AN AUSTRALIAN PILGRIMAGE, (Continued.) CHAPTER III. THE BOGGRABRAIN EPISODE.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1857, 31 May 1884, Page 6

AN AUSTRALIAN PILGRIMAGE, (Continued.)

CHAPTER 111. THE BOGGRABRAIN EPISODE.

By LEE L'ACTON.

A youi>g squatter — A Tragedian succumbs — An Operatic Seena — Neptune interrupts a Love Scene — Sea Ghouls and Comforting Anecdotes — A " bit of Fine Wilting" — Dawn. Oms sceainer was a perfect Microcosm ; that is to say, a little world. There was hardly a class that was not represented, from the bushman to the Australian magnate. There 'was giddy youth, studious maturity, and tottering age. Not being troubled this time with the mal dc mcr I set to work early to study tho rioh field of observation that lay before me. Of the ordinary birds of passage there were many, as there always is on the coasting boats. We had portions of an opera troupe and a dramatic company, and a very curious lot they were. No man is a hero to his valet ; and a few days' voyaging with Signora Macaroni or the great tragedian Eorem very soon disenchants the fervid theatrical ingenue. This was the case with a gushing youth whose acquaintance I made at an early period — in fact I condoled with him as he was sacrificing to Neptune off the Heads — and who was very effusive. "Is that really Miss Squillheigh ? " he asked me in an awestricken whisper when the prima donna of many an opera bouffe walked by " nose uptilted " — she was 100 old a stager for sea-sickness — " and that's Vaurien, the tenor, and Cochon, the bass, and J<euilleniorfc, the baritone," he added, gazing upon the promenading company, who looked very like a respectable drapers' picnic party, with a few brewer's travellers thrown in. " Can that be the divine Dontalli ! " he asked, as a stout, bouncing dame of over forty stalked the deck, casting withering glances around. "Yes, my young friend," I replied, " that ia Dontalh, whose real name is Sally Meggs, who appears nightly when on shore made up as a spirituelle danseuse, attired lightly as the lilies. Those who have seen her in daylight agree her make-up is superb." The flesuliness of Dontalli, however, did not altogether destroy the enthusiasm of my young friend, who was of aesthetic proclivities. He had the supreme pleasure of handing the potatoes that evening to Misa Squilllheigh, and of helping the divine Dontalli — who looked very charming when made up for dinner and shown off b j the lamplight, so kind to female charms— to macaroni cheese. He had stowed his bottle of tf and Chandon — my reprepsible friend was

a sqnattor from Boggabri, or Narnbri, or Boobybri, or some other Bri, where folks are disgustingly rich with Coohon and Feuillemort. Later on that evening I saw him doing the " prison walk " up and down the deck, that melancholy promenade so familiar to the seagoer, with a tall mysterious individual wrapped in a huge ulster. The flabby, clean-shaven face conveyed the idea that the mysterious person was an actor. Indeed it was none other than the famous Mr. Bantum, the great tragedian, whose name I had seen on the hoardings, each letter three feet long, as if it had lost proportion in astonishment at his abilities. Mr. Boggabri — so I will call the young squatter — seemed in the seventh heaven at the condescension of this mighty genius, whose name he had read with awe in his far distant Boggabrian home. And the tragedian in strident tones expressed his views on matters generally, and stiffly acquiesced in the often repeated requests of his companion to visit the steward. " Dark brandy " was his inevitable order, and the night had not far advanced ere Mr. Eantum's roice booame thick — no wonder, considering the jorums he took — and as the pitcher goes once too often to the well, so did he to the bar. The close atmosphere had made him siok, he managed to articulate, and he thought it Detter to take a rest. Boggabri was too frisky, however, to follow the example of the old soaker, so off he went on deck to see what fun was on. The deck at that time was a scene of suffering ; moaning forma were everywhere. From my corner, however, I saw Boggabri light upon a shrouded figure in the distance. It was that of Miss Squillheigh, who had successively been deserted by Feuillemort, Coehon and Vaurien, to whom whisky and a game of napoleon were preferable to the autumnal charms of the prima donna, whose temper was not of too sweet a kind, and whose face, save when plastered with paint and made up, was not very tempting. But it was dark, and Boggabri was primed with champagne, so he started a furious flirtation. Mis 3 Squillheigh knew he wa3 wealthy, so you may depeud she did not discourage him. What would have been the upshot is difficult to tell, he might have offered his hand and heart, and what was of more importance, his purse, but just as the prima donna had begun to run over sotto voce, for his edification, the leading airs in the new opera she was about to sing in, there staggered up an apparition, Signora Dontalli disguised — alas, that I should write it — in liquor. Libations to Neptune had overcome even the dancer's toes. I am not going to give the reader the conversation that followed ; suffice it to say that Miss Squillheigh fled to her cabin overwhelmed with remarks about her age and the " time when I fust knowed you," being able only to retort about persons who made themselves walking spirit ca3ks. It was easy to see the two ladies had no lo\e for each other. " I do believe Signora Dontalli is — is — a little excited," said the innocent Boggabri to me a few minutes afterwards. " Diunk, you mean," was my unfeeling reply. Dontalli, however, having driven Miss Squillheigh off the field, was not going to lose the susceptible youth, and she soon had him seated by her side, and regaled him witli stories of her triumphs. " When I was afore the hemperor of Itoosha," I heard her say. Whispering succeeded, and then out came, " Yes, Loid 'Arry would have committed sooside over my coldness, only I gave him a smile now and then." Matters were proceeding well when poor Boggabri, who, it seems, had been drinking Moet and Chandon on the recommendation of friends to keep off sea sickness, began to feel queer. Alas ! for sentiment ; just as he was in the midst of a poetic speech the fiend overtook him, and he retired to his cabm overcome with emotion — and spasms of the diaphragm ! Some poet has written about the woild being left to darkness and to him, which argues much for his self-conceit, and I could have said the first night out that the deck — I don't go so far as the j>oet and take possession with daikness as a sleeping partner of the whole universe — was left to sick ones and myself. Even Signora Dontalli, having beeu recovered by the sua air, retired to her couch, and I had only the company of old veterans and the sick folks who were coiled up here and there, for, venture under the hatches they could not, and here I must protest against the unsympathetic character of old hands, and certain hackneyed sayings. The old Neptunian watches the neophytes with a grim, prophetic delight. They go round to passenger after passenger, looking anxiously to see if anyone is " getting pale about the gills," and saying encouragingly, " Still holding up ? " just as if it was a foregone conclusion that they would get sick, and no doubt precipitating the event in the oase of nervous people. When they see a poor creature, pale and shiverish, with eyes always looking towards the hatchway or the bulwarks, they invariably squat and condole him with excerpts from Mark Twain or some other humorous writer. One extract is never missed; you hear it every voyage. The hardened reprobate will sit beside the wretched sufferer, and start by saying, " Bad, eh?" " A little," the sick man will reply. " Reminds you of what Mark Twain said of his first voyage, doesn't it ? " the fiend will continue. Getting a gasp for a reply he will pursue the subject with a " Didn't you read his account ? it's first-rate ; enough to make you laugh if you were a hundred times worse." On the victim professing ignorance his tormentor proceeds : " Well, Mark "—how familiar these wits become — " says that the first hour he was afraid he'd die and the next that he wouldn't — he 1 he I|he. Don't you see the point " — the sick one is contemplating a flight to his cabin or to the bulwarks — " it's so plain. He felt so bad the first hour that he thought he was going to die, but he got so sick the next that he wished to die, and was j afraid he wouldn't." " I've heerd that story I told another way," will chime in some marplot. " Indeed," the first tormenter will say, contemptuously, as if he alone had the copyright of Mark Twain's jokes — " How ? " " Why," will be the answer, " Mark said that the first hour he was afraid he would turn himself inside out; the next he rather guessed he wouldn't be lucky enough to be able." These quotations must be put down in future. Captains should be on the watch and heave anyone overboard the moment the ominous words escape, " Mark Twain aaid " — that should be warrant enough for his immediate destruction. The sharks would pay little heed to his secondhand wit. '< At last the sea has conquered. The deck is deserted save by those who cannot venture into the close atmosphere below, but whoso shrouded figures are hardly seen. The man at the wheel and the mate pacing the bridge aie the only moving figures. Plash, plash, sounds the sea against the steamer's side ; swash, swash, the water that is thrown out at the stern after it has condensed the steam in the tubes of the boiler. All around is the dark ocean, breaking here and there into phosphorescent ripples. Above is the violet sky of the south, gemmed with stars of diamond sparkle, amidst which, later on, the comet, with its flaming scimitar, will be a sight vouchsafed but once in a century. Around the plunging, tossing steamer the water is lashed into foam, foam that corusoates with the light of millions of pearls. On, on, beneath the eternal stars, over the bosom of the silent sea, with its fret, and rattle, and throb, plunges our steamer, carrying in its bosom a hundred sleeping human beings, quiet and peaceful now. On, on, she cleaves the billows, at the mercy of the pilot, with death but a hairbreadth distant. What an emblem of man I Man, who pursues his way over the Sea of Life, from the Eternity of the past to the Eternity of the Future; waking up as he passes the echoes of these eternities, at the mercy, too often of his own fallible will, which may lead him on to shoals and rocks ; carrying in his heart a thousand passions, sleeping at times, but ready to awake and destroy ; in danger each moment of disappearing, never to be seen by mortal eyes again ! What a beautiful Bight I beheld later on, for sleep would not visit my eyes. Slowly a faint light began to permeate the east, changing the bluish-gray into shades of gold, eaoh purer as it grew in strength. Then the great comet began to rise, until its scimitar

flamed in the heavsna, bathed in the golden light of th 6 dawn, for the ann followed fast upon its rival. Golden light of comet and dawn> golden ripple on the gently-swelling soa, pale pearl of fading star and moon : with all this lovely vision of beauty in my I mind, I fell gently to sleep, rocked by the waves, and was soon in Dreamland ! (To be Continued.)