"So I goes after 'em down the river to the lagoons, and there was
hundreds of blacks; but these two beauties had heard me coming,
and was planted in the reeds, and the other blacks, of course, they
says, "No more" when I arst them. So there I was, lonely. Only me
and the Chinaman here for two months, 'cause his gin had gone too.
So one day I ketches the horses, and off I goes, and travels for
days, till I makes Pike's pub, and there was this woman.
"It seems from what I heard afterwards that she'd just cleared out
from some fellow she'd been livin' with for years--had a quarrel
with him. Anyhow, I hadn't seen a white woman for years, and she
was a fine lump of a woman, and I got on a bit of a spree for a
week or so, you know--half-tight all the time; and it seems some
sort of a parson--a mish'nary to the blacks--chanced along and
married us. She had her lines and everything all right, but I don't
remember much about it. So then I'm living with her for a bit; but
I don't like her goin's on, and I takes the whip to her once, and
she gets snake-headed to me, and takes up an axe; and then one
day comes a black from this place and he says to me, he says, "Old
man," he says, "Maggie and Lucy come back." So then I says to my
wife, "I'm off back to the run," I says, "and it's sorry I am that
ever I married you." And she says, "Well, I'm not goin' out to yer
old run, to get eat up with musketeers." So says I, "Please yourself
about that, you faggot," I says, "but I'm off." So off I cleared,
and I never seen her from that day till this. I married her under
the name of Keogh, though. Will that make any difference?"
This legal problem kept them occupied for some time; and, after
much discussion, it was decided that a marriage under a false name
could hardly be valid.
Then weariness, the weariness of open-air, travelling, and hard
work, settled down on them, and they made for the house. On the
verandah the two gins lay sleeping, their figures dimly outlined under
mosquito nets; the dogs crouched about in all sorts of attitudes.
Considine turned in all standing in the big rough bunk, while Carew
and Gordon stretched their blankets on the hard earth floor, made
a pillow of their clothes, and lay down to sleep, after fixing
mosquito nets. Gordon slept as soon as he touched the blankets,
but Carew tumbled and tossed. The ground was deadly hard. During
the journey Frying Pan had got grass for their beds; here he had
not been told to get it, and it would have looked effeminate to ask
for grass when no one else seemed to want it. The old man heard him
stirring and rolling, and sat up in his bunk. "What's up, Mister?"
he said kindly. "D'you find it a hard camp?"