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Confessions of a Beachcomber

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through it, carrying a foot or two of the line, and a 30-pounder was added to our catch at one stroke and without a tremor of excitement on Tom's part. He sailed his punt--12 feet long and 4 feet wide--6 miles, loaded with eight adults, eight piccaninnies, five dogs, a cat, blankets for the crowd, and all the frowsy miscellanea of a black's camp. It was not a boatload that landed on the beach: it was a procession. But Tom would go to sea on a chip. His skill as a sailor of small boats is largely a manifestation of characteristic caution, his precept being--"Subpose big seas come one, one--all right. Subpose come two, two--look out!" "LITTLE JINNY" In Life and In Death She was called "Little Jinny" to distinguish her from another of the blacks about the place--a great, good-natured, giggling creature who laughs perpetually and grows ever fatter. There was nothing in common between the two. Indeed they frequently had differences, for "Jinny" proper is industrious, obliging, cheerful, and full of fun, while she, "Little Jinny," was silent, sulky, and ever averse from toil. Tom, her man, alternately petted and beat her. She, no doubt, deserved both, for she was proud and haughty for a black gin, and as venomous at times as a scorpion. His hand is heavy, and when he lifted it in anger poor "Little Jinny" suffered--but suffered in silence. Her chastisements were not frequent, but they seemed to increase her loyalty towards her lord and master. From a European standpoint, "Little Jinny" had little of which to be vain. She had a fuzzy head of hair. Some, like fur, crept down across her brows, giving her face a singularly unbecoming cast. I did not notice this peculiar uncomeliness until she was dying, and I felt then more than ever that she was not to be judged in accordance with our standard of beauty--though she had many of our little weaknesses. Her ignorance of civilised ways was pathetic, yet she was vain and coquettish as the fairest of her sex. And her besetting vanity was endeavouring to be a "lady." Work was sordid, for she wore garments which made her the leader of fashion. She possessed a pair of--well, a bifurcated garment--and her whole life was spent in trying to live up to it--or them. She succeeded to a certain extent. Her ways were mincing and precise, and she lazed away her days quite artistically. A can of water was too heavy for her to carry, less than two hours "spell" at a time quite an offence to her ideal of the amount of repose that a lady wearing the bifurcated garment should permit herself. She was wont to sit in the shade of the mango-tree and pretend to do a little gardening. It was all pretence. What she really loved to do was to wander among the bloodwoods--with Tom, of course--with next to nothing on, the next to nothing being the drawers. There, you have them. Then you saw her at her best--or rather worst, for she was a thin sapling of a girl, of a dull coppery colour, and the garment was not always snowy-white. Hers, after all, was an ideal existence. She had plenty to eat, as much tobacco as was good for her, and outer raiment that in gaudiness outrivalled the flame-tree and the yellow hibiscus. She was the favourite of two consorts, and only when her pride and scorpion-like attributes got the better of her was she corrected. Now, just the other morning, Tom announced that "Little Jinny" was sick "along a bingey" (stomach), and suggested that salt medicine might do her good. It was quite a common occurrence for her to be sick. It was such an easy and excellent excuse for a day's holiday, when she would bask on the soft grey sand and smoke, gazing across the placid bay and waiting for meal-times. So no one took her sickness seriously. Subsequent inquiries, however, elicited the fact that "Little Jinny" had eaten little or no tucker the day prior to Tom's application for medicine on her behalf, and that she was really entitled to sympathy of the most practical kind. But no one had the least suspicion of the fact. Dinner-time came and she did not appear, though she was strolling about the flat below the house, apparently only a "little bit sick," as Tom reported when he came up to his work. "That one all right to-morrow," was the reply to an inquiry. But at five o'clock Tom visited his hut, and hurried back for medicine. "Little Jinny" was very bad. We went down with remedies that seemed fit from his diagnosis of the case and description of the symptoms, and there lay "Little Jinny," obviously dying. She had never complained nor whimpered when Tom's heavy hand had corrected her, though the dried trickle of blood had been seen on her forehead, and now that she lay a-dying, with her figure strangely swollen, she moaned only when Torn, with his heavy hand, sought to squeeze out the dead man, "all the same like debil-debil," who was, according to him, the cause of the trouble. But it was all too implacable and crafty a "debil-debil" for Tom to cast out. We did our best with brandy and steaming flannels; but it was all so useless, for none understood the sickness, or how to prescribe a remedy that might be effective. Our helplessness was grievous. We could only repeat the sips of brandy and water, and endeavour to warm the chilly little body with steamy flannels. All did something. Even Nelly, the second best wife, who had had to play a very subordinate part in the camp, and whom "Little Jinny" had slapped and had abused with all the volubility of spite and temper, crouched beside her dying rival, chafing her cold hands and warming her cheeks. And here was the most touching incident of the pathetic scene. We had brandy and blankets and flannels wherewith to endeavour to afford relief. Poor Nelly had nothing. Her poverty was grim, but she had some resource. She had no means of alleviating the suffering save those which spendthrift Nature provided--the smooth oily leaf of the "Raroo." She used these aromatic leaves, all that she had, with no little art and tenderness. Warming them over the fire until the oil exuded, she would apply them to the hairy jowl of the girl, and anon to her furry forehead and cheeks. While there is life there is hope is evidently Nelly's creed, and so she crunched and warmed the pungently odorous leaves, and rubbed the hands

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