about dying boundary-riders,
+and lonely graves under mournful she-oaks, are the direct outcome
+of the poet's too close association with that soul-destroying animal.
+A man who could write anything cheerful after a day in the drafting-yards
+would be a freak of nature.
+
+
+
+
+The Bullock
+
+
+
+The typical Australian bullock -- long-horned, sullen-eyed, stupid,
+and vindictive -- is bred away out in Queensland, on remote stations
+in the Never Never land, where men live on damper and beef,
+and occasionally eat a whole bottle of hot pickles at a sitting,
+simply to satisfy their craving for vegetable food.  Here,
+under the blazing tropic sun, among flies and dust and loneliness,
+they struggle with the bullock from year's end to year's end.
+It is not to be supposed that they take up this kind of thing for fun.
+The man who worked cattle for sport would wheel bricks for amusement.
+
+At periodical intervals a boom in cattle-country arises in the cities,
+and syndicates are formed to take up country and stock it.
+It looks so beautifully simple -- ON PAPER.
+
+You get your country, thousands of miles of it, for next to nothing.
+You buy your breeding herd for a ridiculously small sum,
+on long-dated bills.  Your staff consists of a manager,
+who toils for a share of the profits, a couple of half-civilized
+white stockmen at low wages, and a handful of blacks,
+who work harder for a little opium ash than they would for much money.
+Plant costs nothing, improvements nothing -- no woolshed is needed,
+there are no shearers to pay, and no carriage to market, for the bullock
+walks himself down to his doom.  Granted that prices are low,
+still it is obvious that there must be huge profits in the business.
+So the cattle start away out to "the country", where they are supposed
+to increase and multiply, and enrich their owners.  Alas! for such hopes.
+There is a curse on cattle.
+
+No one has ever been able to explain exactly how the deficit arises.
+Put the figures before the oldest and most experienced cattleman,
+and he will fail to show why they don't work out right.
+And yet they never do.  It is not the fault of the cattle themselves.
+Sheep would rather die than live -- and when one comes to think of
+the life they lead, one can easily understand their preference for death;
+but cattle, if given half a chance, will do their best to prolong
+their existence.
+
+If they are running on low-lying country and are driven off
+when a flood comes, they will probably walk back into the flood-water
+and get drowned as soon as their owner turns his back.  But, as a rule,
+cattle are not suicidal.  They sort themselves into mobs,
+they pick out the best bits of country, they find their way to the water,
+they breed habitually; but it always ends in the same way.
+The hand of Fate is against them.
+
+If a drought comes, they eat off the grass near the water
+and have to travel far out for a feed.  Then they fall away and get weak,
+and when they come down to drink they get bogged in the muddy waterholes
+and die there.
+
+Or Providence sends the pleuro, and big strong beasts slink away
+by themselves, and stand under trees glaring savagely till death comes.
+Or else the tick attacks them, and soon a fine, strong beast becomes
+a miserable, shrunken, tottering wreck.  Once cattle get really low
+in condition they are done for.  Sheep can be shifted when their
+pasture fails, but you can't shift cattle.  They die quicker on the roads
+than on the run.  The only thing is to watch and pray for rain.
+It always comes -- after the cattle are dead.
+
+As for describing the animals themselves, it would take volumes.
+Sheep are all alike, but cattle are all different.  The drovers on the road
+get to know the habits and tendencies of each particular bullock --
+the one-eyed bullock that pokes out to the side of the mob,
+the inquisitive bullock that is always walking over towards the drover
+as if he were going to speak to him, the agitator bullock who is always
+trying to get up a stampede and prodding the others with his horns.
+
+In poor Boake's "Where the Dead Men Lie" he says:
+
+    Only the hand of Night can free them --
+     That's when the dead men fly!
+    Only the frightened cattle see them --
+     See the dead men go by!
+    Cloven hoofs beating out one measure,
+    Bidding the stockman know no leisure --
+    That's when the dead men take their pleasure!
+     That's when the dead men fly!
+
+Cattle on a camp see ghosts, sure enough -- else, why is it that,
+when hundreds are in camp at night -- some standing, some lying asleep,
+all facing different ways -- in an instant, at some invisible
+cause of alarm, the whole mob are on their feet and all racing
+IN THE SAME DIRECTION, away from some unseen terror?
+
+It doesn't do to sneak round cattle at night; it is better
+to whistle and sing than to surprise them by a noiseless appearance.
+Anyone sneaking about frightens them, and then they will charge
+right over the top of somebody on the opposite side,
+and away into the darkness, becoming more and more frightened as they go,
+smashing against trees and stumps, breaking legs and ribs,
+and playing the dickens with themselves generally.  Cattle "on the road"
+are unaccountable animals; one cannot say for certain what they will do.
+In this respect they differ from sheep, whose movements can be predicted
+with absolute certainty.
+
+All the cussedness of the bovine race is centred in the cow.  In Australia
+the most opprobious epithet one can apply to a man or other object
+is "cow".  In the whole range of a bullock-driver's vocabulary
+there is no word that expresses his blistering scorn so well as "cow".
+To an exaggerated feminine perversity the cow adds a fiendish ingenuity
+in making trouble.
+
+A quiet milking-cow will "plant" her calf with such skill that ten stockmen
+cannot find him in a one-mile paddock.  While the search goes on
+she grazes unconcernedly, as if she never had a calf in her life.
+If by chance he be discovered, then one notices a curious thing.
+The very youngest calf, the merest staggering-Bob two days old,
+will not move till the old lady gives him orders to do so.
+One may pull him about without getting a move out of him.
+If sufficiently persecuted he will at last sing out for help, and then
+his mother will arrive full-gallop, charge men and horses indiscriminately,
+and clear out with him to the thickest timber in the most rugged part
+of the creek-bed, defying man to get her to the yard.
+
+While in his mother's company he seconds her efforts with great judgment.
+But, if he be separated from her, he will follow a horse and rider
+up to the yard thinking he is following his mother, though she bellow
+instructions to him from the rear.  Then the guileless agriculturist,
+having penned him up, sets a dog on him, and his cries soon fetch
+the old cow full-run to his assistance.  Once in the yard she is roped,
+hauled into the bail, propped up to prevent her throwing herself down,
+and milked by sheer brute-force.  After a while she steadies down
+and will walk into the bail, knowing her turn and behaving like
+a respectable female.
+
+Cows and calves have no idea of sound or distance.  If a cow is on
+the opposite side of the fence, and wishes to communicate with her calf,
+she will put her head through the fence, place her mouth against his ear
+as if she were going to whisper, and then utter a roar that can be heard
+two miles off.  It would stun a human being; but the calf thinks it over
+for a moment, and then answers with a prolonged yell in the old cow's ear.
+So the dialogue goes on for hours without either party dropping dead.
+
+There is an element of danger in dealing with cattle that makes men
+smart and self-reliant and independent.  Men who deal with sheep
+get gloomy and morbid, and are for ever going on strike.  Nobody ever heard
+of a stockman's strike.  The true stockrider thinks himself just as good
+a man as his boss, and inasmuch as "the boss" never makes any money,
+while the stockman gets his wages, the stockman may be considered as having
+the better position of the two.
+
+Sheepmen like to think that they know all about cattle, and could work them
+if they chose.  A Queensland drover once took a big mob from the Gulf
+right down through New South Wales, selling various lots as he went.
+He had to deliver some to a small sheep-man, near Braidwood,
+who was buying a few hundred cattle as a spec.  By the time they arrived,
+the cattle had been on the road eight months, and were quiet as milkers.
+But the sheep-man and his satellites came out, riding stable-fed horses and
+brandishing twenty-foot whips, all determined to sell their lives dearly.
+They galloped round the astonished cattle and spurred their horses
+and cracked their whips, till they roused the weary mob.  Then they started
+to cut out the beasts they wanted.  The horses rushed and pulled,
+and the whips maddened the cattle, and all was turmoil and confusion.
+
+The Queensland drovers looked on amazed, sitting their patient
+leg-weary horses they had ridden almost continuously for eight months.
+At last, seeing the hash the sheep-men were making of it,
+the drovers set to work, and in a little while, without a shout,
+or crack of a whip, had cut out the required number.
+These the head drover delivered to the buyer, simply remarking,
+"Many's the time YOU never cut-out cattle."
+
+As I write, there rises a vision of a cattle-camp on an open plain,
+the blue sky overhead, the long grass rustling below,
+the great mob of parti-coloured cattle eddying restlessly about,
+thrusting at each other with their horns; and in among
+the sullen half-savage animals go the light, wiry stock-riders,
+horse and man working together, watchful, quick, and resolute.
+
+A white steer is wanted that is right in the throng.  Way! -- make way!
+and horse and rider edge into the restless sea of cattle,
+the man with his eye fixed on the selected animal, the horse,
+glancing eagerly about him, trying to discover which is the wanted one.
+The press divides and the white steer scuttles along the edge of the mob
+trying to force his way in again.  Suddenly he and two or three others
+are momentarily eddied out to the outskirts of the mob, and in that second
+the stockman dashes his horse between them and the main body.
+The lumbering beasts rush hither and thither in a vain attempt
+to return to their comrades.  Those not wanted are allowed to return,
+but the white steer finds, to his dismay, that wherever he turns that horse
+and man and dreaded whip are confronting him.  He doubles and dodges
+and makes feints to charge, but the horse anticipates every movement
+and wheels quicker than the bullock.  At last the white steer sees
+the outlying mob he is required to join, and trots off to them quite happy,
+while horse and rider return to cut out another.
+
+It is a pretty exhibition of skill and intelligence, doubly pleasant
+to watch because of the undoubted interest that the horses take in it.
+Big, stupid creatures that they are, cursed with highly-strung nerves,
+and blessed with little sense, they are pathetically anxious to do
+such work as they can understand.  So they go into the cutting-out camp
+with a zest, and toil all day edging lumbering bullocks out of the mob,
+but as soon as a bad rider gets on them and begins
+to haul their mouths about, their nerves overcome them,
+and they get awkward and frightened.  A horse that is a crack camp-horse
+in one man's hands may be a hopeless brute in the hands of another.
+
+
+
+
+White-when-he's-wanted
+
+
+
+Buckalong was a big freehold of some 80,000 acres, belonging to
+an absentee syndicate, and therefore run in most niggardly style.
+There was a manager on 200 pounds a year, Sandy M'Gregor to wit --
+a hard-headed old Scotchman known as "four-eyed M'Gregor",
+because he wore spectacles.  For assistants, he had half-a-dozen of us --
+jackaroos and colonial-experiencers -- who got nothing a year,
+and earned it.
+
+We had, in most instances, paid premiums to learn the noble art
+of squatting -- which now appears to me hardly worth studying,
+for so much depends on luck that a man with a head as long as a horse's
+has little better chance than the fool just imported.
+Besides the manager and the jackaroos, there were a few boundary riders
+to prowl round the fences of the vast paddocks.  This constituted
+the whole station staff.
+
+Buckalong was on one of the main routes by which stock were taken
+to market, or from the plains to the tablelands, and vice versa.
+Great mobs of travelling sheep constantly passed through the run,
+eating up the grass and vexing the soul of the manager.  By law,
+sheep must travel six miles per day, and they must be kept to within
+half-a-mile of the road.  Of course we kept all the grass near the road
+eaten bare, to discourage travellers from coming that way.
+
+Such hapless wretches as did venture through Buckalong used to try hard
+to stray from the road and pick up a feed, but old Sandy was always
+ready for them, and would have them dogged right through the run.
+This bred feuds, and bad language, and personal combats between us
+and the drovers, whom we looked upon as natural enemies.
+
+The men who came through with mobs of cattle used to pull down
+the paddock fences at night, and slip the cattle in for refreshments,
+but old Sandy often turned out at 2 or 3 a.m. to catch a mob of bullocks
+in the horse-paddock, and then off they went to Buckalong pound.
+The drovers, as in duty bound, attributed the trespass to accident --
+broken rails, and so on -- and sometimes they tried to rescue the cattle,
+which again bred strife and police-court summonses.
+
+Besides having a particular aversion to drovers, old M'Gregor had
+a general "down" on the young Australians whom he comprehensively described
+as a "feckless, horrse-dealin', horrse-stealin', crawlin' lot o' wretches."
+According to him, a native-born would sooner work a horse to death
+than work for a living any day.  He hated any man who wanted
+to sell him a horse.
+
+"As aw walk the street," he used to say, "the fouk disna stawp me
+to buy claes nor shoon, an' wheerfore should they stawp me to buy horrses?
+It's `Mister M'Gregor, will ye purrchase a horrse?'  Let them wait
+till I ask them to come wi' their horrses."
+
+Such being his views on horseflesh and drovers, we felt
+no little excitement when one Sunday, at dinner, the cook came in to say
+there was "a drover-chap outside wanted the boss to come and have a look
+at a horse."  M'Gregor simmered a while, and muttered something about
+the "Sawbath day"; but at last he went out, and we filed after him
+to see the fun.
+
+The drover stood by the side of his horse, beneath the acacia trees
+in the yard.  He had a big scar on his face, apparently the result
+of collision with a fence; he looked thin and sickly and seemed
+poverty-stricken enough to disarm hostility.  Obviously, he was down
+on his luck.  Had it not been for that indefinable self-reliant look
+which drovers -- the Ishmaels of the bush -- always acquire, one might
+have taken him for a swagman.  His horse was in much the same plight.
+It was a ragged, unkempt pony, pitifully poor and very footsore,
+at first sight, an absolute "moke"; but a second glance showed
+colossal round ribs, square hips, and a great length of rein,
+the rest hidden beneath a wealth of loose hair.  He looked like
+"a good journey horse", possibly something better.
+
+We gathered round while M'Gregor questioned the drover.
+The man was monosyllabic to a degree, as the real bushmen generally are.
+It is only the rowdy and the town-bushy that are fluent of speech.
+
+"Guid mornin'," said M'Gregor.
+
+"Mornin', boss," said the drover, shortly.
+
+"Is this the horrse ye hae for sale?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Ay," and M'Gregor looked at the pony with a businesslike
+don't-think-much-of-him air, ran his hand lightly over the hard legs,
+and opened the passive creature's mouth.  "H'm," he said.
+Then he turned to the drover.  "Ye seem a bit oot o' luck.
+Ye're thin like.  What's been the matter?"
+
+"Been sick with fever -- Queensland fever.  Just come through
+from the North.  Been out on the Diamantina last."
+
+"Ay.  I was there mysel'," said M'Gregor.  "Hae ye the fever on ye still?"
+
+"Yes -- goin' home to get rid of it."
+
+A man can only get Queensland fever in a malarial district, but he can
+carry it with him wherever he goes.  If he stays, it will sap his strength
+and pull him to pieces; if he moves to a better climate, the malady moves
+with him, leaving him by degrees, and coming back at regular intervals
+to rack, shake, burn, and sweat its victim.  Gradually it wears itself out,
+often wearing its patient out at the same time.  M'Gregor had been through
+the experience, and there was a slight change in his voice as he went on
+with his palaver.
+
+"Whaur are ye makin' for the noo?"
+
+"Monaro -- my people live in Monaro."
+
+"Hoo will ye get to Monaro gin ye sell the horrse?"
+
+"Coach and rail.  Too sick to care about ridin'," said the drover,
+while a wan smile flitted over his yellow-grey features.
+"I've rode him far enough.  I've rode that horse a thousand miles.
+I wouldn't sell him, only I'm a bit hard up.  Sellin' him now
+to get the money to go home."
+
+"Hoo auld is he?"
+
+"Seven."
+
+"Is he a guid horrse on a camp?" asked M'Gregor.
+
+"No better camp-horse in Queensland," said the drover.  "You can chuck
+the reins on his neck, an' he'll cut out a beast by himself."
+
+M'Gregor's action in this matter puzzled us.  We spent our time
+crawling after sheep, and a camp-horse would be about as much use to us
+as side-pockets to a pig.  We had expected Sandy to rush the fellow
+off the place at once, and we couldn't understand how it was that he took
+so much interest in him.  Perhaps the fever-racked drover
+and the old camp-horse appealed to him in a way incomprehensible to us.
+We had never been on the Queensland cattle-camps, nor shaken and shivered
+with the fever, nor lived the roving life of the overlanders.
+M'Gregor had done all this, and his heart (I can see it all now) went out
+to the man who brought the old days back to him.
+
+"Ah, weel," he said, "we hae'na muckle use for a camp-horrse here,
+ye ken; wi'oot some of these lads wad like to try theer han'
+cuttin' oot the milkers' cawves frae their mithers."  And the old man
+laughed contemptuously, while we felt humbled in the sight of the man
+from far back.  "An' what'll ye be wantin' for him?" asked M'Gregor.
+
+"Reckon he's worth fifteen notes," said the drover.
+
+This fairly staggered us.  Our estimates had varied between
+thirty shillings and a fiver.  We thought the negotiations
+would close abruptly; but M'Gregor, after a little more examination,
+agreed to give the price, provided the saddle and bridle,
+both grand specimens of ancient art, were given in.  This was agreed to,
+and the drover was sent off to get his meals in the hut before leaving
+by the coach.
+
+"The mon is verra harrd up, an' it's a sair thing that Queensland fever,"
+was the only remark M'Gregor made.  But we knew now that there was
+a soft spot in his heart somewhere.
+
+Next morning the drover got a crisp-looking cheque.  He said no word
+while the cheque was being written, but, as he was going away,
+the horse happened to be in the yard, and he went over to the old comrade
+that had carried him so many miles, and laid a hand on his neck.
+
+"He ain't much to look at," said the drover, speaking slowly and awkwardly,
+"but he's white when he's wanted."  And just before the coach rattled off,
+the man of few words leant down from the box and nodded impressively,
+and repeated, "Yes, he's white when he's wanted."
+
+We didn't trouble to give the new horse a name.  Station horses
+are generally called after the man from whom they are bought.
+"Tom Devine", "The Regan mare", "Black M'Carthy" and "Bay M'Carthy"
+were among the appellations of our horses at that time.  As we didn't know
+the drover's name, we simply called the animal "The new horse"
+until a still newer horse was one day acquired.  Then, one of the hands
+being told to take the new horse, said, "D'yer mean the NEW new horse
+or the OLD new horse?"
+
+"Naw," said the boss, "not the new horrse -- that bay horrse we bought
+frae the drover.  The ane he said was white when he's wanted."
+
+And so, by degrees, the animal came to be referred to as the horse
+that's white when he's wanted, and at last settled down
+to the definite name of "White-when-he's-wanted".
+
+White-when-he's-wanted didn't seem much of an acquisition.  He was sent out
+to do slavery for Greenhide Billy, a boundary-rider who plumed himself
+on having once been a cattle-man.  After a week's experience of "White",
+Billy came in to the homestead disgusted.  The pony was so lazy
+that he had to build a fire under him to get him to move, and so rough
+that it made a man's nose bleed to ride him more than a mile.  "The boss
+must have been off his head to give fifteen notes for such a cow."
+
+M'Gregor heard this complaint.  "Verra weel, Mr. Billy," said he, hotly,
+"ye can juist tak' ane of the young horrses in yon paddock,
+an' if he bucks wi' ye an' kills ye, it's yer ain fault.
+Ye're a cattleman -- so ye say -- dommed if ah believe it.
+Ah believe ye're a dairy-farmin' body frae Illawarra.  Ye ken neither
+horrse nor cattle.  Mony's the time ye never rode buckjumpers, Mr. Billy"
+-- and with this parting-shot the old man turned into the house,
+and White-when-he's-wanted came back to the head station.
+
+For a while he was a sort of pariah.  He used to yard the horses,
+fetch up the cows, and hunt travelling sheep through the run.
+He really was lazy and rough, and we all decided that Billy's opinion
+of him was correct, until the day came to make one of our periodical raids
+on the wild horses in the hills at the back of the run.
+
+Every now and again we formed parties to run in some of these animals,
+and, after nearly galloping to death half-a-dozen good horses,
+we would capture three or four brumbies, and bring them in triumph
+to the homestead to be broken in.  By the time they had thrown
+half the crack riders on the station, broken all the bridles,
+rolled on all the saddles, and kicked all the dogs, they would be
+marketable (and no great bargains) at about thirty shillings a head.
+
+Yet there is no sport in the world to be mentioned in the same volume
+as "running horses", and we were very keen on it.  All the crack nags
+were got as fit as possible, and fed up beforehand;
+and on this particular occasion White-when-he's-wanted, being in good trim,
+was given a week's hard feed and lent to a harum-scarum fellow from
+the Upper Murray, who happened to be working in a survey camp on the run.
+How he did open our eyes!
+
+He ran the mob from hill to hill, from range to range,
+across open country and back again to the hills, over flats and gullies,
+through hop-scrub and stringybark ridges; and all the time
+White-when-he's-wanted was on the wing of the mob, pulling double.
+The mares and foals dropped out, the colts and young stock pulled up
+dead beat, and only the seasoned veterans were left.  Most of our horses
+caved in altogether; one or two were kept in the hunt by judicious nursing
+and shirking the work; but White-when-he's-wanted was with the quarry
+from end to end of the run, doing double his share; and at the finish,
+when a chance offered to wheel them into the trapyard, he simply
+smothered them for pace, and slewed them into the wings before they knew
+where they were.  Such a capture had not fallen to our lot for many a day,
+and the fame of White-when-he's-wanted was speedily noised abroad.
+
+He was always fit for work, always hungry, always ready
+to lie down and roll, and always lazy.  But when he heard the rush
+of the brumbies' feet in the scrub he became frantic with excitement.
+He could race over the roughest ground without misplacing a hoof
+or altering his stride, and he could sail over fallen timber
+and across gullies like a kangaroo.  Nearly every Sunday
+we were after the brumbies, until they got as lean as greyhounds
+and as cunning as policemen.  We were always ready
+to back White-when-he's-wanted to run-down, single-handed,
+any animal in the bush that we liked to put him after -- wild horses,
+wild cattle, kangaroos, emus, dingoes, kangaroo-rats -- we barred nothing,
+for, if he couldn't beat them for pace, he would outlast them.
+
+And then one day he disappeared from the paddock, and we never
+saw him again.  We knew there were plenty of men in the district
+who would steal him; but, as we knew also of many more who would "inform"
+for a pound or two, we were sure that it could not have been local "talent"
+that had taken him.  We offered good rewards and set some of the right sort
+to work, but heard nothing of him for about a year.
+
+Then the surveyor's assistant turned up again, after a trip
+to the interior.  He told us the usual string of back-block lies,
+and wound up by saying that out on the very fringe of settlement
+he had met an old acquaintance.
+
+"Who was that?"
+
+"Why, that little bay horse that I rode after the brumbies that time.
+The one you called White-when-he's-wanted."
+
+"The deuce you did!  Are you sure?  Who had him?"
+
+"Sure!  I'd swear to him anywhere.  A little drover fellow had him.
+A little fellow, with a big scar across his forehead.  Came from Monaro way
+somewhere.  He said he bought the horse from you for fifteen notes."
+
+The King's warrant doesn't run much out west of Boulia,
+and it is not likely that any of us will ever see the drover again,
+or will ever again cross the back of "White-when-he's-wanted".
+
+
+
+
+The Downfall of Mulligan's
+
+
+
+The sporting men of Mulligan's were an exceedingly knowing lot;
+in fact, they had obtained the name amongst their neighbours
+of being a little bit too knowing.  They had "taken down"
+the adjoining town in a variety of ways.  They were always winning
+maiden plates with horses which were shrewdly suspected to be old
+and well-tried performers in disguise.
+
+When the sports of Paddy's Flat unearthed a phenomenal runner in the shape
+of a blackfellow called Frying-pan Joe, the Mulligan contingent
+immediately took the trouble to discover a blackfellow of their own,
+and they made a match and won all the Paddy's Flat money
+with ridiculous ease; then their blackfellow turned out to be
+a well-known Sydney performer.  They had a man who could fight,
+a man who could be backed to jump five-feet-ten, a man who could
+kill eight pigeons out of nine at thirty yards, a man who could make
+a break of fifty or so at billiards if he tried; they could all drink,
+and they all had that indefinite look of infinite wisdom
+and conscious superiority which belongs only to those who know something
+about horseflesh.
+
+They knew a great many things never learnt at Sunday-school.
+They were experts at cards and dice.  They would go to immense trouble
+to work off any small swindle in the sporting line.
+In short the general consensus of opinion was that they were
+a very "fly" crowd at Mulligan's, and if you went there you wanted to
+"keep your eyes skinned" or they'd "have" you over a threepenny-bit.
+
+There were races at Sydney one Christmas, and a select band of
+the Mulligan sportsmen were going down to them.  They were in high feather,
+having just won a lot of money from a young Englishman at pigeon-shooting,
+by the simple method of slipping blank cartridges into his gun
+when he wasn't looking, and then backing the bird.
+
+They intended to make a fortune out of the Sydney people,
+and admirers who came to see them off only asked them as a favour
+to leave money enough in Sydney to make it worth while
+for another detachment to go down later on.  Just as the train
+was departing a priest came running on to the platform,
+and was bundled into the carriage where our Mulligan friends were;
+the door was slammed to, and away they went.  His Reverence was hot
+and perspiring, and for a few minutes mopped himself with a handkerchief,
+while the silence was unbroken except by the rattle of the train.
+
+After a while one of the Mulligan fraternity got out a pack of cards
+and proposed a game to while away the time.  There was a young squatter
+in the carriage who looked as if he might be induced to lose a few pounds,
+and the sportsmen thought they would be neglecting their opportunities
+if they did not try to "get a bit to go on with" from him.
+He agreed to play, and, just as a matter of courtesy, they asked the priest
+whether he would take a hand.
+
+"What game d'ye play?" he asked, in a melodious brogue.
+
+They explained that any game was equally acceptable to them,
+but they thought it right to add that they generally played for money.
+
+"Sure an' it don't matter for wanst in a way," said he --
+"Oi'll take a hand bedad -- Oi'm only going about fifty miles,
+so Oi can't lose a fortune."
+
+They lifted a light portmanteau on to their knees to make a table,
+and five of them -- three of the Mulligan crowd and the two strangers --
+started to have a little game of poker.  Things looked rosy
+for the Mulligan boys, who chuckled as they thought how soon
+they were making a beginning, and what a magnificent yarn they would have
+to tell about how they rooked a priest on the way down.
+
+Nothing sensational resulted from the first few deals, and the priest began
+to ask questions.
+
+"Be ye going to the races?"
+
+They said they were.
+
+"Ah! and Oi suppose ye'll be betting wid thim bookmakers --
+betting on the horses, will yez?  They do be terrible knowing men,
+thim bookmakers, they tell me.  I wouldn't bet much if Oi was ye," he said,
+with an affable smile.  "If ye go bettin' ye will be took in
+wid thim bookmakers."
+
+The boys listened with a bored air and reckoned that by the time
+they parted the priest would have learnt that they were well able
+to look after themselves.  They went steadily on with the game,
+and the priest and the young squatter won slightly; this was part
+of the plan to lead them on to plunge.  They neared the station
+where the priest was to get out.  He had won rather more than they liked,
+so the signal was passed round to "put the cross on".  Poker is a game
+at which a man need not risk much unless he feels inclined,
+and on this deal the priest stood out.  Consequently,
+when they drew up at his station he was still a few pounds in.
+
+"Bedad," he said, "Oi don't loike goin' away wid yer money.
+Oi'll go on to the next station so as ye can have revinge."
+Then he sat down again, and play went on in earnest.
+
+The man of religion seemed to have the Devil's own luck.  When he was dealt
+a good hand he invariably backed it well, and if he had a bad one
+he would not risk anything.  The sports grew painfully anxious
+as they saw him getting further and further ahead of them,
+prattling away all the time like a big schoolboy.  The squatter was
+the biggest loser so far, but the priest was the only winner.
+All the others were out of pocket.  His reverence played with great dash,
+and seemed to know a lot about the game, so that on arrival
+at the second station he was a good round sum in pocket.
+
+He rose to leave them with many expressions of regret, and laughingly
+promised full revenge next time.  Just as he was opening the carriage door,
+one of the Mulligan fraternity said in a stage-whisper:
+"He's a blanky sink-pocket.  If he can come this far,
+let him come on to Sydney and play for double the stakes."
+Like a shot the priest turned on him.
+
+"Bedad, an' if THAT'S yer talk, Oi'll play ye fer double stakes
+from here to the other side of glory.  Do yez think men are mice
+because they eat cheese?  It isn't one of the Ryans would be fearing
+to give any man his revinge!"
+
+He snorted defiance at them, grabbed his cards and waded in.
+The others felt that a crisis was at hand and settled down to play
+in a dead silence.  But the priest kept on winning steadily,
+and the "old man" of the Mulligan push saw that something decisive
+must be done, and decided on a big plunge to get all the money back
+on one hand.  By a dexterous manipulation of the cards
+he dealt himself four kings, almost the best hand at poker.
+Then he began with assumed hesitation to bet on his hand,
+raising the stake little by little.
+
+"Sure ye're trying to bluff, so ye are!" said the priest,
+and immediately raised it.
+
+The others had dropped out of the game and watched with painful interest
+the stake grow and grow.  The Mulligan fraternity felt a cheerful certainty
+that the "old man" had made things safe, and regarded themselves
+as mercifully delivered from an unpleasant situation.  The priest went on
+doggedly raising the stake in response to his antagonist's challenges
+until it had attained huge dimensions.
+
+"Sure that's high enough," said he, putting into the pool
+sufficient to entitle him to see his opponent's hand.
+
+The "old man" with great gravity laid down his four kings,
+whereat the Mulligan boys let a big sigh of relief escape them.
+
+Then the priest laid down four aces and scooped the pool.
+
+The sportsmen of Mulligan's never quite knew how they got out to Randwick.
+They borrowed a bit of money in Sydney, and found themselves
+in the saddling-paddock in a half-dazed condition, trying to realize
+what had happened to them.  During the afternoon they were up at the end
+of the lawn near the Leger stand and could hear the babel of tongues,
+small bookmakers, thimble riggers, confidence men, and so on,
+plying their trades outside.  In the tumult of voices they heard one
+that sounded familiar.  Soon suspicion grew into certainty,
+and they knew that it was the voice of "Father" Ryan.
+They walked to the fence and looked over.  This is what he was saying: --
+
+"Pop it down, gents!  Pop it down!  If you don't put down a brick
+you can't pick up a castle!  I'll bet no one here can pick
+the knave of hearts out of these three cards.  I'll bet half-a-sovereign
+no one here can find the knave!"
+
+Then the crowd parted a little, and through the opening
+they could see him distinctly, doing a great business
+and showing wonderful dexterity with the pasteboard.
+
+There is still enough money in Sydney to make it worth while
+for another detachment to come down from Mulligan's; but the next lot
+will hesitate about playing poker with priests in the train.
+
+
+
+
+The Amateur Gardener
+
+
+
+The first step in amateur gardening is to sit down and consider what good
+you are going to get by it.  If you are only a tenant by the month,
+as most people are, it is obviously not of much use for you to plant
+a fruit orchard or an avenue of oak trees.  What you want is something
+that will grow quickly, and will stand transplanting, for when you move
+it would be a sin to leave behind you the plants on which you have spent
+so much labour and so much patent manure.
+
+We knew a man once who was a bookmaker by trade --
+and a Leger bookmaker at that -- but had a passion for horses and flowers.
+When he "had a big win", as he occasionally did, it was his custom
+to have movable wooden stables, built on skids, put up in the yard,
+and to have tons of the best soil that money could buy
+carted into the garden of the premises which he was occupying.
+
+Then he would keep splendid horses, and grow rare roses
+and show-bench chrysanthemums.  His landlord passing by
+would see the garden in a blaze of colour, and promise himself
+to raise the bookmaker's rent next quarter day.
+
+However, when the bookmaker "took the knock", as he invariably did at least
+twice a year, it was his pleasing custom to move without giving notice.
+He would hitch two cart-horses to the stables, and haul them right away
+at night.  He would not only dig up the roses, trees, and chrysanthemums
+he had planted, but would also cart away the soil he had brought in;
+in fact, he used to shift the garden bodily.  He had one garden
+that he shifted to nearly every suburb in Sydney; and he always argued
+that the change of air was invaluable for chrysanthemums.
+
+Being determined, then, to go in for gardening on common-sense principles,
+and having decided on the shrubs you mean to grow, the next consideration
+is your chance of growing them.
+
+If your neighbour keeps game fowls, it may be taken for granted
+that before long they will pay you a visit, and you will see the rooster
+scratching your pot plants out by the roots as if they were so much straw,
+just to make a nice place to lie down and fluff the dust over himself.
+Goats will also stray in from the street, and bite the young shoots off,
+selecting the most valuable plants with a discrimination
+that would do credit to a professional gardener.
+
+It is therefore useless to think of growing delicate or squeamish plants.
+Most amateur gardeners maintain a lifelong struggle against
+the devices of Nature; but when the forces of man and the forces of Nature
+come into conflict Nature wins every time.  Nature has decreed
+that certain plants shall be hardy, and therefore suitable to suburban
+amateur gardeners; the suburban amateur gardener persists in trying to grow
+quite other plants, and in despising those marked out by Nature
+for his use.  It is to correct this tendency that this article is written.
+
+The greatest standby to the amateur gardener should undoubtedly be
+the blue-flowered shrub known as "plumbago".  This homely but hardy plant
+will grow anywhere.  It naturally prefers a good soil,
+and a sufficient rainfall, but if need be it will worry along
+without either.  Fowls cannot scratch it up, and even the goat
+turns away dismayed from its hard-featured branches.
+The flower is not strikingly beautiful nor ravishingly scented,
+but it flowers nine months out of the year; smothered with street dust
+and scorched by the summer sun, you will find that faithful old plumbago
+plugging along undismayed.  A plant like this should be encouraged --
+but the misguided amateur gardener as a rule despises it.
+
+The plant known as the churchyard geranium is also one marked out
+by Providence for the amateur; so is Cosmea, which comes up year after year
+where once planted.  In creepers, bignonia and lantana will hold their own
+under difficulties perhaps as well as any that can be found.
+In trees the Port Jackson fig is a patriotic one to grow.
+It is a fine plant to provide exercise, as it sheds its leaves unsparingly,
+and requires the whole garden to be swept up every day.
+
+Your aim as a student of Nature should be to encourage
+the survival of the fittest.  There is a grass called nut grass,
+and another called Parramatta grass, either of which holds its own
+against anything living or dead.  The average gardening manual
+gives you recipes for destroying these.  Why should you destroy them
+in favour of a sickly plant that needs constant attention?  No.
+The Parramatta grass is the selected of Nature, and who are you
+to interfere with Nature?
+
+Having decided to go in for strong, simple plants that will hold their own,
+and a bit over, you must get your implements of husbandry.
+
+The spade is the first thing, but the average ironmonger will show you
+an unwieldy weapon only meant to be used by navvies.  Don't buy it.
+Get a small spade, about half-size -- it is nice and light and doesn't
+tire the wrist, and with it you can make a good display of enthusiasm,
+and earn the hypocritical admiration of your wife.  After digging
+for half-an-hour or so, get her to rub your back with any
+of the backache cures.  From that moment you will have no further need
+for the spade.
+
+A barrow is about the only other thing needed; anyhow,
+it is almost a necessity for wheeling cases of whisky up to the house.
+A rake is useful when your terrier dog has bailed up a cat,
+and will not attack it until the cat is made to run.
+
+Talking of terrier dogs, an acquaintance of ours has a dog that does all
+his gardening.  The dog is a small elderly terrier with a failing memory.
+As soon as the terrier has planted a bone in the garden
+the owner slips over, digs it up and takes it away.  When that terrier
+goes back and finds the bone gone, he distrusts his memory,
+and begins to think that perhaps he has made a mistake,
+and has dug in the wrong place; so he sets to work, and digs patiently
+all over the garden, turning over acres of soil in the course of
+his search.  This saves his master a lot of backache.
+
+The sensible amateur gardener, then, will not attempt to fight with Nature
+but will fall in with her views.  What more pleasant than to get out of bed
+at 11.30 on a Sunday morning; to look out of your window at a lawn
+waving with the feathery plumes of Parramatta grass, and to see beyond it
+the churchyard geranium flourishing side by side with the plumbago
+and the Port Jackson fig?
+
+The garden gate blows open, and the local commando of goats,
+headed by an aged and fragrant patriarch, locally known as De Wet,
+rushes in; but their teeth will barely bite through the wiry stalks
+of the Parramatta grass, and the plumbago and the figtree fail
+to attract them, and before long they stand on one another's shoulders,
+scale the fence, and disappear into the next-door garden,
+where a fanatic is trying to grow show roses.
+
+After the last goat has scaled your neighbour's fence, and only De Wet
+is left, your little dog discovers him.  De Wet beats a hurried retreat,
+apparently at full speed, with the dog exactly one foot behind him
+in frantic pursuit.  We say apparently at full speed, because experience
+has taught that De Wet can run as fast as a greyhound when he likes;
+but he never exerts himself to go faster than is necessary
+to keep just in front of whatever dog is after him.
+
+Hearing the scrimmage, your neighbour comes on to his verandah,
+and sees the chase going down the street.
+
+"Ha! that wretched old De Wet again!" he says.  "Small hope your dog has
+of catching him!  Why don't you get a garden gate like mine,
+so that he won't get in?"
+
+"No; he can't get in at your gate," is the reply; "but I think his commando
+are in your back garden now."
+
+Then follows a frantic rush.  Your neighbour falls downstairs in his haste,
+and the commando, after stopping to bite some priceless pot plants
+of your neighbour's as they come out, skips easily back over the fence
+and through your gate into the street again.
+
+If a horse gets in his hoofs make no impression on the firm turf
+of the Parramatta grass, and you get quite a hearty laugh
+by dropping a chair on him from the first-floor window.
+
+The game fowls of your other neighbour come fluttering into your garden,
+and scratch and chuckle and fluff themselves under your plumbago bush;
+but you don't worry.  Why should you?  They can't hurt it; and, besides,
+you know that the small black hen and the big yellow one,
+who have disappeared from the throng, are even now laying their daily egg
+for you behind the thickest bush.
+
+Your little dog rushes frantically up and down the front bed
+of your garden, barking and racing, and tearing up the ground,
+because his rival little dog, who lives down the street, is going past
+with his master, and each pretends that he wants to be at the other --
+as they have pretended every day for the past three years.  The performance
+he is going through doesn't disturb you.  Why should it?  By following
+the directions in this article you have selected plants he cannot hurt.
+
+After breakfasting at noon, you stroll out, and, perhaps,
+smooth with your foot, or with your spade, the inequalities
+made by the hens; you gather up casually the eggs they have laid;
+you whistle to your little dog, and go out for a stroll with a light heart.
+
+
+
+
+Thirsty Island
+
+
+
+Travellers approaching a bush township are sure to find some distance
+from the town a lonely public-house waiting by the roadside
+to give them welcome.  Thirsty (miscalled Thursday) Island
+is the outlying pub of Australia.
+
+When the China and British-India steamers arrive from the North
+the first place they come to is Thirsty Island, the sentinel at the gate
+of Torres Straits.  New chums on the steamers see a fleet
+of white-sailed pearling luggers, a long pier clustered with a hybrid crowd
+of every colour, caste and creed under Heaven, and at the back of it all
+a little galvanized-iron town shining in the sun.
+
+For nine months of the year a crisp, cool south-east wind blows,
+the snow-white beach is splashed with spray and dotted with
+the picturesque figures of Japanese divers and South Sea Island boatmen.
+Coco-nut palms line the roads by the beach, and back of the town
+are the barracks and a fort nestling among the trees on the hillside.
+Thirsty Island is a nice place -- to look at.
+
+When a vessel makes fast the Thirsty Islanders come down
+to greet the new-comers and give them welcome to Australia.
+The new-chums are inclined to patronise these simple, outlying people.
+Fresh from the iniquities of the China-coast cocktail
+and the unhallowed orgies of the Sourabaya Club, new-chums think they have
+little to learn in the way of drink; at any rate, they haven't come
+all the way to Thursday Island to be taught anything.  Poor new-chums!
+Little do they know the kind of people they are up against.
+
+The following description of a night at Thursday Island is taken from
+a new-chum's note book:
+
+"Passed Proudfoot shoal and arrived at Thursday Island.
+First sight of Australia.  Lot of men came aboard, all called Captain.
+They are all pearl-fishers or pilots, not a bit like the bushmen
+I expected.  When they came aboard they divided into parties.  Some invaded
+the Captain's cabin; others sat in the smoking room; the rest crowded
+into the saloon.  They talked to the passengers about the Boer War,
+and told us about pearls worth 1000 pounds that had been found lately.
+
+"One captain pulled a handful of loose pearls out of a jar
+and handed them round in a casual way for us to look at.
+The stewards opened bottles and we all sat down for a drink and a smoke.
+I spoke to one captain -- an oldish man -- and he grinned amiably,
+but did not answer.  Another captain leaned over to me and said,
+`Don't take any notice of him, he's boozed all this week.'
+
+"Conversation and drink became general.  The night was very hot and close,
+and some of the passengers seemed to be taking more than was good for them.
+A contagious thirst spread round the ship, and before long the stewards
+and firemen were at it.  The saloon became an inferno of drink and sweat
+and tobacco smoke.  Perfect strangers were talking to each other
+at the top of their voices.
+
+"Young MacTavish, who is in a crack English regiment,
+asked the captain of a pearling lugger whether he didn't know
+Talbot de Cholmondeley in the Blues.
+
+"The pearler said very likely he had met 'em, and no doubt he'd remember
+their faces if he saw them, but he never could remember names.
+
+"Another passenger -- a Jew -- was trying to buy some pearls cheap
+from the captains, but the more the captains drank the less anxious
+they became to talk about pearls.
+
+"The night wore on, and still the drinks circulated.  Young MacTavish
+slept profoundly.
+
+"One passenger gave his steward a sovereign as he was leaving the ship,
+and in half an hour the steward was carried to his berth in a fit --
+alcoholic in its origin.  Another steward was observed openly drinking
+the passengers' whisky.  When accused, he didn't even attempt
+to defend himself; the great Thursday Island thirst seemed to have
+communicated itself to everyone on board, and he simply HAD to drink.
+
+"About three in the morning a tour of the ship disclosed the following
+state of affairs:  Captain's room full of captains solemnly tight;
+smoking-room empty, except for the inanimate form of the captain
+who had been boozed all the week, and was now sleeping peacefully
+with his feet on the sofa and his head on the floor.  The saloon was full
+of captains and passengers -- the latter mostly in a state of collapse
+or laughing and singing deliriously; the rails lined with firemen
+who had business over the side; stewards ditto.
+
+"At last the Thursday Islanders departed, unsteadily, but still on
+their feet, leaving a demoralized ship behind them.  And young MacTavish,
+who has seen a thing or two in his brief span, staggered to his berth,
+saying, `My God!  Is ALL Australia like this place?'"
+
+     *    *    *    *    *
+
+When no ships arrive, the Islanders just drop into the pubs,
+as a matter of routine, for their usual evening soak.
+They drink weird compounds -- horehound beer, known as "lady dog",
+and things like that.  About two in the morning they go home speechless,
+but still able to travel.  It is very rarely that an Islander gets
+helplessly drunk, but strangers generally have to be put to bed.
+
+The Japanese on the island are a strong faction.  They have a club
+of their own, and once gave a dinner to mark the death
+of one of their members.  He was shrewdly suspected of having tried
+to drown another member by cutting his airpipe, so, when he died,
+the club celebrated the event.  The Japanese are not looked upon with favor
+by the white islanders.  They send their money to Japan --
+thousands of pounds a year go through the little office in money-orders --
+and so they are not "good for trade".
+
+The Manilamen and Kanakas and Torres Strait islanders,
+on the other hand, bring all the money they do not spend
+on the pearling schooner to the island, and "blow it in", like men.
+They knife each other sometimes, and now and again have to be
+run in wholesale, but they are "good for trade".  The local lock-up
+has a record of eighteen drunks run in in seven minutes.
+They weren't taken along in carriages-and-four, either;
+they were mostly dragged along by the scruff of the neck.
+
+Billy Malkeela, the South Sea diver, summed up the Japanese question --
+"Seems to me dis Islan' soon b'long Japanee altogedder.
+One time pa-lenty rickatta (plenty regatta), all same Isle of Wight.
+Now no more rickatta.  All money go Japan!"
+
+An English new-chum made his appearance there lately --
+a most undefeated sportsman.  He was put down in a diving dress
+in about eight feet of water, where he bubbled and struggled about
+in great style.  Suddenly he turned, rushed for the beach,
+and made for the foot of a tree, which he tried to climb
+under the impression that he was still at the bottom of the ocean.
+Then he was hauled in by the life-line.
+
+The pearlers thought to get some fun out of him by giving him
+an oyster to open in which they had previously planted a pearl;
+he never saw the pearl and threw the oyster into the scuppers
+with the rest, and the pearlers had to go down on all fours
+and grope for that pearl among the stinking oysters.  It was funny --
+but not in the way they had intended.
+
+The pearlers go out in schooners called floating stations
+(their enemies call them floating public-houses) and no man knows
+what hospitality is till he has been a guest on a pearling schooner.
+They carry it to extremes sometimes.  Some pearlers were out in a lugger,
+and were passing by one of these schooners.  They determined
+not to go on board, as it was late, and they were in a hurry.
+The captain of the schooner went below, got his rifle and put two bullets
+through their foresail.  Then they put the helm down and went aboard;
+it was an invitation almost equivalent to a royal command.
+They felt heartily ashamed of themselves as they slunk up on deck,
+and the captain of the schooner eyed them reproachfully.
+
+"I couldn't let you disgrace yourselves by passing my schooner," he said;
+"but if it ever happens again I'll fire at the deck.  A man that would
+pass a schooner in broad daylight is better dead."
+
+There is a fort and garrison at Thirsty Island, but they are not needed.
+If an invading fleet comes this way it should be encouraged
+by every possible means to land at the island; the heat, the thirst,
+the horehound beer, and the Islanders may be trusted to do the rest.
+
+
+
+
+Dan Fitzgerald Explains
+
+
+
+The circus was having its afternoon siesta.  Overhead the towering
+canvas tent spread like a giant mushroom on a network of stalks --
+slanting beams, interlaced with guys and wire ropes.
+
+The ring looked small and lonely; its circle of empty benches seemed
+to stare intently at it, as though some sort of unseen performance
+were going on for the benefit of a ghostly audience.  Now and again
+a guy rope creaked, or a loose end of canvas flapped like faint,
+unreal applause, as the silence shut down again, it did not need
+much imagination to people the ring with dead and gone circus riders
+performing for the benefit of shadowy spectators packed on those benches.
+
+In the menagerie portion matters were different; here there was
+a free and easy air, the animals realising that for the present
+the eyes of the public were off them, and they could put in the afternoon
+as they chose.
+
+The big African apes had dropped the "business" of showing their teeth,
+and pretending that they wanted to tear the spectators' faces off.
+They were carefully and painstakingly trying to fix up a kind of
+rustic seat in the corner of their cage with a short piece of board,
+which they placed against the wall.  This fell down every time
+they sat on it, and the whole adjustment had to be gone through again.
+
+The camel had stretched himself full length on the tan, and was enjoying
+a luxurious snooze, oblivious of the fact that before long he would have to
+get up and assume that far-off ship-of-the-desert aspect.  The remainder
+of the animals were, like actors, "resting" before their "turn" came on;
+even the elephant had ceased to sway about, while a small monkey,
+asleep on a sloping tent pole, had an attack of nightmare
+and would have fallen off his perch but for his big tail.
+It was a land of the Lotus-eater
+  
+     "In which it seemed always afternoon."
+
+These visions were dispelled by the entry of a person who said,
+"D'ye want to see Dan?" and soon Dan Fitzgerald, the man who knows
+all about the training of horses, came into the tent with Montgomery,
+the ringmaster, and between them they proceeded to expound the methods
+of training horseflesh.
+
+"What sort of horse do we buy for circus work?  Well, it depends what
+we want 'em for.  There are three sorts of horses in use in a circus --
+ring horses, trick horses, and school horses; but it doesn't matter
+what he is wanted for, a horse is all the better if he knows nothing.
+A horse that has been pulled about and partly trained has to unlearn a lot
+before he is any use to us.  The less he knows, the better it is."
+
+"Then do you just try any sort of horse?"
+
+"Any sort, so long as he is a good sort, but it depends on what
+he is wanted for.  If we want a ring horse, he has to be a quiet
+sober-going animal, not too well-bred and fiery.  A ring horse is one
+that just goes round the ring for the bareback riders and equestriennes
+to perform on.  The human being is the "star", and the horse in only
+a secondary performer, a sort of understudy; yes, that's it,
+an understudy -- he has to study how to keep under the man."
+
+"Are they hard to train?"
+
+"Their work all depends on the men that ride them.  In bareback riding
+there's a knack in jumping on the horse.  If a man lands awkwardly
+and jars the horse's back, the horse will get out of step
+and flinch at each jump, and he isn't nearly so good to perform on.
+A ring horse must not swerve or change his pace; if you're up in the air,
+throwing a somersault, and the horse swerves from underneath you --
+where are you?"
+
+"Some people think that horses take a lot of notice of the band --
+is that so?"
+
+"Not that I know of.  If there are any horses in the show
+with an ear for music, I haven't heard of them.  They take a lot of notice
+of the ringmaster."
+
+"Does it take them long to learn this work?"
+
+"Not long; a couple of months will teach a ring horse; of course,
+some are better than others."
+
+"First of all we teach them to come up to you, with the whip,
+like horsebreakers do.  Then we run them round the ring with a lunging rein
+for a long time; then, when they are steady to the ring, we let them run
+with the rein loose, and the trainer can catch hold of it if they go wrong.
+Then we put a roller on them -- a broad surcingle that goes round
+the horse's body -- and the boys jump on them and canter round,
+holding on to the roller, or standing up, lying down, and doing tricks
+till the horse gets used to it."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Well, you give 'em a couple of hours of it, perhaps, and then dry them
+and feed them, and give them a spell, and then bring them out again.
+They soon get to know what you want; but you can't break in horses
+on the move.  The shifting and worry and noise and excitement put it all
+out of their heads.  We have a fixed camp where we break them in.
+And a horse may know his work perfectly well when there is no one about,
+but bring him into the ring at night, and he is all abroad."
+
+"Do you have to give them much whip?"
+
+"Not much.  If a horse doesn't know what you want him to do,
+it only ruins him to whip him.  But once he does a thing a few times,
+and then won't do it, then you must whip him."
+
+"What about trick horses?"
+
+"A trick horse rolls a barrel, or lies down and goes to bed with the clown,
+or fires a pistol -- does any trick like that.  Some small circuses
+make the same horses do both trick and ring work, but it isn't a good line.
+A horse is all the better to have only one line of business --
+same as a man."
+
+"How do you teach them tricks?"
+
+"Oh, it takes a long time and a lot of hard work and great patience.
+Even to make a horse lie down when he's ordered takes a couple of months
+sometimes.  To make a horse lie down, you strap up one leg,
+and then pull his head round; after a while he gets so tired
+of the strained position that he lies down, after which
+he learns to do it at command.  If you want him to pick up a handkerchief,
+you put a bit of carrot in it, and after a while they know
+that you want them to pick it up -- but it takes a long time.
+Then a strange hand in the ring will flurry them,
+and if anything goes wrong, they get all abroad.  A good active pony,
+with a bit of Arab blood in him, is the best for tricks."
+
+"What's a school horse?"
+
+"Ah, that's a line of business that isn't appreciated enough out here.
+On the Continent they think a lot of them.  A school horse is one
+that is taught to do passaging, to change his feet at command,
+to move sideways and backwards; in fact, to drill.  Out here
+no one thinks much of it.  But in Germany, where everyone goes through
+military riding schools, they do.  The Germans are the best horse-trainers
+in the world; and the big German circus-proprietors have men
+to do all their business for them, while they just attend to the horses."
+
+"How long does it take to turn out a school horse?"
+
+"Well, Chiarini was the best trainer out here, and he used to take
+two years to get a horse to his satisfaction.  For school horses, you must
+have thoroughbreds, because their appearance is half their success.
+We had a New Zealand thoroughbred that had raced, and was turning out
+a splendid school horse, and he got burnt after costing a year's training.
+That's the luck of the game, you know.  You keep at it year after year,
+and sometimes they die, and sometimes they get crippled --
+it's all in the luck of the game.  You may give fifty pounds for a horse,
+and find that he can never get over his fear of the elephant, while you
+give ten pounds for another, and find him a ready-made performer almost."
+
+We passed out through the ghostly circus and the menagerie tent
+down to the stable tent.  There, among a lot of others,
+a tranquil-looking animal was munching some feed, while in front of him
+hung a placard, "Tiger Horse".
+
+"That's a new sort!  What is he, ring, trick, or school horse?"
+
+"Well, he's a class by himself.  I suppose you'd call him a ring horse.
+That's the horse that the tiger rides on."
+
+"Did it take him long to learn that?"
+
+"Well, it did not take this horse long; but we tried eleven others
+before we could get one to stand it.  They're just like men, all different.
+What one will stand another won't look at.  Well, good-bye."
+
+Just like men -- no doubt; most men have to carry tigers of various sorts
+through life to get a living.
+
+
+
+
+The Cat
+
+
+
+Most people think that the cat is an unintelligent animal,
+fond of ease, and caring little for anything but mice and milk.
+But a cat has really more character than most human beings,
+and gets a great deal more satisfaction out of life.
+Of all the animal kingdom, the cat has the most many-sided character.
+
+He -- or she --  is an athlete, a musician, an acrobat, a Lothario,
+a grim fighter, a sport of the first water.  All day long
+the cat loafs about the house, takes things easy, sleeps by the fire,
+and allows himself to be pestered by the attentions of our womenfolk
+and annoyed by our children.  To pass the time away
+he sometimes watches a mouse-hole for an hour or two --
+just to keep himself from dying of ennui; and people get the idea
+that this sort of thing is all that life holds for the cat.  But watch him
+as the shades of evening fall, and you see the cat as he really is.
+
+When the family sits down to tea, the cat usually puts in an appearance
+to get his share, and purrs noisily, and rubs himself against the legs
+of the family; and all the time he is thinking of a fight or a love-affair
+that is coming off that evening.  If there is a guest at table
+the cat is particularly civil to him, because the guest is likely to have
+the best of what is going.  Sometimes, instead of recognizing this civility
+with something to eat, the guest stoops down and strokes the cat, and says,
+"Poor pussy! poor pussy!"
+
+The cat soon tires of that; he puts up his claw and quietly but firmly
+rakes the guest in the leg.
+
+"Ow!" says the guest, "the cat stuck his claws into me!"
+The delighted family remarks, "Isn't it sweet of him?
+Isn't he intelligent?  HE WANTS YOU TO GIVE HIM SOMETHING TO EAT."
+
+The guest dares not do what he would like to do -- kick the cat
+through the window -- so, with tears of rage and pain in his eyes,
+he affects to be very much amused, and sorts out a bit of fish
+from his plate and hands it down.  The cat gingerly receives it,
+with a look in his eyes that says:  "Another time, my friend,
+you won't be so dull of comprehension," and purrs maliciously
+as he retires to a safe distance from the guest's boot before eating it.
+A cat isn't a fool -- not by a long way.
+
+When the family has finished tea, and gathers round the fire to enjoy
+the hours of indigestion, the cat slouches casually out of the room
+and disappears.  Life, true life, now begins for him.
+
+He saunters down his own backyard, springs to the top of the fence
+with one easy bound, drops lightly down on the other side,
+trots across the right-of-way to a vacant allotment, and skips to the roof
+of an empty shed.  As he goes, he throws off the effeminacy
+of civilisation; his gait becomes lithe and pantherlike;
+he looks quickly and keenly from side to side, and moves noiselessly,
+for he has so many enemies -- dogs, cabmen with whips,
+and small boys with stones.
+
+Arrived on the top of the shed, the cat arches his back, rakes his claws
+once or twice through the soft bark of the old roof, wheels round
+and stretches himself a few times; just to see that every muscle
+is in full working order; then, dropping his head nearly to his paws,
+he sends across a league of backyards his call to his kindred --
+a call to love, or war, or sport.
+
+Before long they come, gliding, graceful shadows, approaching circuitously,
+and halting occasionally to reconnoitre -- tortoiseshell, tabby, and black,
+all domestic cats, but all transformed for the nonce
+into their natural state.  No longer are they the hypocritical,
+meek creatures who an hour ago were cadging for fish and milk.
+They are now ruffling, swaggering blades with a Gascon sense of dignity.
+Their fights are grim and determined, and a cat will be clawed to ribbons
+before he will yield.
+
+Even young lady cats have this inestimable superiority over human beings,
+that they can work off jealousy, hatred, and malice in a sprawling,
+yelling combat on a flat roof.  All cats fight, and all keep themselves
+more or less in training while they are young.  Your cat may be
+the acknowledged lightweight champion of his district --
+a Griffo of the feline ring!
+
+Just think how much more he gets out of his life than you do out of yours
+-- what a hurricane of fighting and lovemaking his life is --
+and blush for yourself.  You have had one little love-affair,
+and never had a good, all-out fight in your life!
+
+And the sport they have, too!  As they get older and retire from the ring
+they go in for sport more systematically; the suburban backyards,
+that are to us but dullness indescribable, are to them hunting-grounds
+and trysting-places where they may have more gallant adventure
+than ever had King Arthur's knights or Robin Hood's merry men.
+
+Grimalkin decides to kill a canary in a neighbouring verandah.
+Consider the fascination of it -- the stealthy reconnaissance
+from the top of the fence; the care to avoid waking the house-dog,
+the noiseless approach and the hurried dash, and the fierce clawing
+at the fluttering bird till its mangled body is dragged through
+the bars of the cage; the exultant retreat with the spoil;
+the growling over the feast that follows.  Not the least entertaining part
+of it is the demure satisfaction of arriving home in time for breakfast
+and hearing the house-mistress say:  "Tom must be sick; he seems to have
+no appetite."
+
+It is always levelled as a reproach against cats that they are more fond
+of their home than of the people in it.  Naturally, the cat doesn't like
+to leave his country, the land where all his friends are,
+and where he knows every landmark.  Exiled in a strange land,
+he would have to learn a new geography, to exploit another tribe of dogs,
+to fight and make love to an entirely new nation of cats.
+Life isn't long enough for that sort of thing.  So, when the family moves,
+the cat, if allowed, will stay at the old house and attach himself
+to the new tenants.  He will give them the privilege of boarding him
+while he enjoys life in his own way.  He is not going to sacrifice
+his whole career for the doubtful reward which fidelity to his old master
+or mistress might bring.
+
+
+
+
+Sitting in Judgment
+
+
+
+The show ring was a circular enclosure of about four acres,
+with a spiked batten fence round it, and a listless crowd
+of back-country settlers propped along the fence.  Behind them were
+the sheds for produce, and the machinery sections where steam threshers
+and earth scoops hummed and buzzed and thundered unnoticed.
+Crowds of sightseers wandered past the cattle stalls to gape at
+the fat bullocks; side-shows flourished, a blase goose drew marbles
+out of a tin canister, and a boxing showman displayed his muscles
+outside his tent, while his partner urged the youth of the district
+to come in and be thumped for the edification of the spectators.
+
+Suddenly a gate opened at the end of the show ring, and horses, cattle,
+dogs, vehicles, motor-cars, and bicyclists crowded into the arena.
+This was the general parade, but it would have been better described
+as a general chaos.  Trotting horses and ponies, in harness,
+went whirling round the ring, every horse and every driver fully certain
+that every eye was fixed on them; the horses -- the vainest creatures
+in the world -- arching their necks and lifting their feet,
+whizzed past in bewildering succession, till the onlookers grew giddy.
+Inside the whirling circle blood stallions stood on their hind legs,
+screaming defiance to the world at large; great shaggy-fronted bulls,
+with dull vindictive eyes, paced along, looking as though they were trying
+to remember who it was that struck them last.  A showground bull
+always seems to be nursing a grievance.
+
+Mixed up with the stallions and bulls were dogs and donkeys.
+The dogs were led by attendants, apparently selected on the principle
+of the larger the dog the smaller the custodian; while the donkeys
+were the only creatures unmoved by their surroundings,
+for they slept peaceably through the procession, occasionally waking up
+to bray their sense of boredom.
+
+In the centre of the ring a few lady-riders, stern-featured women
+for the most part, were being "judged" by a trembling official,
+who feared to look them in the face, but hurriedly and apologetically
+examined horses and saddles, whispered his award to the stewards,
+and fled at top speed to the official stand -- his sanctuary from the fury
+of spurned beauty.  The defeated ladies immediately began to "perform" --
+that is, to ask the universe at large whether anyone ever heard
+the like of that!  But the stewards strategically slipped away,
+and the injured innocents had no resource left but to ride haughtily
+round the ring, glaring defiance at the spectators.
+
+All this time stewards and committee-men were wandering among
+the competitors, trying to find the animals for judgment.
+The clerk of the ring -- a huge man on a small cob -- galloped around,
+roaring like a bull:  "This way for the fourteen stone 'acks!  Come on,
+you twelve 'and ponies!" and by degrees various classes got judged,
+and dispersed grumbling.  Then the bulls filed out with their grievances
+still unsettled, the lady riders were persuaded to withdraw,
+and the clerk of the ring sent a sonorous bellow across the ground:
+"Where's the jumpin' judges?"
+
+From the official stand came a brisk, dark-faced, wiry little man.
+He had been a steeplechase rider and a trainer in his time.
+Long experience of that tricky animal, the horse, had made him reserved
+and slow to express an opinion.  He mounted the table,
+and produced a note-book.  From the bar of the booth came a large, hairy,
+red-faced man, whose face showed fatuous self-complacency.
+He was a noted show-judge because he refused, on principle,
+to listen to others' opinions; or in those rare cases when he did,
+only to eject a scornful contradiction.  The third judge was
+a local squatter, who was overwhelmed with a sense of his own importance.
+
+They seated themselves on a raised platform in the centre of the ring,
+and held consultation.  The small dark man produced his note-book.
+
+"I always keep a scale of points," he said.  "Give 'em so many points
+for each fence.  Then give 'em so many for make, shape, and quality,
+and so many for the way they jump."
+
+The fat man looked infinite contempt.  "I never want any scale of points,"
+he said.  "One look at the 'orses is enough for me.  A man that judges
+by points ain't a judge at all, I reckon.  What do you think?" he went on,
+turning to the squatter.  "Do you go by points?"
+
+"Never," said the squatter, firmly; which, as he had never judged before
+in his life, was strictly true.
+
+"Well, we'll each go our own way," said the little man.  "I'll keep points.
+Send 'em in."
+
+"Number One, Conductor!" roared the ring steward in a voice like thunder,
+and a long-legged grey horse came trotting into the ring
+and sidled about uneasily.  His rider pointed him for the first jump,
+and went at it at a terrific pace.  Nearing the fence the horse made
+a wild spring, and cleared it by feet, while the crowd yelled applause.
+At the second jump he raced right under the obstacle, propped dead,
+and rose in the air with a leap like a goat, while the crowd
+yelled their delight again, and said:  "My oath! ain't he clever?"
+As he neared the third fence he shifted about uneasily, and finally
+took it at an angle, clearing a wholly unnecessary thirty feet.
+Again the hurricane of cheers broke out.  "Don't he fly 'em," said one man,
+waving his hat.  At the last fence he made his spring yards too soon;
+his forelegs got over all right, but his hind legs dropped on the rail
+with a sounding rap, and he left a little tuft of hair sticking on it.
+
+"I like to see 'em feel their fences," said the fat man.
+"I had a bay 'orse once, and he felt every fence he ever jumped;
+shows their confidence."
+
+"I think he'll feel that last one for a while," said the little dark man.
+"What's this now?"
+
+"Number Two, Homeward Bound!"  An old, solid chestnut horse came out
+and cantered up to each jump, clearing them coolly and methodically.
+The crowd was not struck by the performance, and the fat man said:
+"No pace!" but surreptitiously made two strokes (to indicate Number Two)
+on the cuff of his shirt.
+
+"Number Eleven, Spite!"  This was a leggy, weedy chestnut, half-racehorse,
+half-nondescript, ridden by a terrified amateur, who went at the fence
+with a white, set face.  The horse raced up to the fence, and stopped dead,
+amid the jeers of the crowd.  The rider let daylight into him
+with his spurs, and rushed him at it again.  This time he got over.
+
+Round he went, clouting some fences with his front legs,
+others with his hind legs.  The crowd jeered, but the fat man,
+from a sheer spirit of opposition, said:  "That would be a good horse
+if he was rode better."  And the squatter remarked:  "Yes,
+he belongs to a young feller just near me.  I've seen him jump splendidly
+out in the bush, over brush fences."
+
+The little dark man said nothing, but made a note in his book.
+
+"Number Twelve, Gaslight!"  "Now, you'll see a horse," said the fat man.
+"I've judged this 'orse in twenty different shows, and gave him first prize
+every time!"
+
+Gaslight turned out to be a fiddle-headed, heavy-shouldered brute,
+whose long experience of jumping in shows where they give points for pace
+-- as if the affair was a steeplechase -- had taught him
+to get the business over as quickly as he could.  He went thundering
+round the ring, pulling double, and standing off his fences in a style
+that would infallibly bring him to grief if following hounds across roads
+or through broken timber.
+
+"Now," said the fat man, "that's a 'unter, that is.  What I say is,
+when you come to judge at a show, pick out the 'orse you'd soonest be on
+if Ned Kelly was after you, and there you have the best 'unter."
+
+The little man did not reply, but made the usual scrawl in his book,
+while the squatter hastened to agree with the fat man.  "I like to see
+a bit of pace myself," he ventured.
+
+The fat man sat on him heavily.  "You don't call that pace,
+do you?" he said.  "He was going dead slow."
+
+Various other competitors did their turn round the ring,
+some propping and bucking over the jumps, others rushing and tearing
+at their fences; not one jumped as a hunter should.  Some got themselves
+into difficulties by changing feet or misjudging the distance,
+and were loudly applauded by the crowd for "cleverness"
+in getting themselves out of the difficulties they had themselves created.
+
+A couple of rounds narrowed the competitors down to a few,
+and the task of deciding was entered on.
+
+"I have kept a record," said the little man, "of how they jumped
+each fence, and I give them points for style of jumping, and for their make
+and shape and hunting qualities.  The way I bring it out is that
+Homeward Bound is the best, with Gaslight second."
+
+"Homeward Bound!" said the fat man.  "Why, the pace he went wouldn't head
+a duck.  He didn't go as fast as a Chinaman could trot with two baskets
+of stones.  I want to have three of 'em in to have another look at 'em."
+Here he looked surreptitiously at his cuff, saw a note "No. II.",
+mistook it for "Number Eleven", and said:  "I want Number Eleven
+to go another round."
+
+The leggy, weedy chestnut, with the terrified amateur up, came sidling
+and snorting out into the ring.  The fat man looked at him with scorn.
+
+"What is that fiddle-headed brute doing in the ring?" he said.
+
+"Why," said the ring steward, "you said you wanted him."
+
+"Well," said the fat man, "if I said I wanted him I do want him.
+Let him go the round."
+
+The terrified amateur went at his fences with the rashness of despair,
+and narrowly escaped being clouted off on two occasions.
+This put the fat man in a quandary.  He had kept no record,
+and all the horses were jumbled up in his head; but he had one fixed idea,
+to give the first prize to Gaslight; as to the second he was open
+to argument.  From sheer contrariness he said that Number Eleven would be
+"all right if he were rode better," and the squatter agreed.
+The little man was overruled, and the prizes went -- Gaslight, first;
+Spite, second; Homeward Bound, third.
+
+The crowd hooted loudly as Spite's rider came round with the second ribbon,
+and small boys suggested to the fat judge in shrill tones that he ought to
+boil his head.  The fat man stalked majestically into the stewards' stand,
+and on being asked how he came to give Spite the second prize,
+remarked oracularly:  "I judge the 'orse, I don't judge the rider."
+This silenced criticism, and everyone adjourned to have a drink.
+
+Over the flowing bowl the fat man said:  "You see, I don't believe
+in this nonsense about points.  I can judge 'em without that."
+
+Twenty dissatisfied competitors vowed they would never bring
+another horse there in their lives.  Gaslight's owner said:  "Blimey,
+I knew it would be all right with old Billy judging.  'E knows this 'orse."
+
+
+
+
+The Dog
+
+
+
+The dog is a member of society who likes to have his day's work,
+and who does it more conscientiously than most human beings.
+A dog always looks as if he ought to have a pipe in his mouth
+and a black bag for his lunch, and then he would go quite happily to office
+every day.
+
+A dog without work is like a man without work, a nuisance to himself
+and everybody else.  People who live about town, and keep a dog
+to give the children hydatids and to keep the neighbours awake at night,
+imagine that the animal is fulfilling his destiny.  All town dogs,
+fancy dogs, show dogs, lap-dogs, and other dogs with no work to do,
+should be abolished; it is only in the country that a dog has
+any justification for his existence.
+
+The old theory that animals have only instinct, not reason, to guide them,
+is knocked endways by the dog.  A dog can reason as well as a human being
+on some subjects, and better on others, and the best reasoning dog of all
+is the sheep-dog.  The sheep-dog is a professional artist with a pride
+in his business.  Watch any drover's dogs bringing sheep into the yards.
+How thoroughly they feel their responsibility, and how very annoyed
+they get if a stray dog with no occupation wants them to stop
+and fool about!  They snap at him and hurry off, as much as to say:
+"You go about your idleness.  Don't you see this is my busy day?"
+
+Sheep-dogs are followers of Thomas Carlyle.  They hold that
+the only happiness for a dog in this life is to find his work and to do it.
+The idle, `dilettante', non-working, aristocratic dog they have no use for.
+
+The training of a sheep-dog for his profession begins at a very early age.
+The first thing is to take him out with his mother and let him see
+her working.  He blunders lightheartedly, frisking along
+in front of the horse, and his owner tries to ride over him,
+and generally succeeds.  It is amusing to see how that knocks all the gas
+out of a puppy, and with what a humble air he falls to the rear
+and glues himself to the horse's heels, scarcely daring to look
+to the right or to the left, for fear of committing some other breach
+of etiquette.
+
+He has had his first lesson -- to keep behind the horse until he is wanted.
+Then he watches the old slut work, and is allowed to go with her
+round the sheep; and if he shows any disposition to get out of hand
+and frolic about, the old lady will bite him sharply to prevent
+his interfering with her work.
+
+By degrees, slowly, like any other professional, he learns his business.
+He learns to bring sheep after a horse simply at a wave of the hand;
+to force the mob up to a gate where they can be counted or drafted;
+to follow the scent of lost sheep, and to drive sheep through a town
+without any master, one dog going on ahead to block the sheep from
+turning off into by-streets while the other drives them on from the rear.
+
+How do they learn all these things?  Dogs for show work
+are taught painstakingly by men who are skilled in handling them;
+but, after all, they teach themselves more than the men teach them.
+It looks as if the acquired knowledge of generations were transmitted
+from dog to dog.  The puppy, descended from a race of sheep-dogs,
+starts with all his faculties directed towards the working of sheep;
+he is half-educated as soon as he is born.  He can no more help
+working sheep than a born musician can help being musical,
+or a Hebrew can help gathering in shekels.  It is bred in him.
+If he can't get sheep to work, he will work a fowl;
+often and often one can see a collie pup painstakingly and carefully
+driving a bewildered old hen into a stable, or a stock-yard,
+or any other enclosed space on which he has fixed his mind.
+How does he learn to do that?  He didn't learn it at all.
+The knowledge was born with him.
+
+When the dog has been educated, or has educated himself,
+he enjoys his work; but very few dogs like work "in the yards".
+The sun is hot, the dust rises in clouds, and there is nothing to do
+but bark, bark, bark -- which is all very well for learners and amateurs,
+but is beneath the dignity of the true professional sheep-dog.
+When they are hoarse with barking and nearly choked with dust,
+the men lose their tempers and swear at them, and throw clods of earth
+at them, and sing out to them "Speak up, blast you!"
+
+Then the dogs suddenly decide that they have done enough for the day.
+Watching their opportunity, they silently steal over the fence,
+and hide in any cool place they can find.  After a while the men notice
+that hardly any are left, and operations are suspended while
+a great hunt is made into outlying pieces of cover, where the dogs
+are sure to be found lying low and looking as guilty as so many thieves.
+A clutch at the scruff of the neck, a kick in the ribs, and they are
+hauled out of hiding-places; and accompany their masters to the yard
+frolicking about and pretending that they are quite delighted to be
+going back, and only hid in those bushes out of sheer thoughtlessness.
+He is a champion hypocrite, is the dog.
+
+Dogs, like horses, have very keen intuition.  They know when the men
+around them are frightened, though they may not know the cause.
+In a great Queensland strike, when the shearers attacked and burnt
+Dagworth shed, some rifle-volleys were exchanged.  The air was full
+of human electricity, each man giving out waves of fear and excitement.
+Mark now the effect it had on the dogs.  They were not in the fighting;
+nobody fired at them, and nobody spoke to them; but every dog
+left his master, left the sheep, and went away to the homestead,
+about six miles off.  There wasn't a dog about the shed next day
+after the fight.  The noise of the rifles had not frightened them,
+because they were well-accustomed to that.*
+  
+* The same thing happened constantly with horses in the South African War.
+A loose horse would feed contentedly while our men were firing,
+but when our troops were being fired at the horses became uneasy,
+and the loose ones would trot away.  The excitement of the men
+communicated itself to them.
+
+Dogs have an amazing sense of responsibility.  Sometimes,
+when there are sheep to be worked, an old slut who has young puppies
+may be greatly exercised in her mind whether she should go out or not.
+On the one hand, she does not care about leaving the puppies, on the other,
+she feels that she really ought to go rather than allow the sheep
+to be knocked about by those learners.  Hesitatingly, with many a look
+behind her, she trots out after the horses and the other dogs.
+An impassioned appeal from the head boundary rider,
+"Go back home, will yer!" is treated with the contempt it deserves.
+She goes out to the yards, works, perhaps half the day,
+and then slips quietly under the fences and trots off home, contented.
+
+
+
+
+The Dog -- as a Sportsman
+
+
+
+The sheep-dog and the cattle-dog are the workmen of the animal kingdom;
+sporting and fighting dogs are the professionals and artists.
+
+A house-dog or a working-dog will only work for his master;
+a professional or artistic dog will work for anybody, so long as he
+is treated like an artist.  A man going away for a week's shooting
+can borrow a dog, and the dog will work for him loyally, just as
+a good musician will do his best, though the conductor is strange to him,
+and the other members of the band are not up to the mark.
+The musician's art is sacred to him, and that is the case with the dog --
+Art before everything.
+
+It is a grand sight to see a really good setter or pointer
+working up to a bird, occasionally glancing over his shoulder to see
+if the man with the gun has not lost himself.  He throws his whole soul
+into his work, questing carefully over the cold scent, feathering eagerly
+when the bird is close, and at last drawing up like a statue.
+Not Paganini himself ever lost himself in his art more thoroughly than does
+humble Spot or Ponto.  It is not amusement and not a mere duty to him;
+it is a sacred gift, which he is bound to exercise.
+
+A pointer in need of amusement will play with another dog --
+the pair pretending to fight, and so on, but when there is work to be done,
+the dog is lost in the artist.  How crestfallen he looks if by any chance
+he blunders on to a bird without pointing it!  A fiddler who has played
+a wrong note in a solo is the only creature who can look
+quite so discomfited.  Humanity, instead of going to the ant for wisdom,
+should certainly go to the dog.
+
+Sporting dogs are like other artists, in that they are apt to get careless
+of everything except their vocation.  They are similarly
+quite unreliable in their affections.  They are not good watch dogs,
+and take little interest in chasing cats.  They look on a little dog
+that catches rats much as a great musician looks on a cricketer --
+it's clever, but it isn't Art.
+
+Hunting and fighting dogs are the gladiators of the animal world.
+A fox-hound or a kangaroo-dog is always of the same opinion
+as Mr. Jorrocks: -- "All time is wasted what isn't spent in 'untin'."
+
+A greyhound will start out in the morning with three lame legs,
+but as soon as he sees a hare start he MUST go.  He utterly forgets
+his sorrows in the excitement, just as a rowing-man, all over
+boils and blisters, will pull a desperate race without feeling any pain.
+Such dogs are not easily excited by anything but a chase,
+and a burglar might come and rob the house and murder the inmates
+without arousing any excitement among them.  Guarding a house
+is "not their pidgin" as the Chinese say.  That is one great reason
+for the success of the dog at whatever branch of his tribe's work
+he goes in for -- he is so thorough.  Dogs who are forced to combine
+half-a-dozen professions never make a success at anything.
+One dog one billet is their motto.
+
+The most earnest and thorough of all the dog tribe is the fighting dog.
+His intense self-respect, his horror of brawling, his cool determination,
+make him a pattern to humanity.  The bull-dog or bull-terrier is generally
+the most friendly and best-tempered dog in the world; but when he
+is put down in the ring he fights till he drops, in grim silence,
+though his feet are bitten through and through, his ears are in rags,
+and his neck a hideous mass of wounds.
+
+In a well-conducted dog-fight each dog in turn has to attack the other dog,
+and one can see fierce earnestness blazing in the eye of the attacker
+as he hurls himself on the foe.  What makes him fight like that?  It is not
+bloodthirstiness, because they are neither savage nor quarrelsome dogs:
+a bulldog will go all his life without a fight, unless put into a ring.
+It is simply their strong self-respect and stubborn pride which will not
+let them give in.  The greyhound snaps at his opponent and then runs
+for his life, but the fighting dog stands to it till death.
+
+Just occasionally one sees the same type of human being --
+some quiet-spoken, good-tempered man who has taken up glove-fighting
+for a living, and who, perhaps, gets pitted against a man a shade better
+than himself.  After a few rounds he knows he is overmatched, but there is
+something at the back of his brain that will not let him cave in.
+Round after round he stands punishment, and round after round
+he grimly comes up, till, possibly, his opponent loses heart,
+or a fluky hit turns the scale in his favour.  These men are to be found
+in every class of life.  Many of the gamest of the game are mere
+gutter-bred boys who will continue to fight long after they have endured
+enough punishment to entitle them to quit.
+
+You can see in their eyes the same hard glitter that shows
+in the bulldog's eyes as he limps across the ring, or in the eye
+of the racehorse as he lies down to it when his opponent is outpacing him.
+It is grit, pluck, vim, nerve force; call it what you like,
+and there is no created thing that has more of it than the dog.
+
+The blood-lust is a dog-phase that has never been quite understood.
+Every station-owner knows that sometimes the house-dogs are liable to take
+a sudden fit of sheep-killing.  Any kind of dog will do it,
+from the collie downward.  Sometimes dogs from different homesteads meet
+in the paddocks, having apparently arranged the whole affair beforehand.
+They are very artful about it, too.  They lie round the house till dark,
+and then slink off and have a wild night's blood-spree,
+running down the wretched sheep and tearing their throats open;
+before dawn they slink back again and lie around the house as before.
+Many and many a sheep-owner has gone out with a gun
+and shot his neighbour's dogs for killing sheep which his own wicked,
+innocent-looking dogs had slain.
+
+
+
+
+Concerning a Steeplechase Rider
+
+
+
+Of all the ways in which men get a living there is none so hard
+and so precarious as that of steeplechase-riding in Australia.
+It is bad enough in England, where steeplechases only take place in winter,
+when the ground is soft, where the horses are properly schooled
+before being raced, and where most of the obstacles will yield a little
+if struck and give the horse a chance to blunder over safely.
+
+In Australia the men have to go at racing-speed, on very hard ground,
+over the most rigid and uncompromising obstacles -- ironbark rails
+clamped into solid posts with bands of iron.  No wonder they are always
+coming to grief, and are always in and out of hospital
+in splints and bandages.  Sometimes one reads that a horse has fallen
+and the rider has "escaped with a severe shaking."
+
+That "shaking", gentle reader, would lay you or me up for weeks,
+with a doctor to look after us and a crowd of sympathetic friends
+calling to know how our poor back was.  But the steeplechase-rider
+has to be out and about again, "riding exercise" every morning,
+and "schooling" all sorts of cantankerous brutes over the fences.
+These men take their lives in their hands and look at grim death
+between their horses' ears every time they race or "school".
+
+The death-record among Australian cross-country jockeys and horses
+is very great; it is a curious instance of how custom sanctifies all things
+that such horse-and-man slaughter is accepted in such a callous way.
+If any theatre gave a show at which men and horses were habitually
+crippled or killed in full sight of the audience, the manager would be
+put on his trial for manslaughter.
+
+Our race-tracks use up their yearly average of horses and men
+without attracting remark.  One would suppose that the risk being so great
+the profits were enormous; but they are not.  In "the game" as played
+on our racecourses there is just a bare living for a good capable horseman
+while he lasts, with the certainty of an ugly smash if he keeps at it
+long enough.
+
+And they don't need to keep at it very long.  After a few good "shakings"
+they begin to take a nip or two to put heart into them before they go out,
+and after a while they have to increase the dose.  At last they cannot
+ride at all without a regular cargo of alcohol on board, and are either
+"half-muzzy" or shaky according as they have taken too much or too little.
+
+Then the game becomes suicidal; it is an axiom that as soon as a man
+begins to funk he begins to fall.  The reason is that a rider who has
+lost his nerve is afraid of his horse making a mistake, and takes a pull,
+or urges him onward, just at the crucial moment when the horse is rattling
+up to his fence and judging his distance.  That little, nervous pull
+at his head or that little touch of the spur, takes his attention
+from the fence, with the result that he makes his spring a foot too far off
+or a foot too close in, and -- smash!
+
+The loafers who hang about the big fences rush up to see if the jockey
+is killed or stunned; if he is, they dispose of any jewellery he may have
+about him; they have been known almost to tear a finger off in their
+endeavours to secure a ring.  The ambulance clatters up at a canter,
+the poor rider is pushed in out of sight, and the ladies in the stand
+say how unlucky they are -- that brute of a horse falling
+after they backed him.  A wolfish-eyed man in the Leger-stand shouts
+to a wolfish-eyed pal, "Bill, I believe that jock was killed
+when the chestnut fell," and Bill replies, "Yes, damn him,
+I had five bob on him."  And the rider, gasping like a crushed chicken,
+is carried into the casualty-room and laid on a little stretcher,
+while outside the window the bookmakers are roaring "Four to one bar one,"
+and the racing is going on merrily as ever.
+
+These remarks serve to introduce one of the fraternity
+who may be considered as typical of all.  He was a small, wiry,
+hard-featured fellow, the son of a stockman on a big cattle-station,
+and began life as a horse-breaker; he was naturally a horseman,
+able and willing to ride anything that could carry him.
+He left the station to go with cattle on the road, and having picked up
+a horse that showed pace, amused himself by jumping over fences.
+Then he went to Wagga, entered the horse in a steeplechase,
+rode him himself, won handsomely, sold the horse at a good price
+to a Sydney buyer, and went down to ride it in his Sydney races.
+
+In Sydney he did very well; he got a name as a fearless and clever rider,
+and was offered several mounts on fine animals.  So he pitched his camp
+in Sydney, and became a fully-enrolled member of the worst profession
+in the world.  I had known him in the old days on the road, and when
+I met him on the course one day I enquired how he liked the new life.
+
+"Well, it's a livin'," he said, "but it's no great shakes.  They don't give
+steeplechase-riders a chance in Sydney.  There's very few races,
+and the big sweepstakes keep horses out of the game."
+
+"Do you get a fair share of the riding?" I asked.
+
+"Oh, yes; I get as much as anybody.  But there's a lot of 'em got a notion
+I won't take hold of a horse when I'm told (i.e., pull him
+to prevent him winning).  Some of these days I'll take hold of a horse
+when they don't expect it."
+
+I smiled as I thought there was probably a sorry day in store
+for some backer when the jockey "took hold" unexpectedly.
+
+"Do you have to pull horses, then, to get employment?"
+
+"Oh, well, it's this way," he said, rather apologetically, "if an owner
+is badly treated by the handicapper, and is just giving his horse a run
+to get weight off, then it's right enough to catch hold a bit.
+But when a horse is favourite and the public are backing him
+it isn't right to take hold of him then.  _I_ would not do it."
+This was his whole code of morals -- not to pull a favourite;
+and he felt himself very superior to the scoundrel who would pull
+favourites or outsiders indiscriminately.
+
+"What do you get for riding?" I asked him.
+
+"Well," he said, looking about uneasily, "we're supposed to get
+a fiver for a losing mount and ten pounds if we win, but a lot
+of the steeplechase-owners are what I call `battlers' --
+men who have no money and get along by owing everybody.  They promise us
+all sorts of money if we win, but they don't pay if we lose.
+I only got two pounds for that last steeplechase."
+
+"Two pounds!" I made a rapid calculation.  He had ridden over
+eighteen fences for two pounds -- had chanced his life eighteen times
+at less than half-a-crown a time.
+
+"Good Heavens!" I said, "that's a poor game.  Wouldn't you be better
+back on the station?"
+
+"Oh, I don't know -- sometimes we get laid a bit to nothing,
+and do well out of a race.  And then, you know, a steeplechase rider
+is somebody -- not like an ordinary fellow that is just working."
+
+I realised that I was an "ordinary fellow who was just working",
+and felt small accordingly.
+
+"I'm just off to weigh now," he said -- "I'm riding Contractor,
+and he'll run well, but he always seems to fall at those logs.  Still,
+I ought to have luck to-day.  I met a hearse as I was coming out.
+I'll get him over the fences, somehow."
+
+"Do you think it lucky, then, to meet a hearse?"
+
+"Oh, yes," he said, "if you MEET it.  You mustn't overtake it --
+that's unlucky.  So is a cross-eyed man unlucky.  Cross-eyed men
+ought to be kept off racecourses."
+
+He reappeared clad in his racing rig, and we set off to see
+the horse saddled.  We found the owner in a great state of excitement.
+It seemed he had no money -- absolutely none whatever -- but had borrowed
+enough to pay the sweepstakes, and stood to make something if the horse won
+and lose nothing if he lost, as he had nothing to lose.  My friend insisted
+on being paid two pounds before he would mount, and the owner
+nearly had a fit in his efforts to persuade him to ride on credit.
+At last a backer of the horse agreed to pay 2 pounds 10s., win or lose,
+and the rider was to get 25 pounds out of the prize if he won.
+So up he got; and as he and the others walked the big muscular horses
+round the ring, nodding gaily to friends in the crowd, I thought of
+the gladiators going out to fight in the arena with the cry of
+"Hail, Caesar, those about to die salute thee!"
+
+The story of the race is soon told.  My friend went to the front
+at the start and led nearly all the way, and "Contractor!" was on
+every one's lips as the big horse sailed along in front of his field.
+He came at the log-fence full of running, and it looked certain
+that he would get over.  But at the last stride he seemed to falter,
+then plunged right into the fence, striking it with his chest, and,
+turning right over, landed on his unfortunate rider.
+
+A crowd clustered round and hid horse and rider from view,
+and I ran down to the casualty-room to meet him when the ambulance came in.
+The limp form was carefully taken out and laid on a stretcher
+while a doctor examined the crushed ribs, the broken arm, and all the havoc
+that the horse's huge weight had wrought.
+
+There was no hope from the first.  My poor friend, who had so often
+faced Death for two pounds, lay very still awhile.  Then he began to talk,
+wandering in his mind, "Where are the cattle?" -- his mind evidently
+going back to the old days on the road.  Then, quickly, "Look out there --
+give me room!" and again "Five-and-twenty pounds, Mary, and a sure thing
+if he don't fall at the logs."
+
+Mary was sobbing beside the bed, cursing the fence and the money
+that had brought him to grief.  At last, in a tone of satisfaction,
+he said, quite clear and loud:  "I know how it was --
+THERE COULDN'T HAVE BEEN ANY DEAD MAN IN THAT HEARSE!"
+
+And so, having solved the mystery to his own satisfaction, he drifted away
+into unconsciousness -- and woke somewhere on the other side
+of the big fence that we can neither see through nor over,
+but all have to face sooner or later.
+
+
+
+
+Victor Second
+
+
+
+We were training two horses for the Buckatowndown races --
+an old grey warrior called Tricolor -- better known to the station boys
+as The Trickler -- and a mare for the hack race.  Station horses
+don't get trained quite like Carbine; some days we had no time
+to give them gallops at all, so they had to gallop twice as far
+the next day to make up.
+
+One day the boy we had looking after The Trickler fell in with
+a mob of sharps who told him we didn't know anything about training horses,
+and that what the horse really wanted was "a twicer" -- that is to say,
+a gallop twice round the course.  So the boy gave him "a twicer"
+on his own responsibility.  When we found out about it we gave the boy
+a twicer with the strap, and he left and took out a summons against us.
+But somehow or other we managed to get the old horse pretty fit,
+tried him against hacks of different descriptions, and persuaded ourselves
+that we had the biggest certainty ever known on a racecourse.
+
+When the horses were galloping in the morning the kangaroo-dog, Victor,
+nearly always went down to the course to run round with them.
+It amused him, apparently, and didn't hurt anyone, so we used
+to let him race; in fact, we rather encouraged him, because it kept him
+in good trim to hunt kangaroo.  When we were starting for the meeting,
+someone said we had better tie up Victor or he would be getting stolen
+at the races.  We called and whistled, but he had made himself scarce,
+so we started and forgot all about him.
+
+Buckatowndown Races.  Red-hot day, everything dusty, everybody drunk
+and blasphemous.  All the betting at Buckatowndown was double-event --
+you had to win the money first, and fight the man for it afterwards.
+
+The start for our race, the Town Plate, was delayed for
+a quarter of an hour because the starter flatly refused to leave a fight
+of which he was an interested spectator.  Every horse,
+as he did his preliminary gallop, had a string of dogs after him,
+and the clerk of the course came full cry after the dogs with a whip.
+
+By and by the horses strung across to the start at the far side
+of the course.  They fiddled about for a bit; then down went the flag
+and they came sweeping along all bunched up together, one holding
+a nice position on the inside.  All of a sudden we heard a wild chorus
+of imprecations -- "Look at that dog!"  Victor had chipped in with
+the racehorses, and was running right in front of the field.
+It looked a guinea to a gooseberry that some of them would fall on him.
+
+The owners danced and swore.  What did we mean by bringing
+a something mongrel there to trip up and kill horses that were worth
+a paddockful of all the horses we had ever owned, or would ever
+breed or own, even if we lived to be a thousand.  We were fairly in it
+and no mistake.
+
+As the field came past the stand the first time we could hear the riders
+swearing at our dog, and a wild yell of execration arose from the public.
+He had got right among the ruck by this time, and was racing alongside
+his friend The Trickler, thoroughly enjoying himself.  After passing
+the stand the pace became very merry; the dog stretched out all he knew;
+when they began to make it too hot for him, he cut off corners,
+and joined at odd intervals, and every time he made a fresh appearance
+the people in the stand lifted up their voices and "swore cruel".
+
+The horses were all at the whip as they turned into the straight,
+and then The Trickler and the publican's mare singled out.
+We could hear the "chop, chop!" of the whips as they came along together,
+but the mare could not suffer it as long as the old fellow,
+and she swerved off while he struggled home a winner by a length or so.
+Just as they settled down to finish Victor dashed up on the inside,
+and passed the post at old Trickler's girths.  The populace
+immediately went for him with stones, bottles, and other missiles,
+and he had to scratch gravel to save his life.  But imagine the amazement
+of the other owners when the judge placed Trickler first, Victor second,
+and the publican's mare third!
+
+The publican tried to argue it out with him.  He said you couldn't place
+a kangaroo-dog second in a horse-race.
+
+The judge said it was HIS (hiccough) business what he placed,
+and that those who (hiccough) interfered with him would be sorry for it.
+Also he expressed a (garnished) opinion that the publican's mare
+was no rotten good, and that she was the right sort of mare
+for a poor man to own, because she would keep him poor.
+
+Then the publican called the judge a cow.  The judge was willing;
+a rip, tear, and chew fight ensued, which lasted some time.  The judge won.
+
+Fifteen protests were lodged against our win, but we didn't
+worry about that -- we had laid the stewards a bit to nothing.
+Every second man we met wanted to run us a mile for 100 pounds a side;
+and a drunken shearer, spoiling for a fight, said he had heard we were
+"brimming over with bally science", and had ridden forty miles to find out.
+
+We didn't wait for the hack race.  We folded our tents like the Arab
+and stole away.  But it remains on the annals of Buckatowndown
+how a kangaroo-dog ran second for the Town Plate.
+
+
+
+
+Concerning a Dog-fight
+
+
+
+Dog-fighting as a sport is not much in vogue now-a-days.  To begin with
+it is illegal.  Not that THAT matters much, for Sunday drinking
+is also illegal.  But dog-fighting is one of the cruel sports which
+the community has decided to put down with all the force of public opinion.
+Nevertheless, a certain amount of it is still carried on near Sydney,
+and very neatly and scientifically carried on, too -- principally by
+gentlemen who live out Botany way and do not care for public opinion.
+
+The grey dawn was just breaking over Botany when we got to
+the meeting-place.  Away to the East the stars were paling
+in the faint flush of coming dawn, and over the sandhills came
+the boom of breakers.  It was Sunday morning, and all the respectable,
+non-dog-fighting population of that odoriferous suburb were sleeping
+their heavy, Sunday-morning sleep.  Some few people, however, were astir.
+In the dim light hurried pedestrians plodded along the heavy road
+towards the sandhills.  Now and then a van, laden with ten or eleven of
+"the talent", and drawn by a horse that cost fifteen shillings at auction,
+rolled softly along in the same direction.  These were dog-fighters who
+had got "the office", and knew exactly where the match was to take place.
+
+The "meet" was on a main road, about half-a-mile from town;
+here some two hundred people had assembled, and hung up
+their horses and vehicles to the fence without the slightest concealment.
+They said the police would not interfere with them -- and they did not seem
+a nice crowd to interfere with.
+
+One dog was on the ground when we arrived, having come out
+in a hansom cab with his trainer.  He was a white bull-terrier,
+weighing about forty pounds, "trained to the hour",
+with the muscles standing out all over him.  He waited in the cab,
+licking his trainer's face at intervals to reassure that individual of
+his protection and support; the rest of the time he glowered out of the cab
+and eyed the public scornfully.  He knew as well as any human being
+that there was sport afoot, and looked about eagerly and wickedly
+to see what he could get his teeth into.
+
+Soon a messenger came running up to know whether they meant
+to sit in the cab till the police came; the other dog, he said,
+had arrived and all was ready.  The trainer and dog got out of the cab;
+we followed them through a fence and over a rise -- and there,
+about twenty yards from the main road, was a neatly-pitched enclosure
+like a prize-ring, a thirty-foot-square enclosure formed with
+stakes and ropes.  About a hundred people were at the ringside,
+and in the far corner, in the arms of his trainer, was the other dog --
+a brindle.
+
+It was wonderful to see the two dogs when they caught sight of each other.
+The white dog came up to the ring straining at his leash, nearly dragging
+his trainer off his feet in his efforts to get at the enemy.
+At intervals he emitted a hoarse roar of challenge and defiance.
+
+The brindled dog never uttered a sound.  He fixed his eyes on his adversary
+with a look of intense hunger, of absolute yearning for combat.
+He never for an instant shifted his unwinking gaze.
+He seemed like an animal who saw the hopes of years about to be realised.
+With painful earnestness he watched every detail of the other dog's toilet;
+and while the white dog was making fierce efforts to get at him,
+he stood Napoleonic, grand in his courage, waiting for the fray.
+
+All details were carefully attended to, and all rules strictly observed.
+People may think a dog-fight is a go-as-you-please outbreak of lawlessness,
+but there are rules and regulations -- simple, but effective.  There were
+two umpires, a referee, a timekeeper, and two seconds for each dog.
+The stakes were said to be ten pounds a-side.  After some talk,
+the dogs were carried to the centre of the ring by their seconds and put
+on the ground.  Like a flash of lightning they dashed at each other,
+and the fight began.
+
+Nearly everyone has seen dogs fight -- "it is their nature to",
+as Dr. Watts put it.  But an ordinary worry between (say) a retriever
+and a collie, terminating as soon as one or other gets his ear bitten,
+gives a very faint idea of a real dog-fight.  But bull-terriers
+are the gladiators of the canine race.  Bred and trained to fight,
+carefully exercised and dieted for weeks beforehand, they come to the fray
+exulting in their strength and determined to win.  Each is trained to fight
+for certain holds, a grip of the ear or the back of the neck
+being of very slight importance.  The foot is a favourite hold,
+the throat is, of course, fashionable -- if they can get it.
+
+The white and the brindle sparred and wrestled and gripped and threw
+each other, fighting grimly, and disdaining to utter a sound.
+Their seconds dodged round them unceasingly, giving them encouragement
+and advice -- "That's the style, Boxer -- fight for his foot" --
+"Draw your foot back, old man," and so on.  Now and again one dog
+got a grip of the other's foot and chewed savagely, and the spectators
+danced with excitement.  The moment the dogs let each other go
+they were snatched up by their seconds and carried to their corners,
+and a minute's time was allowed, in which their mouths were washed out
+and a cloth rubbed over their bodies.
+
+Then came the ceremony of "coming to scratch".  When time was called
+for the second round the brindled dog was let loose in his own corner,
+and was required by the rules to go across the ring of his own free will
+and attack the other dog.  If he failed to do this he would lose the fight.
+The white dog, meanwhile, was held in his corner waiting the attack.
+After the next round it was the white dog's turn to make the attack,
+and so on alternately.  The animals need not fight a moment longer
+than they chose, as either dog could abandon the fight by failing to attack
+his enemy.
+
+While their condition lasted they used to dash across the ring at full run;
+but, after a while, when the punishment got severe and their "fitness"
+began to fail, it became a very exciting question whether or not a dog
+would "come to scratch".  The brindled dog's condition was not so good
+as the other's.  He used to lie on his stomach between the rounds to
+rest himself, and several times it looked as if he would not cross the ring
+when his turn came.  But as soon as time was called he would
+start to his feet and limp slowly across glaring steadily at his adversary;
+then, as he got nearer, he would quicken his pace, make a savage rush,
+and in a moment they would be locked in combat.  So they battled on
+for fifty-six minutes, till the white dog (who was apparently having
+all the best of it), on being called to cross the ring,
+only went half-way across and stood there for a minute growling savagely.
+So he lost the fight.
+
+No doubt it was a brutal exhibition.  But it was not cruel to the animals
+in the same sense that pigeon-shooting or hare-hunting is cruel.
+The dogs are born fighters, anxious and eager to fight,
+desiring nothing better.  Whatever limited intelligence they have
+is all directed to this one consuming passion.  They could stop
+when they liked, but anyone looking on could see that they gloried
+in the combat.  Fighting is like breath to them -- they must have it.
+Nature has implanted in all animals a fighting instinct
+for the weeding out of the physically unfit, and these dogs have
+an extra share of that fighting instinct.
+
+Of course, now that militarism is going to be abolished, and the world
+is going to be so good and teetotal, and only fight in debating societies,
+these nasty savage animals will be out of date.  We will not be allowed
+to keep anything more quarrelsome than a poodle -- and a man of the future,
+the New Man, whose fighting instincts have not been quite bred out of him,
+will, perhaps, be found at grey dawn of a Sunday morning
+with a crowd of other unregenerates in some backyard
+frantically cheering two of them to mortal combat.
+
+
+
+
+His Masterpiece
+
+
+
+Greenhide Billy was a stockman on a Clarence River cattle-station,
+and admittedly the biggest liar in the district.  He had been
+for many years pioneering in the Northern Territory, the other side
+of the sun-down -- a regular "furthest-out man" -- and this assured
+his reputation among station-hands who award rank according to
+amount of experience.
+
+Young men who have always hung around the home districts, doing a job
+of shearing here or a turn at horse-breaking there, look with reverence
+on Riverine or Macquarie-River shearers who come in with tales of runs
+where they have 300,000 acres of freehold land and shear 250,000 sheep;
+these again pale their ineffectual fires before the glory of
+the Northern Territory man who has all-comers on toast, because no one
+can contradict him or check his figures.  When two of them meet, however,
+they are not fools enough to cut down quotations and spoil the market;
+they lie in support of each other, and make all other bushmen feel
+mean and pitiful and inexperienced.
+
+Sometimes a youngster would timidly ask Greenhide Billy about
+the `terra incognita':  "What sort of a place is it, Billy -- how big
+are the properties?  How many acres had you in the place you were on?"
+
+"Acres be d----d!" Billy would scornfully reply; "hear him
+talking about acres!  D'ye think we were blanked cockatoo selectors!
+Out there we reckon country by the hundred miles.  You orter say,
+`How many thousand miles of country?' and then I'd understand you."
+
+Furthermore, according to Billy, they reckoned the rainfall
+in the Territory by yards, not inches.  He had seen blackfellows
+who could jump at least three inches higher than anyone else had ever seen
+a blackfellow jump, and every bushman has seen or personally known
+a blackfellow who could jump over six feet.  Billy had seen
+bigger droughts, better country, fatter cattle, faster horses,
+and cleverer dogs, than any other man on the Clarence River.
+But one night when the rain was on the roof, and the river was rising
+with a moaning sound, and the men were gathered round the fire in the hut
+smoking and staring at the coals, Billy turned himself loose and gave us
+his masterpiece.
+
+"I was drovin' with cattle from Mungrybanbone to old Corlett's station
+on the Buckadowntown River" (Billy always started his stories
+with some paralysing bush names).  "We had a thousand head of store-cattle,
+wild, mountain-bred wretches that'd charge you on sight;
+they were that handy with their horns they could skewer a mosquito.
+There was one or two one-eyed cattle among 'em -- and you know how
+a one-eyed beast always keeps movin' away from the mob,
+pokin' away out to the edge of them so as they won't git on his blind side,
+so that by stirrin' about he keeps the others restless.
+
+"They had been scared once or twice, and stampeded and gave us
+all we could do to keep them together; and it was wet and dark
+and thundering, and it looked like a real bad night for us.
+It was my watch.  I was on one side of the cattle, like it might be here,
+with a small bit of a fire; and my mate, Barcoo Jim, he was right opposite
+on the other side of the cattle, and had gone to sleep under a log.
+The rest of the men were in the camp fast asleep.  Every now and again
+I'd get on my horse and prowl round the cattle quiet like,
+and they seemed to be settled down all right, and I was sitting by my fire
+holding my horse and drowsing, when all of a sudden a blessed 'possum
+ran out from some saplings and scratched up a tree right alongside me.
+I was half-asleep, I suppose, and was startled; anyhow, never thinking
+what I was doing, I picked up a firestick out of the fire and flung it
+at the 'possum.
+
+"Whoop!  Before you could say Jack Robertson, that thousand head of cattle
+were on their feet, and made one wild, headlong, mad rush right over
+the place where poor old Barcoo Jim was sleeping.  There was no time
+to hunt up materials for the inquest; I had to keep those cattle together,
+so I sprang into the saddle, dashed the spurs into the old horse,
+dropped my head on his mane, and sent him as hard as he could leg it
+through the scrub to get to the lead of the cattle and steady them.
+It was brigalow, and you know what that is.
+
+"You know how the brigalow grows," continued Bill; "saplings about as thick
+as a man's arm, and that close together a dog can't open his mouth
+to bark in 'em.  Well, those cattle swept through that scrub, levelling it
+like as if it had been cleared for a railway line.  They cleared a track
+a quarter of a mile wide, and smashed every stick, stump and sapling on it.
+You could hear them roaring and their hoofs thundering
+and the scrub smashing three or four miles off.
+
+"And where was I?  I was racing parallel with the cattle, with my head down
+on the horse's neck, letting him pick his way through the scrub
+in the pitchy darkness.  This went on for about four miles.
+Then the cattle began to get winded, and I dug into the old stock-horse
+with the spurs, and got in front, and began to crack the whip and sing out,
+so as to steady them a little; after awhile they dropped slower and slower,
+and I kept the whip going.  I got them all together in a patch of
+open country, and there I rode round and round 'em all night till daylight.
+
+"And how I wasn't killed in the scrub, goodness only knows;
+for a man couldn't ride in the daylight where I did in the dark.
+The cattle were all knocked about -- horns smashed, legs broken, ribs torn;
+but they were all there, every solitary head of 'em; and as soon as
+the daylight broke I took 'em back to the camp -- that is,
+all that could travel, because I had to leave a few broken-legged ones."
+
+Billy paused in his narrative.  He knew that some suggestions would
+be made, by way of compromise, to tone down the awful strength of the yarn,
+and he prepared himself accordingly.  His motto was "No surrender";
+he never abated one jot of his statements; if anyone chose to remark
+on them, he made them warmer and stronger, and absolutely flattened out
+the intruder.
+
+"That was a wonderful bit of ridin' you done, Billy,"
+said one of the men at last, admiringly.  "It's a wonder you wasn't killed.
+I suppose your clothes was pretty well tore off your back with the scrub?"
+
+"Never touched a twig," said Billy.
+
+"Ah!" faltered the inquirer, "then no doubt you had a real
+ringin' good stock-horse that could take you through a scrub like that
+full-split in the dark, and not hit you against anything."
+
+"No, he wasn't a good un," said Billy decisively, "he was the worst horse
+in the camp.  Terrible awkward in the scrub he was, always fallin' down
+on his knees; and his neck was so short you could sit far back on him
+and pull his ears."
+
+Here that interrogator retired hurt; he gave Billy best.  After a pause
+another took up the running.
+
+"How did your mate get on, Billy?  I s'pose he was trampled to a mummy!"
+
+"No," said Billy, "he wasn't hurt a bit.  I told you he was sleeping
+under the shelter of a log.  Well, when those cattle rushed
+they swept over that log a thousand strong; and every beast of that herd
+took the log in his stride and just missed landing on Barcoo Jimmy
+by about four inches."
+
+The men waited a while and smoked, to let this statement soak well
+into their systems; at last one rallied and had a final try.
+
+"It's a wonder then, Billy," he said, "that your mate didn't come after you
+and give you a hand to steady the cattle."
+
+"Well, perhaps it was," said Billy, "only that there was a bigger wonder
+than that at the back of it."
+
+"What was that?"
+
+"My mate never woke up all through it."
+
+Then the men knocked the ashes out of their pipes and went to bed.
+
+
+
+
+Done for the Double
+
+by Knott Gold
+Author of "Flogged for a Furlong", "Won by a Winker", etc., etc.
+
+
+
+Chapter I. -- Wanted, a Pony
+
+
+Algernon de Montgomery Smythers was a merchant, wealthy beyond
+the dreams of avarice.  Other merchants might dress more lavishly,
+and wear larger watch chains; but the bank balance is the true test
+of mercantile superiority, and in a trial of bank balances
+Algernon de Montgomery Smythers represented Tyson at seven stone.
+He was unbeatable.
+
+He lived in comfort, not to say luxury.  He had champagne
+for breakfast every morning, and his wife always slept with a pair
+of diamond earrings worth a small fortune in her ears.
+It is things like these that show true gentility.
+
+Though they had been married many years, the A. de M. Smythers
+had but one child -- a son and heir.  No Christmas Day was allowed to pass
+by his doting parents without a gift to young Algy of some trifle
+worth about 150 pounds, less the discount for cash.  He had six play-rooms,
+all filled with the most expensive toys and ingenious mechanical devices.
+He had a phonograph that could hail a ship out at the South Head,
+and a mechanical parrot that sang "The Wearing of the Green".
+And still he was not happy.
+
+Sometimes, in spite of the vigilance of his four nurses
+and six under-nurses, he would escape into the street, and run about
+with the little boys he met there.  One day he gave one of them a sovereign
+for a locust.  Certainly the locust was a "double-drummer",
+and could deafen the German Band when shaken up judiciously;
+still, it was dear at a sovereign.
+
+It is ever thus.
+
+What we have we do not value, and what other people have
+we are not strong enough to take from them.
+
+Such is life.
+
+Christmas was approaching, and the question of Algy's Christmas present
+agitated the bosom of his parents.  He already had nearly everything
+a child could want; but one morning a bright inspiration
+struck Algy's father.  Algy should have a pony.
+
+With Mr. Smythers to think was to act.  He was not a man
+who believed in allowing grass to grow under his feet.  His motto was,
+"Up and be doing -- somebody."  So he put an advertisement in the paper
+that same day.
+
+"Wanted, a boy's pony.  Must be guaranteed sound, strong, handsome,
+intelligent.  Used to trains, trams, motors, fire engines,
+and motor 'buses.  Any failure in above respects will disqualify.
+Certificate of birth required as well as references from last place.
+Price no object."
+
+
+Chapter II. -- Blinky Bill's Sacrifice
+
+
+Down in a poverty-stricken part of the city lived Blinky Bill,
+the horse-dealer.
+
+His yard was surrounded by loose-boxes made of any old timber,
+galvanized iron, sheets of roofing-felt, and bark he could gather together.
+
+He kept all sorts of horses, except good sorts.  There were harness horses,
+that wouldn't pull, and saddle horses that wouldn't go -- or, if they went,
+used to fall down.  Nearly every animal about the place had something
+the matter with it.
+
+When the bailiff dropped in, as he did every two or three weeks,
+Bill and he would go out together, and "have a punt" on some of
+Bill's ponies, or on somebody else's ponies -- the latter for choice.
+But periodical punts and occasional sales of horses would not keep the wolf
+from the door.  Ponies keep on eating whether they are winning or not
+and Blinky Bill had got down to the very last pitch of desperation
+when he saw the advertisement mentioned at the end of last chapter.
+
+It was like a ray of hope to him.  At once there flashed upon him
+what he must do.
+
+He must make a great sacrifice; he must sell Sausage II.
+
+Sausage II. was the greatest thirteen-two pony of the day.
+Time and again he had gone out to race when, to use William's own words,
+it was a blue duck for Bill's chance of keeping afloat; and every time
+did the gallant race pony pull his owner through.
+
+Bill owed more to Sausage II. than he owed to his creditors.
+
+Brought up as a pet, the little animal was absolutely trustworthy.
+He would carry a lady or a child, or pull a sulky; in fact,
+it was quite a common thing for Blinky Bill to drive him in a sulky
+to a country meeting and look about him for a likely "mark".
+If he could find a fleet youth with a reputedly fast pony,
+Bill would offer to "pull the little cuddy out of the sulky
+and run yer for a fiver."  Sometimes he got beaten; but as he never paid,
+that didn't matter.  He did not believe in fighting; but he would always
+sooner fight than pay.
+
+But all these devices had left him on his uppers in the end.
+He had no feed for his ponies, and no money to buy it; the corn merchant
+had written his account off as bad, and had no desire to make it worse.
+Under the circumstances, what was he to do?  Sausage II. must be sold.
+
+With heavy heart Bill led the pony down to be inspected.
+He saw Mr. Algernon de Montgomery Smythers, and measured him with his eye.
+He saw it would be no use to talk about racing to him,
+so he went on the other track.
+
+He told him that the pony belonged to a Methodist clergyman,
+who used to drive him in a "shay".  There are no shays in this country;
+but Bill had read the word somewhere, and thought it sounded respectable.
+"Yus, sir," he said, "'e goes lovely in a shay," and he was
+just starting off at twenty words a second, when he was stopped.
+
+Mr. A. de M. Smythers was brusque with his inferiors, and in this
+he made a mistake.  Instead of listening to all that Blinky Bill said,
+and disbelieving it at his leisure, he stopped his talk.
+
+"If you want to sell this pony, dry up," he said.  "I don't believe
+a word you say, and it only worries me to hear you lying."
+
+Fatal mistake!  You should never stop a horse-dealer's talk.
+And call him anything you like, but never say you doubt his word.
+
+Both these things Mr. Smythers did; and, though he bought the pony
+at a high price, yet the insult sank deep into the heart of Blinky Bill.
+
+As the capitalist departed leading the pony, Blinky Bill muttered
+to himself, "Ha! ha!  Little does he know that he is leading Sausage II.,
+the greatest 13.2 pony of the century.  Let him beware how he gets
+alongside anything.  That's all!  Blinky Bill may yet be revenged!"
+
+
+Chapter III. -- Exit Algy
+
+
+Christmas Day came.  Algy's father gave orders to have the pony saddled,
+and led round to the front door.  Algy's mother, a lady of forty summers,
+spent the morning superintending the dinner.  Dinner was the
+principal event in the day with her.  Alas, poor lady!  Everything she ate
+agreed with her, and she got fatter and fatter and fatter.
+
+The cold world never fully appreciates the struggles of those
+who are fat -- the efforts at starvation, the detested exercise,
+the long, miserable walks.  Well has one of our greatest poets written,
+"Take up the fat man's burden."  But we digress.
+
+When Algy saw the pony he shouted with delight, and in half a minute
+was riding him up and down the front drive.  Then he asked for leave
+to go out in the street -- and that was where the trouble began.
+
+Up and down the street the pony cantered, as quietly as possible,
+till suddenly round a corner came two butcher boys racing their horses.
+With a clatter of clumsy hoofs they thundered past.  In half a second
+there was a rattle, and a sort of comet-like rush through the air.
+Sausage II. was off after them with his precious burden.
+
+The family dog tried to keep up with him, and succeeded in keeping ahead
+for about three strides.  Then, like the wolves that pursued Mazeppa,
+he was left yelping far behind.  Through Surry Hills and Redfern swept
+the flying pony, his rider lying out on his neck in Tod Sloan fashion,
+while the ground seemed to race beneath him.  The events of the way
+were just one hopeless blur till the pony ran straight as an arrow
+into the yard of Blinky Bill.
+
+
+Chapter IV. -- Running the Rule
+
+
+As soon as Blinky Bill recognised his visitor, he was delighted.
+
+"You here," he said, "Ha, ha, revenge is mine!  I'll get a tidy reward
+for taking you back, my young shaver."
+
+Then from the unresisting child he took a gold watch and three sovereigns.
+These he said he would put in a safe place for him, till he was
+going home again.  He expected to get at least a tenner ready money for
+bringing Algy back, and hoped that he might be allowed to keep the watch
+into the bargain.
+
+With a light heart he went down town with Algy's watch and sovereigns
+in his pocket.  He did not return till daylight, when he awoke his wife
+with bad news.
+
+"Can't give the boy up," he said.  "I moskenoed his block and tackle,
+and blued it in the school."  In other words, he had pawned the boy's
+watch and chain, and had lost the proceeds at pitch and toss.
+
+"Nothing for it but to move," he said, "and take the kid with us."
+
+So move they did.
+
+The reader can imagine with what frantic anxiety the father and mother
+of little Algy sought for their lost one.  They put the matter into
+the hands of the detective police, and waited for the Sherlock Holmeses
+of the force to get in their fine work.  There was nothing doing.
+
+Years rolled on, and the mysterious disappearance of little Algy
+was yet unsolved.  The horse-dealer's revenge was complete.
+
+The boy's mother consulted a clairvoyant, who murmured mystically
+"What went by the ponies, will come by the ponies;" and with that
+they had to remain satisfied.
+
+
+Chapter V. -- The Tricks of the Turf
+
+
+It was race day at Pulling'em Park, and the ponies were doing
+their usual performances.
+
+Among the throng the heaviest punter is a fat lady with diamond earrings.
+Does the reader recognize her?  It is little Algy's mother.
+Her husband is dead, leaving her the whole of his colossal fortune,
+and, having developed a taste for gambling, she is now engaged in
+"doing it in on the ponies".  She is one of the biggest bettors
+in the game.
+
+When women take to betting they are worse than men.
+
+But it is not for betting alone that she attends the meetings.
+She remembers the clairvoyant's "What went by the ponies will come
+by the ponies."  And always she searches in the ranks of the talent
+for her lost Algy.
+
+Here enters another of our dramatis personae -- Blinky Bill,
+prosperous once more.  He has got a string of ponies and punters together.
+The first are not much use to a man without the second; but, in spite of
+all temptations, Bill has always declined to number among his punters
+the mother of the child he stole.  But the poor lady regularly punts
+on his ponies, and just as regularly is "sent up" -- in other words,
+loses her money.
+
+To-day she has backed Blinky's pair, Nostrils and Tin Can, for the double.
+Nostrils has won his race, and Tin Can, if on the job,
+can win the second half of the double.  Is he on the job?
+The prices are lengthening against him, and the poor lady recognises
+that once more she is "in the cart".
+
+Just then she meets Tin Can's jockey, Dodger Smith, face to face.
+A piercing scream rends the atmosphere, as if a thousand school children
+drew a thousand slate pencils down a thousand slates simultaneously.
+"Me cheild!  Me cheild!  Me long-lost Algy!"
+
+It did not take long to convince Algy that he would be better off as a son
+to a wealthy lady than as a jockey, subject to the fiendish caprices
+of Blinky Bill.
+
+"All right, mother," he said.  "Put all you can raise on Tin Can.
+I'm going to send Blinky up.  It's time I had a cut on me own, anyway."
+
+The horses went to the post.  Tons of money were at the last moment
+hurled on to Tin Can.  The books, knowing he was "dead",
+responded gamely, and wrote his name till their wrists gave out.
+Blinky Bill had a half-share in all the bookies' winnings,
+so he chuckled grimly as he went to the rails to watch the race.
+
+They're off.  And what is this that flashes to the front,
+while the howls of the bookies rise like the yelping of fiends in torment?
+It is Dodger Smith on Tin Can, and from the grandstand there is
+a shrill feminine yell of triumph as the gallant pony sails past the post.
+
+The bookies thought that Blinky Bill had sold them,
+and they discarded him for ever.
+
+Algy and his mother were united, and backed horses together
+happily ever after, and sometimes out in the back yard of
+their palatial mansion they hand the empty bottles, free of charge,
+to a poor old broken-down bottle-O, called Blinky Bill.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of this Project Gutenberg Etext of Three Elephant Power and Other Stories
+
+
+
+
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