The Empty House

by Неизвестный

  So the first one that came by, Keola told him everything. And the missionary was very sharp on him for taking the second wife in the low island; but for all the rest, he vowed he could make neither head nor tail of it.

  ‘However,’ says he, ‘if you think this money of your father is ill-gotten, my advice to you would be to give some of it to the lepers and some to the missionary fund. And as for this extraordinary rigmarole, you cannot do better than keep it to yourselves.’

  But he warned the police at Honolulu that, by all he could make out, Kalamake and Keola had been coining false money, and it would not be amiss to watch them.

  Keola and Lehua took his advice, and gave many dollars to the lepers. And no doubt the advice must have been good, for from that day to this, Kalamake has never more been heard of. But whether he was slain in the battle by the trees, or whether he is still kicking his heels upon the Isle of Voices, who shall say?

  Some Early Australian Ghosts

  Anonymous

  In the spring of 1850, I was employed in driving a large herd of cattle from New England down into the Melbourne country. The grass was plentiful, and the cattle travelled along at their leisure across the wide plains which lie between the Lachlan, Murrumbidgee and Edward Rivers.

  It was nearly sunset on a fine evening in August when we came to the crossing-place of the Edward; and driving the cattle down into an angle of the river, we camped close to the foot of the sandhill on which the township is built. There was a pretty large crowd around our campfire, and there was a long argument as to the best track across the Old Man Plain. Most of us were in favour of Lang’s Crossing, but a stockman named Driscoll objected, asking, ‘And how do you propose to avoid the Black Swamp and the ghost of the Trotting Cob?’

  His objection was received with a roar of laughter; but Driscoll jumped up in a rage and said: ‘You may laugh as much as you like, boys, but as sure as I am standing here, I saw it myself, worse luck, and seeing’s believing!’

  Of course, when we heard this, we were all anxious to hear the story. And Driscoll was soon prevailed upon to tell us his adventure.

  ‘You all know Wantabadgery Station above Wagga-Wagga. Well, two years ago, Bill Kelly and I took three hundred fat beasts from there to Bendigo. The feed was good, and we came down the riverbank until we reached Lang’s Crossing, where we took the cattle across. It was late in the afternoon when we got out on the plain, and the sun was just dipping as we were abreast of the Black Swamp; so we rounded up the cattle and decided to stop there for the night. We hobbled our horses close at hand, lit our fire and had our suppers. Then we agreed that I should take the first watch. Kelly rolled himself up in his possum rug, and I went down to have a look at the cattle and horses. I found them all right; so I went back to the fire, heaped on fresh fuel, and stretched myself out to have a comfortable smoke. I was pretty tired with riding all day, and the fire was hot, so in a short time I dozed off.

  ‘I must have slept three or four hours, for the cold awoke me. I got up to put more wood on the fire, and then I thought I would just go round to check the cattle before I woke Kelly to take his watch. So I caught and saddled a mare, and rode off to the cattle range. The moon was at the full, and shining brightly, and the beasts had drawn out on the plain to feed. So I started to head them back. I was cantering along when all of a sudden the leading cattle came galloping back. As they wheeled, a man passed close to me, riding a bald-faced cob, and coming from the opposite direction. Now, Kelly’s horse was bald-faced, and I thought he had woken up and come to look for me, so I rode on towards our camp. When I got there, I found Kelly lying quite snug, rolled up in his rug, fast asleep! Naturally I was quite put out.

  ‘I shook him quite roughly, and when he sat up, I said: “Kelly, what do you mean by coming back and lying down again, when you know it’s your watch?”

  “Lying down again?” he replied. “Why, I never got up until this moment.”

  ‘“What!” I cried. “Do you want to deny that you passed me just now on the plain, heading back the cattle? I did not see your face, but I saw the bald face of your horse plain enough.”

  ‘At that Kelly jumped up as though he’d been shot. “Saddle up for your life, Driscoll,” said he, “and let us be off. You’ve seen the ghost of the Trotting Cob, and we’re both dead men!”

  ‘Well, we jumped on our horses and moved camp. And by daybreak we had camped just where we are now. But that very trip, Kelly was drowned in the Campaspe, and I broke two ribs and my collarbone, So I, for one, would sooner go a hundred miles round than camp again near the Black Swamp than chance seeing the ghost of the Trotting Cob.’

  Incident At Myrtle Creek

  There were still several who laughed at the idea of such things as ghosts. At last a bullock driver from the Sydney side said: ‘There are ghosts, there’s no denying. And I’ll tell you of one that hundreds heard about and many of you know the man who saw it … Most of you have been up the Murray and have passed Brown’s Station just above Quart. Well, when I was a government man doing my time, I was living near Brown’s farm. He had just settled down at the Murray with a few hundred heads of cattle, and stopped there five or six months, putting up huts and yards and breaking in the cattle to the run. So when he thought everything was going well, he started for down-country, intending to bring up more stock. He travelled on horseback, for there were no mail-coaches then, and as he pushed on pretty sharp, he was very tired when he got to Myrtle Creek.

  ‘Putting up at the Myrtle Creek inn, he told Thomson, the landlord, to call him early in the morning. He took his supper, and two or three glasses of rum, and went to bed. Towards morning something awoke him, and when he opened his eyes he saw his wife standing by the bedside. Before he could speak to her, she went out of the room. Well, Brown was greatly surprised at seeing her, but he got up and dressed, thinking she had come part of the way to meet him. When he went down, he looked into the parlour. And when he could not find her anywhere, he began calling out her name. The noise roused the landlord, who came and asked him what was going on.

  ‘“Why,” says Brown, “I want my wife. She’s come and got me up, and now she’s hidden herself.”

  “You’re dreaming, man,” said the landlord. “How can your wife be here? You know she’s at your Cow-pasture Farm.”

  ‘With that, Brown grew quite frightened. “Saddle my horse at once,” said he, “for as sure as I’m a living man, my wife came and spoke to me tonight, and I’m greatly afraid that something has happened to her at home.” And he mounted his horse and galloped off.

  ‘He rode until he knocked up his horse, and then he borrowed a fresh one, and kept on as fast as he could ride, so that, before sunset, he came close to the Cow-pasture Farm. As he galloped up, he could see that something unusual was going on. Several horses were fastened to the posts of the verandah, the working men were standing in groups at the doors of their huts, and two or three troupers were lounging about near the stockyard. Brown jumped off his horse and was about to enter his house when one of his neighbours met him at the door. The neighbour led him away a little distance, and told him as gently as he could what had taken place. Now boys, Brown was a good master to his assigned servants, but his wife was a tyrant. And while he was at the Murray, she had been stopping the rations of the government men. There was one man in particular she took a dislike to; he could do nothing right, and almost every Monday morning she saw to it that he got fifty lashes at the nearest courthouse. At last he got desperate. He was chopping some wood, when she came up to him, and after abusing him, said: “I’ll get you fifty more on Monday next.” “I may get the fifty,” said he, “but you’ll not live to know of it.” And with that he lifted the axe he had in his hand, and split her skull.

  ‘This happened at the Cow-pastures at the very hour when she was seen by Brown in the inn at Myrtle Creek. So, you see, boys, there can be no doubt but ghosts do sometimes appear to us!’

  The Cooee Hut

  ‘Have yo
u heard the story about the Cooee Hut?’ asked Jim Darling, stirring up the fire. ‘It’s out at the Yareko Creek, and the way it got its name was this: at the time the Billilong and Yareko were first settled on, there was a man named Bill White employed at the Goree Station. He was an emigrant, and had not been long in the colony, so they used to keep him about the place chopping wood and carting water. Well, it so happened that one of the shepherds had a row with the overseer and got discharged at once; so, as they had no one else handy, they decided to send Bill White shepherding until they could get another man. The hut is twenty-five miles back from Goree; so the overseer went out himself with Bill and the sheep, and then stopped a day with him, to show him the run. Bill had no hut-keeper, but he managed pretty well for two or three days.

  ‘One very hot day he must have fallen asleep in the middle of the day, when the sheep were in camp, and did not awake until they were drawn out. He was, as I told you, a new churn, and did not know anything about tracking, so he wandered vaguely up and down, looking for the flock, until he lost himself completely. Dusk was coming on, so he began cooeeing until he was fairly worn out, and then lay down to sleep. Next morning he started again, but he had got confused by then. You know the Yareko country is very puzzling, for the sandhills and plains are so much alike, it’s very hard to tell one from another. Well, poor Bill tried to travel by the sun; but as he kept following it, he went round and round, and at dusk was near the place he started from. He had no food, and could not find the creek, so he was dying of thirst, for it was burning hot weather. He cooeed again and again, until he fell exhausted. And there he lay until morning.

  ‘In the morning he got up and crawled a few yards. Then down he sank, and there he perished.

  ‘Meanwhile, the sheep had gone to another outstation, ten miles further back, where they had been running formerly. As the feed was good, they stopped there very contentedly for seven or eight days. The overseer happened to see them, and of course he brought them into the home station, and then went out to tell Bill White to come in himself.

  ‘When the overseer got to the hut, he found the ashes cold on the hearth; and he could see that White had not been in for some days. In a great fright he galloped back to the home station, where he mustered all hands to go and look for Bill. He took two aboriginal trackers along. And as I happened to be passing, I joined them.

  ‘Well, it was near dusk when we got to the hut, and of course we could do nothing that night, so we hobbled the horses and went into the hut. We were just getting our suppers when we heard a faint cooee, and then another and another. We answered at once, for we were hoping that it was Bill White coming up; but the sound came no nearer, though the cooee was repeated every four or five minutes. We thought that perhaps he had been hurt and could not walk, so several of us went out to look for him. But we could see nothing of Bill, though the cooeeing continued and apparently quite close to us. After about an hour, it ceased suddenly. We went back to the hut, greatly puzzled and very uneasy.

  ‘Next morning at daylight we started out, and the trackers very soon found poor Bill’s trail. It was through them that I am able to tell you of his rambling about, for they traced all his wanderings, pointed out where he sat and where he slept, and at last brought us to where his body lay. And strange to relate, he had died within less than a mile of his home.

  ‘We buried him in an adjacent sandhill, where you may see his grave fenced in. But since that time, no one will live in that hut, for every evening, from dusk until dark, poor Bill White is heard cooeeing. Many who had never heard this story, and chanced to camp in the neighbourhood, have heard the cooeeing and have imagined that some traveller was approaching, little realizing that it was the spirit of Bill White wandering about the Cooee Hut.’

  (Retold by Ruskin Bond from an article in

  Chambers’s Journal for July–December 1863)

  Thurnley Abbey

  Perceval Landon

  Three years ago I was on my way out to the East, and as an extra day in London was of some importance, I took the Friday evening mail-train to Brindisi instead of the usual Thursday morning Marseilles Express. Many people shrink from the long forty-eight hour train journey through Europe, and the subsequent rush across the Mediterranean on the nineteen-knot Isis or Osiris; but there is really very little discomfort on either the train or the mail-boat, and unless there is actually nothing for one to do, I always like to save the extra day and a half in London before I say goodbye to her for one of my longer tramps. This time—it was early, I remember, in the shipping season, probably about the beginning of September—there were few passengers, and I had a compartment in the P&O Indian Express to myself all the way from Calais. All Sunday I watched the blue waves dimpling the Adriatic, and the pale rosemary along the cuttings; the plain white towns, with their flat roofs and their bold ‘duomos’, and the grey-green gnarled olive orchards of Apulia. The journey was just like any other. We ate in the dining car as often and as long as we decently could. We slept after luncheon; we dawdled the afternoon away with yellow-backed novels; sometimes we exchanged platitudes in the smoking room, and it was there that I met Alastair Colvin.

  Colvin was a man of middle height, with a resolute, well-cut jaw; his hair was turning grey; his moustache was sun-whitened, otherwise he was clean-shaven—obviously a gentleman, and obviously also a preoccupied man. He had no great wit. When spoken to, he made the usual remarks in the right way, and I dare say he refrained from banalities only because he spoke less than the rest of us; most of the time he buried himself in the Wagon-lit Company’s timetable, but seemed unable to concentrate his attention on any one page of it. He found that I had been over the Siberian railway, and for a quarter of an hour he discussed it with me. Then he lost interest in it, and rose to go to his compartment. But he came back again very soon, and seemed glad to pick up the conversation again.

  Of course, this did not seem to me to be of any importance. Most travellers by train become a trifle infirm of purpose after thirty-six hours’ rattling. But Colvin’s restless way I noticed in somewhat marked contrast with the man’s personal importance and dignity; especially ill-suited was it to his finely made large hand with strong, broad, regular nails and its few lines. As I looked at his hand I noticed a long, deep, and recent scar of ragged shape. However, it is absurd to pretend that I thought anything was unusual. I went off at five o’clock on Sunday afternoon to sleep away the hour or two that had still to be got through before we arrived at Brindisi.

  Once there, we few passengers transhipped our hand baggage, verified our berths—there were only a score of us in all—and then, after an aimless ramble of half an hour in Brindisi, we returned to dinner at the Hotel International, not wholly surprised that the town had been the death of Virgil. If I remember rightly, there is a gaily painted hall at the International—I do not wish to advertise anything, but there is no other place in Brindisi at which to await the coming of the mails—and after dinner I was looking with awe at a trellis overgrown with blue vines, when Colvin moved across the room to my table. He picked up Il Secolo, but almost immediately gave up the pretence of reading it. He turned squarely to me and said:

  ‘Would you do me a favour?’

  One doesn’t do favours to stray acquaintances on Continental Expresses without knowing something more of them than I knew of Colvin. But I smiled in a non-committal way, and asked him what he wanted. I wasn’t wrong in part of my estimate of him; he said bluntly:

  ‘Will you let me sleep in your cabin on the Osiris?’ And he coloured a little as he said it.

  Now, there is nothing more tiresome than having to put up with a stable-companion at sea, and I asked him rather pointedly: ‘Surely, there is room for all of us?’ I thought that perhaps he had been partnered off with some mangy Levantine, and wanted to escape from him at all hazards.

  Colvin, still somewhat confused, said: ‘Yes; I am in a cabin by myself. But you would do me the greatest favour if you would allow me to share y
ours.’

  This was all very well, but, besides the fact that I always sleep better when alone, there had been some recent thefts on board English liners, and I hesitated, frank and honest and self-conscious as Colvin was. Just then the mail-train came in with a clatter and a rush of escaping steam, and I asked him to see me again about it on the boat when we started. He answered me curtly—I suppose he saw the mistrust in my manner—’I am a member of White’s.’ I smiled to myself as he said it, but I remembered in a moment that the man—if he were really what he claimed to be, and I make no doubt that he was—must have been sorely put to it before he urged the fact as a guarantee of his respectability to a total stranger at a Brindisi hotel.

  That evening, as we cleared the red and green harbour—lights of Brindisi, Colvin explained. This is his story in his own words.