A BUSHMAN AFLOAT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8493, 23 July 1907, Page 3

A BUSHMAN AFLOAT.

By ALBERT DORRINGTON. (Author of "Along the Castlereagh," "Children of the Gully," etc.)

(Published by special arrangement— Copyright reserved.)

THE CROWDED CHANNEL. The journey from Plymouth to London is a revelation in the way of sea travel. Each moment sends a group of black funnels streaming over the skyline. Often a crowd of steamers troop up in a bunch with scarcely steering way between them, when the bunch will suddenly separate in seven different directions, hooting at each other like angry fishwives. A fog smothers you without warning, and your engines cease to gallop, your big frightened ship creeps foot by foot, bleating from her patent fog-horn, crying in a tearful bass to the disrespectful little bully tramps who run their black noses almost within collision distance. The fog lifts and you behold the Channel full of ships snorting defiance at each other. The Goodwin Sands showed us their heaving red shallows between buoy and skyline. The masts and rigging of a dozen illfated vessels are staked within their ever-shifting bed. Rumour has it that an Amsterdam liner grounded this morning, but the mists roll in again blotting out everything save the lightship and the crying gulls. LONDON. Slowly we enter the mouth of the Thames, and within an hour are past the Nore and fetch Gravesend and the green slopes of the Kentish coast. At 5 o'clock in the afternoon we are abreast of the. Tilbury pier.and are soon being overhauled by the alert Customs officials. "Any silk or tobacco in your luggage, sir?" "No, James." "Any bpirits, cigarettes, wine or lace?'' ' ''No, James." "Open out then. We might find a pipeful, you know. That tightstrapped leather bag first, if you don't mind." And the large-handed Customs officer punches the interior of your portmanteau skilfully, casts your linen at his feet, and gropes cunningly in the regions of your bag. The married men suffered least in the overhauling. It is supposed that woman's influence prevents the rash tobacco-loving man from storing bundles of cigars and other contraband among his white shirts. Of course, smuggling goes on in a small way. Many ladies who bought large quantites of silk at Marseilles came ashore bulging at the shoulders and waist. One cr two Melbourne girls who appeared as slim as billiard cues the night before, staggered down the pier wearing a bloated expression about the hips and busts. Once in the train between Tilbury and Fenchurch Street, we felt London breathing like an animal in the distance. Afar off above the hammering of the train we heard the beat of the animal's heart. East, west, north and south stretched a forest of chimney pots and black roofs. The night was almost warm, but there were no stars visible. in the throbbing smokewashed vault above. Millions of voices around us, a babbling Niagara of humans swirling down the narrow streets, and, only yesterday, we had felt the intolerable silence of the Bush pressing upon us! * From Fenchurch Street station we plunged into a network of streets choked with barrows, cabs and loitering men. The hurrying Londoner is a myth, the eager-eyed fresh young man tearing past you is another scrapbook fallacy. From Butchers' Row to High Holborn, from Picadiliy Circus to Victoria, we met the shuffling little Cockney with the semi-Hebrew face, and the petrified city man in the stove-hat and frock-coat. A lot of the men have pink cheeks —I saw pink-cheeked men looking out of the hospital windows—others, you meet them in the Strand and on the Mall—-white-eyed creatureswith the hatchetscrokes of worry carved on their brows. There is the cheerful Londoner, thousands of him, well-fed, ignorant, good-natured people who will walk half a mile to put you on a tram or 'bus. London is full of kindly man and womea, and the boys are far more obliging and civil than the Australian urchin. It is not possible to see London in a life time. The cabmen know it not, and the police are acquainted only with their own particular district. The women of the East End reflect London's grimy side. We saw them reeling from the bars and gin shops with children at their heels. They stare at you sullenly over their shoulders, big-jawed women, slackmouthed girls, ill-dressed, underfed drunk. . . . "> In one bar off the Strand we saw a quiet fat man sitting with his face to the wall drinking brandy. He drank slowly, methodically, and the purple flesh under his eyes seemed to move and shake when he threw back his head to drii.k. For a moment we felt-a little sick and surprised at sight of the young women drinking side by side with the men at the counters. Somehow after our long sea trip the streets do not adjust themselves to our line of sight. The lights spin and throb, throb, the war of wind and sea is still in our ears. We had once dreamed of Hell—the real place with the central whirlwind of white fire and down-streaming ashes, but we were not prepared for the gehenna of motor 'buses, the line of shifting traffic and stifling petrol cars. It is inhuman, ferocious, meaningless, and there comes to us a solid conviction that it is all silly. After all London is merely a net work of flaring byeways and whisky advertisements. And your up-to-date Londoner is a very simple fellow. His head is full of music-hall catch-words. His evening papers supply him with his intellectual needs. This whirlwind of traffic and machine-guided civiliza-

tion doesn't sharpen a man's wits; it makes him dully dependent on a poison-machine that shatters his brain and nerve. If you put an ordinai'y question to a Londoner in a different way he gasps and struggles to grip the meaning. All interjections, methods of interrogation, jokes and forms of address are ready-made in London; everybody uses them. It saves thinking. Sunday found our fury against London much abated. You begin to know the animal; you allow him to snarl and purr or lick your hand without resentment. But still one has to admit that the animal expression is distinctly Jewish. If you ask a Londoner to show you something really great he points to a monument or the houses of his dear departed dead. If you say to him were are your big men? he will indicate the column in Trafalgar Square where the thin, dreamy figure of the old fighting admiral soars above the mammoth lines. St. Paul's is great; Westminster colossal. London's w;et white skies and sullen river, her endless pavements and gaslit hearth, have a certain charm of their own, the charm of a Beatrice, the sorrow of a Dante. Behind us calling in a clearer, warmer, voice than London is the Bush with her purple nights and her dry gumwood fires burning on her contented hearths. A bushman standing alone in the cold English streets turns his face to the south and mutters: "Oh, mother, the night is long without thee." THE END.