Australian Hauntings: A Second Anthology of Australian Colonial Supernatural Fiction

by James Doig

  “He had been with me for years. We made a creek the first night, and I camped the rams successfully by a big ‘waterhole’. Mick had his old one-eyed cattle dog, ‘Bally,’ with him, and I had ‘Joker,’ who had taken to me wonderfully. We had about fifty miles to make from this water-hole to Fassifern, and a long stage next day of fifteen miles. Next day proved to be very hot, and we made slow progress. At noon we let the sheep ‘camp’ as usual. I made sure of finding good water over the range at a place I knew of, or I never should have taken this route, but it was a straight track of my own from Belala to Fassifern.

  “I let the rams have a good rest and feed, intending to take them on to the water during the night if necessary.

  “‘Boro’ had our water on the packhorse, and I tell you both Mick and I needed a drink badly at mid-day. We had four big waterbags. The horses felt the heat too, and they just got a ‘washout’—a mouthful apiece. We started on again at about four o’clock in the afternoon, ten miles to go to water. We kept on ’til dark and camped again four miles farther on. It was the middle of summer, and a horrible sort of haze had set in which would obscure the moon. There would not be much of that luminary in any case, only about a third of the night, but I had calculated on it. As we rounded the rams on to a nice dry ‘rise’ to ‘camp’ for the night, I missed ‘Boro’.

  “Just before we had rounded up we had passed a low spur of the range we had to cross. I had seen him there last, but what with being absorbed with my reflections about poor Tom Imrie’s case, and upon my own business, I had given little thought to him. Mick, of course, had been actively employed in heading the sheep in the right direction, and had had his eyes on the flock.

  “Well, we lit a fire and sat there waiting for the young brute to come up, so that we could get enough water for our tea to boil the ‘billy’. Not a sign of him an hour after, and I began to get uneasy.

  “From thinking he had been delayed in cutting a ‘possum’ out, a conviction was formed that he must have met with an accident. Old ‘Chockaroo,’ the packhorse, was a demon to kick if anything went wrong with the ‘swag’ on his back, and, for all I knew, he might have kicked ‘Boro’s’ head off also. So I told my ideas to Mick, got my horse, which was hobbled, and started to where I had last seen him. Not a sign of him! And the sky got so cloudy, that it very soon got too dark to do anything. So I found my way back to camp. Here we were, in a pretty pickle, no water, and both of us very thirsty.

  “Nothing could be done ’til daylight. The sky was now completely overcast, with a sort of cottony-woolly haze, which looked as if it meant another blazing hot day on the morrow.

  “I resolved to hang it out. About six miles more would do it.

  “So we two got a small round pebble apiece, rolling them round in our mouths to increase the flow of saliva. And all that blessed night we didn’t get a show to move, and it would have been just madness to attempt a start, for you couldn’t see the sheep fifteen yards off, and as to where your horse would go to it would be impossible to judge. My eye, it was a weary watch.

  “To make matters worse, Mick’s horse smashed his hobbles, and, of course, made back straight to the last water. I just managed to catch mine, as I heard the row.

  “Mick’s horse must have come a cropper by getting his hobbles across the stump of an old burnt mulga tree. I shouldn’t have caught ‘Black Jack’ if I hadn’t run full butt into him, and he would have been sure to have followed Mick’s horse. It was black dark ’til the moon rose, but that made very little difference.

  “I took the precaution to put a halter on ‘Black Jack’ and tie him to a tree, hobbles and all. I couldn’t afford to lose him. However, I got him a big heap of mulga boughs, and made him as comfortable as circumstances would allow, but the poor old chap wanted a drink as much as I did, and didn’t bother about eating.

  “Morning broke dull and cloudy. I had had plenty of time to think over my plans, and determined not to be beat. I would try and find ‘Boro’ and the water-bags, and then come back on my tracks and join Mick. I might find ‘Boro’ and I mightn’t. The horses, if loose, would be sure to make back to the last water. If I had had anything to carry water in, I would have gone on to the other side of the range, and brought some water to Mick, but all our belongings were on the packhorse.

  “The young blackguard had evidently bolted. He had probably ridden well clear, and then jumped off and let the ‘yarramen’ go. I knew he daren’t turn up at either Belala or Fassifern on horseback without us. Well, I came to the place where Mick’s track and mine of yesterday were going to camp. A little farther on I got the two others. ‘Boro’s’ horses, ridden, I could see that. If he had been off their backs they would have been apart more than the half length of the head-stall rope. Of course I had given instructions to Mick to keep steadily on; he knew the way ‘Boro’s’ horses’ tracks swerved off our direction of yesterday, then towards the range, and then up and over the first hill. He was probably making towards some blacks’ camp. When he knew the country he would let them go—having dismounted—and probably by this time they would be back at Belala. Well, if they were, they would be sent on from the station, and some one with them to see what was the matter with us.

  “I paused to think. Should I go back to Mick and take the chance of getting to the water with the sheep, and let the horses be?

  “’Boro’ had gone, also three horses, and all our waterbags. No doubt of that. I was awfully thirsty, but I could not now leave Mick and the rams. I turned and rode slowly back. My thirst was increasing, and my mouth was dry and harsh. Just as I passed a large cotton bush, a minute later, one of those confounded blue-grey Tarcoo snakes made a dash at my horse’s legs. You know well enough what those deadly brutes mean—death in about twenty minutes for a man. ‘Black Jack’ gave a plunge, and fell clean over, throwing me just clear. He was so startled that he fell for the first time in all his life, I believe. The next moment he was up, off and away, as if the devil had kicked him.

  “In the scrimmage and flurry, for we were all floundering about in a lump, I felt a sharp puncture on my wrist. I was certain I had been bitten. I examined it carefully. Sure enough, two punctures, with a small drop of blood in each. The death mark! I got my knife, cut the place out pretty deep, sucked it furiously, and tied a ligature just above the wound (the direction nearest to the heart), with a silk cracker I happened to have in my pocket. Oh, the agonies of mind I felt! Death staring me in the face! But I reflected that I had taken all reasonable precautions, and at once. The flow of the blood and the sucking might have removed the deadly virus. So I staggered on, half-dead with thirst, bruised, sore and very sick and nervous. ‘Black Jack’ had sprung into a crab hole in his fright and gone clean over nearly on top of me, right on to the rough stony ground. I had made sure that I saw the snake dash at me afterwards, and that I had put my hand on it!

  “I began to feel like a man in a dream, and staggered on and on, not knowing in the least what I was going to do, or where I was going.

  “So,” I thought, “it has come to this at last. Cut off in my prime by a beastly accident; bitten by a snake, and if the poison has taken hold of my blood, I shan’t have very long to live. It’s destiny, I suppose—my fate! This is the end planned by a higher Power from the very first moment that I was born! I am not the first or the only one in this world who has had to suffer in the same way, and they had to meet their fate, and must have felt very much as I do now. Death, the end of all things! I wonder what poor Tom felt before he pulled the trigger of his revolver? Hundreds of men and women, thousands of them, perish every year by awful accidents—drowning, burning and shipwreck, plague, pestilence and famine.

  “Some are annihilated in a moment. Others die fearful deaths. Well, life has been very pleasant to me, in spite of its many ups and downs, and I must meet death like a man.

  “I had better write a few lines de
scribing how I came to my end. I began to hastily jot down the details in my pocketbook, and whether it was with the worry at my repeated bad luck, the unavoidable accident, or terror at the approach of grim, unflinching, unalterable Death, I half lost my senses. I was vaguely conscious of staggering on, choking with thirst, and fighting with something or some one, I could not tell what. I had a sort of idea that my name was Robert McIlwaine, and I had to do something, but that it would be no use because I was dead. Then I must completely have lost consciousness, for I remember nothing until I came to myself lying at full length in a thick scrub. I vaguely wondered what it was all about. What was I there for? How did I come there? Who was I? Then I fainted again. Then—but how long a time after I have no idea—a thought came upon me that I was dreadfully oppressed with thirst. Then I became conscious that there was a weight on my chest, and that ‘Joker’ was licking my face. I gradually came round, and, after a period during which my mind refused to work at all clearly, I began to understand that it was really ‘Joker’ who was by me. I must have been asleep somewhere. No, I was dead and ‘Joker’ was a ghost. He must have died too, then, to be with me? Was this heaven, this scrub? No, I was dead, I had had a sharp fall with a horse. I had been bitten by a snake. What was ‘Joker’ here for? He ought to be with Mick and the rams. He must be a ghost. I feebly felt him. No, it was ‘Joker’ right enough. I found myself sitting up somehow, and I realised that it was moonlight.

  “‘Joker’ was whining. I managed, I never knew how, to stagger to my feet, and grasp a sapling to keep myself from falling down again. Oh, this dreadful thirst! I had suffered from it once before, when I had started on a very hot day and ridden thirty miles away from the river to where I expected to find water, but it had dried up. That was thirst, but I got relief then, for I found the lid of an old tin ‘billy’ which some idiot had pricked full of holes, but I plugged these with bits of green polygonum and then milked my mare ‘Flirt’ for she had a foal at home. But I shan’t get relief from this! No water anywhere. This thirst! I can’t speak, I can’t even make a noise! I shall go mad! Who am I? Where am I? Bitten by a snake and dying, and no water. Oh, God! What can I do? I can hardly walk! Two steps and a frantic clutch at another sapling. Dying, oh, my God! I made a feeble step or two forward, poor old ‘Joker’ whining with delight. I got a firm hold on the next sapling and rested panting. As I looked up again, as I live and am here to tell you all, I saw a little open glade, with the moon bright on it, and Tom Imrie sitting on his roan horse, as I often remember him doing, half-turned round in his saddle towards me. He pointed with a gesture of authority right across me. I looked steadfastly at him. He was only vapour, so was his horse. I could see the trees through both of them. But his gesture was very clear, commanding yet kind, and his index finger pointed straight in one direction.

  “I remember trying to say weakly, ‘Hallo, Tom, old chap,’ but no sound came, and I thought: ‘Yes, I’m dead. That’s Tom. We are together again. This is the other world!’ But Joker jumped upon me, almost pushing me down. Tom was still there, he and his horse. I saw what he meant. I was to go where he pointed. Must go, to save my life. Must go! I made a line slowly in the direction he indicated, and before I had gone six yards I saw a pool of water—a good clay pan!

  “I managed to reach it, fall flat down, and drink a little. And I have a dim consciousness of shouting and singing, and then a long period of rest.

  “When I came to myself again it was daylight, warm and sunny. And there was ‘Joker’ with a bandicoot he had caught. My senses were a little better. Where had Tom gone to? I remembered. Tom showed me the water. Came out of his grave to do it!

  “Poor old Tom and ‘Joker’! Good dog, ‘Joker’. I felt ever such a little stronger. Oh, the snake! What time is it? Time must have passed! Moonlight and sunlight. I was too weak to rejoice; I couldn’t take it in yet. I was close to the water; I drank some more, then lit a fire, cooked the bandicoot on the hot embers, and ate it ravenously, slaking my thirst with the life-saving water. I was coming round, but the thought of the snake struck through me like white-hot iron every now and then. I have, personally, a nervous horror of snakes. Some fellows don’t care a button for them, and will catch them by the neck and handle them, but to me they are a terror. Well, I wasn’t dead after all. And slowly my thoughts came back, and I began to want to go back and find Mick. ‘Joker’ never faltered. I was in a gully, a good bit off the track, or tracks, we had made. I hadn’t the slightest idea of my whereabouts, but he took me in a straight line to more water. Caught a ‘paddy melon’ and we cooked that. I came up with Mick two days afterwards, a little dazed still. He had got the rams to water all right after a very severe and thirsty trip, but had been terribly uneasy about me. So he sent ‘Joker’ off to find me.

  “You can’t beat a rough cattle dog with one blue eye and one brown one. Best breed of the lot. And so you see, boys, why I don’t like to make a mock at ghosts. Poor Tom Imrie! I saw him as plain as I see you, ghost or no ghost. I am quite open to argument that I was off my head for a bit. I don’t deny it. I know I was, but where did the idea come from—the positive conviction that I saw Tom Imrie at a critical point in my lifetime when I should have gone mad and died of thirst unless I had seen him? Was not the idea providential in itself, if I had not been guided? Therefore I believe in this sight of Tom Imrie’s ghost as the one means of preserving me, and I hold it sacred. But whether I really saw him or my poor excited over-wrought brain brought the fancy that I did, I cannot tell you. I simply narrate the impression and belief left. And ‘Joker’ was a bit of a ghost too at first. He turned out real. And the vision showed me the water. We finished our journey with the rams all right. I hunted all over the Fassifern Camp for ‘Boro,’ but never saw him again.

  “The horses were all found and sent over, water-bags and all. We went down the Tarcoo afterwards, arranged matters with O’Hooligan, and made a most successful trip to Adelaide with the fat cattle, topping the market.

  “Then I went to Sydney, and found that Miss Imrie had gone to England, but I kept true to my trust and never said a word that would prejudice my old friend Tom’s case.”

  “No, I suppose not,” said Jemmy, “you’ve simply been letting the cat out of the bag the whole bally time!”

  “What? You think I have given him away all through, do you? Well, none of you fellows know Tom Imrie or his sister either, for they don’t exist. I never told you the real names, and the facts of the case are completely forgotten. It happened too long ago to come to light, as only the actors in it can say anything, and there’s not one of them near the district now. What do you say to a game of whist?”

  HULK NO. 49, by J. A. Barry

  The Queenslander, December 1893

  John Arthur Barry (1850-1911) was born in Torquay and was apprenticed to the Orient Steam Navigation Co. at the age of thirteen. He found himself in Australia during the gold rush and joined the Palmer diggings in North Queensland in about 1870. Over the next few years he was engaged on various outback occupations such as droving and boundary riding. In 1879 he accepted a position as overseer and station-manager, probably at a property near Scone in New South Wales. In 1893 he visited England and there published his first collection of short stories, Steve Brown’s Bunyip, for which Rudyard Kipling provided some introductory verses. He soon returned to Sydney and continued writing popular tales of sea adventure. He remained a bachelor, and died of chronic myocarditis at his home at North Sydney on 23 September 1911, aged sixty-one.

  There was a big crowd of officers and men “looking for a ship” one damp, foggy morning at the old Tower Hill office in London. A barque for the Cape, two or three steamers, and a four-master for Calcutta filled up before I could get a show at all. At last “A second mate and eight ABs for the West Indies!” was sung out. Lots of seamen still hung about, but not a man except myself stirred.

  “Now then!” shouted the doorkeep
er again, “here y’are! Who’s for the Cumberland—three pound a month, and a six months trip, all in the warm weather?”

  “Not me,” replied a big, grey-bearded, mahogany-faced seaman, drawing back. “I likes a light in my fok’sle, I does. An’ I ain’t taken’ any stock in stinkin’ ghosts wot can’t leave a poor shellback alone in his watch below!”

  This much I heard as, passing in, I found myself in the presence of the captain of the Cumberland and the shipping-master.

  “What’s the matter with the men, Mr Jackson?” the former was saying. “They simply rushed the other vessels, and now they won’t look at mine.”

  “Oh,” replied the other, “I expect some of them have got hold of the old story about the barque. I remember once or twice, years ago, the same thing happening. I should have thought, though, that by now the thing had died out. Probably one of the men outside has sailed in her and told his mates the yarn. It’s said that to keep a lamp alight in her fok’sle’s an impossibility—that—or—in fact, a ghost comes and blows it out.” And old Jackson grinned and looked rather sheepishly at us.

  “What rubbish!” exclaimed the captain—a pleasant-faced man of about 30—laughing heartily. “And I’m to lose my ship because a pack of idiots have got some old woman’s story into their thick heads! Why, the Cumberland’s been laid up for years, and has, they tell me, only just come out of dock after a good overhauling, as sweet and fresh and clean as a new pin.”

  “That’s so,” replied Jackson; “and the very reason she lay idle for so long is the one that stops the men signing to her now. Before your present firm bought her and altered her name she was known as the Carlisle, and was in the same trade as she’s going to run in at present.”