THE ACCIDENT

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 394, 10 January 1947, Page 21

THE ACCIDENT

_- — 7HIs short story by

ANTON

VOGT

won first prize

in the Progressive Publishing Society’s short story competition in 1945. It has not previously been published,

HEN Johnnie’s sharp bushman’s axe sank into his foot two toes were completely severed. They lay there on the ground like caterpillars that had forgotten how to crawl. But his immediate concern was with the rest of his foot. The blow had fallen sharp and swift, leaving ‘no time for pain. There was only a numbness and the warm feel of blood bathing his foot stickily. Now a -hammer was beginning to beat in his brain, and nausea gripped his bowels low down asking him to be sick. But he had been hurt before. As he worked he was» conscious of hands damaged, the sawn-off stump of the index finger on the right hand; the left hand with the little finger neatly lopped off by the doctor. The hand had been crushed that time, but had miraculously recovered. The bush brooded and when the time was right struck back. The tall trees stood where the seed fell before man came. But when the axe struck, like Samson they drew down their destroyers. Johnnie, binding his foot firmly with the red kerchief he wore round his neck, said to himself: "The cows’ll never get wise to this lot... ." hal nes hs * * T wasn’t until he had made ‘a good job of the bandage that he began to’ hobble out. He had been ringing trees, working without a mate. He knew that Ben and Sailor were felling; they would be thinking of morning tea. Well, he’d get them the morning off, and nothing lost. He used his axe as a stick, hopping on the sound leg. The foot was starting to throb now and he could feel the strain in his head: a dull hurt, a wouhd that was not merely physical, himself dying. Panic struck him, all the old fears, blood-poisoning, tetanus, the uncertainty of life and death. The trees loomed up, hating him. From the ground their roots struck upwards, eager to trip or to wound. The damp arth, soggy with long rains, the leaves, rank and half rotten, smelled of death. Involuntarily he shuddered. "I’ve had enough," he said. "By Christ; I’ve had enough. After this lot they can keep their bleeding bush." He stumbled painfully, catching the bad foot on a stump. Cursing, he saw the blood splotched with mud, the soggy lump of bandage oozing freely. Well, he had good blood. "Plenty of red corpuscles," the doctor had said: "You'll never die of anaemia anyway." No, by Christ, the bush gave you no ‘chance for that, nor old age either. It got you somehow, some of you or all of you. The bush or the. mill: the axe or the saw. Some blokes thought they were smart, but it got them in the end. Or else rheumatism from being wet, with the rain always falling and the sweat, end the wait around for the engine and the cold ride home. "You get a big screw in the bush," they had told him. "A quid a day without overtime... ." Yeh;

and you went screwey around long enough. The hammer in his A,

Drain beat more loudly; it beat like the rain on the roof of his shack, insistently, trying to remind him of something he had forgotten, buried deep down somewhere where it was no use looking. As he moved forward he disturbed a branch, weighed down with water. The heavy shower caught him, but he was already wet. Under the hill where the mill houses were it rained every night. The low cloud hung over the bush so that everything was permeated with water, trees and earth and men turned to a wet slime. It made trees grow, Sailor said. But then Sailor was used to water. He wouldn’t mind water that way, in ‘oceans; on a windjammer maybe, with the sails spread and the wind whistling and the spray coming salt on the smooth hard deck. In the bush the hollows between roots bogged, furrows were. creeks, depressions _great pools full of water newts and crawlies. Even when it wasn’t raining you got wet through ten minutes after starting, and you stayed that way all day, winter and summer, sweating and freezing. And all the time working heavily, using hands and arms, straining your back and your guts. . . . Well, he’d had his share and he was getting out light. Coming out on an open patch where the beech had been cleared and the bracken grew tall and thick, he startled a deer. They stood there looking at each other: the man, crippled and without a gun, the deer, half-grown stag, frightened but proud. Then the deer broke and ran. Johnnie cursed his luck. You chased them all day with a gun, and when you went out without one they came walking. Well, one bleeding cow at a time was plenty. Skins were two quid a pop, but your own was worth a darn sight more. You got something even for bits 6f it. He remembered the story about the bushman who had lost his thumb; according to his cobber he had cooked it. Said he wanted to see. what it was like, ... They’d argued the toss, whether it made him a cannibal or what. Well, he wasn’t trying anything as fancy as that. ‘Compo’ was enough; enough to take him out of the bush and keep him out. Till next time. He hobbled on, more cheerful remembering the man with the thumb. As he nade his way towards Ben and Sailor he: crossed patches of bush already cut. The remains of the old line were still visible; the sleepers grown soft and almost rotted away, the bits of iron that remained porous with rust. Bracken and blackberry grew heavily, hiding the low ramp. Between the trees the sky was overcast, but to the south it was clear. With luck it would be fine to-morrow. They were in for a change. In the distance he heard an axe bite into wood, and then the answering call from another axe; and now the tattoo sang in

his head like the rhythm of his pulse. Sailor and Ben keeping time with the loss of his blood, swinging arid flinging, easy and sure, but never too sure, with the tall trees waiting to catch them... . And then Ben saw him coming and ran forward to meet him. ; Ea * * ALL day long they worked in the bush, always together. It became second sense with them to know what the other was doing. Ben and Sailor, the people would say at the mill; never just Ben or Sailor. Like David and Jonathan. It was safer that way too. It was surprising how often accidents happened through poor combination. People worked in different rhythms, the ebb and flow varied. Put a slow man with a quick man and they’d kill each other. It wasn’t.that you worked slow or worked fast. It was like two clocks: they’d both do the same speed finally, they’d keep the same time. But the pendulums varied; they varied in length and weight, they had different rhythms. ‘They ticked differently. In the bush you had to synchronise, or else the trees fell on you, or the axe went into you; or else you got knocked up in some other way. If you didn’t get knocked up you got on each others nerves, and once you got rattled the bush did the-~ rest.. There were too many funerals in the little mill settlements; too many for the population. The bush was always ready to strike back. It wasn’t a matter of brains either. There’s more than one way of having brains. A man might have it with figures or with language, and still be a dumb cluck with tools, or handling a horse or an engine. Or keeping alive in the bush | with the trees after him, waiting for him to make a mistake, waiting for his cobber to make a mistake, waiting for them to get out of step... . And ready to hop in and beat them up with a few thousand feet of timber, with ten tons of wood, with all the malice of centuries.... Ben worked with Sailor and Sailor talked; not always, but always slowly, spacing the flow with grunts as the axe struck. Ben went to work each day like the rest of the men, with his crib and oil-skin, riding out on the engine. The women at the mill could hear the whistle and they’d look out and watch the engine go out, the smoke merging with the low clouds. And then they’d be swallowed. up by the bush. Ben’s wife hated the mill. She hated the tall trees and the brooding hills and the rain that never stopped falling. But Ben loved the feel of the axe and the smell of the leaves. He loved to startle the red deer. He listened to the birds and knew their song. He loved the feel of the soft grey (continued on next page)

SHORT STORY : (continued from previous page)

fur of the opossums he caught each night in the traps he set where they worked. ‘He would watch the bases of the trees for tracks, and when he saw fresh marks he set traps. Because he knew the ways of the bush he always got something, although sometimes it would only be a big bush rat. But best of all he loved to listen to Sailor. Sailor was Ben’s adventure. Ben’s wife didn’t know Sailor; to her he was just a drunken ne’er-do-well, Ben learnt to keep quiet about Sailor. But every day he heard some new story about China or Brazil or Madagascar or Ceylon or Siberia, or some other place where Sailor had lived crudely but well, drinking, fighting, making love; using his senses and his imagination as Ben did in the bush, glorying in’ himself. And Ben was a fair mate, giving as well as taking. He knew every tree in the bush, every shrub, every bird -and insect; every living thing: And like Sailor he gloried in it, gloried in his

mastery. In neither was there any conceit. Their pride was the natural pride of craftsmanship. From the first night they met, leaning over the pub bar, they had clicked, They recognised them‘selves in each other, ‘They were curiously ‘similar for all that they had scarcely a feature in common. They were similar in action, in humour rather than in looks. They loved hunting and eating and drinking and yarningand laughing with the women when Ben’s wife wasn’t looking. What

was more strange they liked working, especially working together. They loved the smooth swinging rhythm of the axe, the synchronous movement of bodies, the skilled judgment of weight and balance, the nicety of timing that gave them mastery over the great dumb trees. Ben and Sailor, working to-day wholly absorbed, didn’t see Johnnie until he was almost on them. Ben stayed his axe, wiping the sweat off his face. Sailor did likewise, the stroke falling rhythmic and neat, the pause coming cleanly. Then he saw Ben run forward. By 7 * OHNNIE saw Ben coming and stopped. He grinned seeing the other man run. "One day they'll both run under a train together," he said to himself, "And whose fault will that be?" Ben caught his arm and he sat down and Ben called out something to Sailor, and then he couldn't remember anything except that it was raining and he was out walking and he only had one boot on; and the other boot was hidden somewhere, and there were leaves everywhere, and it was no use looking because there was only one boot and all the time it was raining, and it wasn’t any use look- ing. ... And the trees stood there like sentinels saying, "You can’t get away. We'll get you. It’s no use trying to get away. We’ll get you, we’ll get you, we'll get you... ." And then the showers came drowning their voices, and the boot went sailing down on a river of blood. . .. * * * ‘THE mill houses clustered under the hills. The road from the station passed through three miles of bush,

mostly second growth. The road followed the old line, and the remains of the old mill made an untidy splodge of rotting timbers. Over the stumps of the cut trees bracken and blackberry grew fiercely. Parisitic plants flourished. Mosses covered the eroded roots of the living and the dead. Sinewy creeper strangled the gnarled trunks, reaching far into the arms of giant trees still standing. Survivors of first and second cuttings, they stood proudly among the rubble. They were like old men. Around each hung a spirit, an emanation, a will to be and to survive. Even the stumps seemed to say, ‘"We hang on, and we are renewed. You lop us off, but we sprout. Our death is a new birth; in decay we give life." The road came to an end at the mill. On the wall facing the road a humorist had carved the inscription ‘"World’s End." On either side, close together, there were five small houses. Behind the mill there were two shacks, Against two of the houses there were garages, one a big sprawling barn for the lorry, thé other for the owner’s car Throuch the

open door it stood lop-sided, jacked up on an empty kerosene case: the track was hard on axles. All the houses had wood-sheds. Ben’s had a fowlhouse and run, and most of them had small strips of garden. But where the gardens finished the bush began. In winter the tall trees shaded the sun; but then the sun didn’t shine much in winter anyway. The low cloud hung over the hills. The ground went soggy. Up at the mill they threw great logs into the bog in the road to get the truck clear. Further down it was easier: the subsoil was shallow and the road tolerable. If you had speed up you could make it. If you didn’t you got to work with scrub to give the chains a grip. The houses were small wooden boxes with tin roofs. They had squares cut out of them for windows and slits for doors. They were bleached by the weather to a dull grey and the grey roofing rusted to a dirty brown. A mill only lasted so long, and it wasn’t much use throwing paint around if the timber gave out. The smoke came from the chimneys all day. There was no wood shortage. Inside the women put up curtains, and used embroidered cloths when they invited each other to afternoon tea. At night the men came in full of mud and slush. They bathed, carrying kerosene tins of hot water from the copper in the wash-house. After tea they sank into time-payment chesterfields, listened to time-payment radios run on batteries; they looked through the sporting results in the weekly, end usually fell asleep before supper from sheer exhaustion, But (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) some of the men went down to the station with the last lorry and stayed down there. If they couldn’t get the driver to stay they walked back drunk or fell asleep on the way. Sailor knew every puddle and stone on the road to the pub. "Like Mark Twain on the Mississippi," he’d say, "I know every shoal blindfold. Whoah there! Three points to starboard or you'll be up to your bloody neck," he'd yell. And by God you would be. The liquor oiled Sailor’s tongue, and somehow made him grow. Ben liked getting drunk with Sailor, but Ben’s wife didn’t like him splashing the money. You’ve got to get out of here," she’d say. "This is no place to bring up kids. We've got to save and move out, into town maybe." To-day she hung over the tub washing his sweaty shirt and singlet and socks. The copper was well stoked up. There was no shortage of water either. All through the winter the tanks overflowed, corrugating the gardens and paths and carrying the soil into the creek. But in spite of the wet the slabs smouldered night and day on the tip at the side of the mill. She could see the smoke now as she leant out of the window, shooing the neighbour’s cat from the fowl-run. Outer shavings, no good for timber, they were good firewood in any language but not worth transportation. The cabbages sprouting in the small dark plot grew on wood ash and humus. So did the nasturtium in the bed under the wash-house window, ‘that startled her with its fierce growth, mothering the wall and producing leaves ike saucers. It was a world of growth nd decay. But chained to the tubs and the range, and insulated from a child100d home and friends in town by miles of mud and slush, Ben’s wife brooded like the bush, only more fiercely, hating the small box-like house and the sooty smell of kerosene lamps, and the torn clothes and dirty feet of her children smearing the grime of the yard on the one good carpet, the two good chairs; resenting the coarse thick socks, the greasy singlets; hating the low cloud that cut off the horizon levelling even the hills. To-day she hung over the tub, knowing the scene too well, reliving the day that was to-day, yesterday and forever, unless something happened; unless. 4 With a start she saw the procession coming from the mill: men moving slowly, men carrying something. Men walking slowly carrying someone. . . . Suddenly she ran, her heart beating wildly, clasping her hand to her side in an agony of fear. "Ben, Ben, Ben!" she cried. A wild hysteria shook her so that she did not see; so that she was unaware of other women running. . . Until at last she was there, and Ben was holding her hand and saying, "All right, old dear. It’s only Johnnie, and it’s nothing serious." * * % as lived by himself in one of the shacks at the back of the mill. He had his meals with Sailor’s wife, who ran the boarding house. It wasn't a boarding house really. She had her own kids to look after and the house was full as far as beds went; but all the men who weren't married had _ their meals there. She got twenty-five bob a week from them, and the house rentfree to run-things that way. There wasn’t much in it. Besides Sailor and_ herself and three kids she had six men to. wash and cook and cut sandwiches for; and

once every week she went down to the pub and got shikkered. She was up at 5 o'clock most mornings, and when she went down to the pub on a weeknight she didn’t go to bed at all, but just, started in on the sandwiches; seven big lunches for the men, and three smaller ones for,the kids who went in to school with the second lorry load. When she found that it was Johhnie that was hurt she took over the way she always did. While they were waiting for the lorry to come back she took care of the foot. "How did you do it, kid? Meat shortage isn’t as bad as all that," she said. She worked over him steadily and easily like she did over the sandwiches, and then she lit a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth. "Feeling better?" And Johhnie, who had come to hearing Ben’s wife yell out, thought, "Now everything is a big fuss, but it’s only a little thing really. A man can live without toes." And suddenly he realised that he had passed out and he coloured, wondering what they’d think. Well, Christ almighty, accidents were always happening and it was always the same, except that he had never passed out before, % * * NDY was a great fellow with "his men. Andy was in the bush for the wood he could get out of it, but he was a fair boss: When there was anything on they were never stuck for the lorry. And when there was anyone hurt there wasn’t a quicker man to get things moving. In his younger days Andy had been a crack bushman himself. He had come away from the chops with good money in his belt, but he had stuck to it. And when the chance came he went, in for his own mill. No man ever made anything on wages, so Andy paid wages and collected on footage. The little mill was Andy’s creation: with no Andy there would have been no houses. There would have been no street with five boxes with squares cut out of them for win-

dows on either side, no cabbage or nasturtium in the cleared beds, no chickens behind the wires, no clothes -props or tin chimneys with the smoke always coming, no slab heap smouldering against the rain, no mill stuck in the heart of the bush with the inscription carved, "World’s End." Also there would have been no community of thirty souls poked away in the back of beyond, though God knows where they would have been had they not been there. Sailor on the high seas perhaps, and the others ‘in other nooks and crannies where the world’s work is done. ... For without the mill settlement there would have been so many feet of timber less, so many fewer cheese. crates, so many less houses in the suburb... . So when a man got hurt Andy saw to it that he went to hospital | in his car or in the big truck that took the heart out of the bush and took the sweat out of the man and lined Andy's pockets and built a fine bank balance, though Christ knows he deserved it. To Johnnie, sitting up gripping his leg to stop it from flopping when the bumps came, no three miles were ever longer. He could feel the blood drain from his face and the blue vein thump high up. He wanted to talk, but’ said nothing. Ralph, driving, leaned forward and thought, Thank God I’m out of it. Shoving his foot down, feeling the power, he said: "I got mine snigging." (continued on next page)

SHORT STORY (continued from previous page) He showed his elbow, the joint projecting, the flesh scarred deeply with the vicious marks of rough surgery still visible. Johnnie nodded. "Everyone gets it sooner or later,’ he said. The foot throbbed, and he could feel the soggy bandage spilling. They were passing the small school with its clean cream wails and the pointed roof like a church. Through the pines planted evenly along the south of the cleared patch that made a playground he could see thé children out for lunch. Some of them came running to the gate, hearing the lorry. They waved and he waved back. Suddenly his mind was at peace. Twenty miles to go, but a good road from here on. In an hour the doctor would be cleaning up the mess. As the school disappeared behind the trees Johnnie caught a glimpse of a slim blonde girl standing in the doorway. He could feel the blood come to his face, a hot wave running up to his ears, making them scarlet. He looked around, but Ralph was busy negotiating the railway crossing where one train passed each night and morning but where the signpost told you to Stop, Look and Listen. % * % Y OUNG Johynie sat on a stone under a tree and ate his lunch made of white bread sandwiches with mince and blackberry jam, smeared on thick so the purple came through like dye. He had been kept in for putting gum in Pat’s hair. Now as he ate his lunch he watched the other children playing rounders. The girls and boys played together, the big ones with the little ones, and when the ball went over the fence into the scrub they all went over to look for it. Young Johnnie liked playing rounders and he liked coming down to the cream school with the red roof and hoisting the flag for Miss Thomas even though he couldn’t sing the King in tune. Miss Thomas was blonde and very beautiful, especially when someone was naughty and she flared up and her blue eyes were like ice with a flame in the middle of-them cutting into you. It wasn’t only with children that she went like that. He hed seen her once wi:h big Johnnie, tearing into him so that he, little Johnnie had got frightened. Mister, she called him; no one ever called anyone Mister in the mill settlement unless they didn’t belong. But then Miss Thomas lived at the farm near the school, and. anyway she had come from town. Looking through the school porch Johnnie could see her sitting at her table with her head down and he suddenly wondered what she was thinking about, And then he heard the lorry coming and crammed the last mouthful down and crumpled the paper and ran to the gate, and, Miss Thomas came out to look too. The lorry didn’t stop but went right on, and big Johnnie was sitting very white and he waved at them; but then they noticed that the lorry was empty and they knew that something was wrong. Little Johnnie saw Miss Thomas come out and heard her ask in a funny kind of voice who was in the lorry, and saying, "Johnnie? Why, Johnnie’s in the bush... ." _ They stood and watched the lorry cross the line and veer past the station on the way to town, and then they went on with their rounders,

RALPH came back about sundown and said everything was O.K. Johnnie would be right in no time, and no complications. Young Johnnie and the other children had a great time running wild around the school playing cowboys and Indians while waiting for the lorry; but now they were getting peevish. While they were having tea Johnnie heard his father and mother talk about accidents, and when he went to bed he could still hear them talking and his Dad saying, "Anyway he’ll get compo." Then he heard his Dad go out, and he lay there in the dark thinking about Johnnie who was hurt until he felt quite bad about it. % % * ‘THAT night Andy drove down to the pub himself to ring up the hospital. Ben and Sailor and Sailor’s wife and Dave, the sawyer, went down too. While the ring was going through they went into the pub parlour. There was a good fire getting under way. There were no customers in the pub except after hours. The law said you could only drink until 6 o’clock; but the men from the mill, or from the few outlying farms, or the small dredge working up Mura creek had a fat chance of getting in before that. So since there was nothing else to do they broke the law. The pub stood open for all the world to see, with 2 light in front and a good fire in the parlour. It was good to get in out of the rain and stand drying yourself in front of the fire, and warming your inside too, even if the stuff was getting so weak that you needed a stiffener to get a kick out of it. It was civilised drinking, with women present and no rush, sitting down to it when you got dry; with the radio ‘throwing out a good tune that made you forget the green bush and the tough going and the small boxlike houses. Tunes from the bright lights and the big streets, London and New York, and all the other places you wouldn't see, unless you were like Sailor but it was too late for that now. For good measure they had dragged in an old piano from the disused parlour at the back, and the sawyer Dave played: catchy tunes that had them singing and sometimes swinging it. Then the dingy parlour with its splotchy walls and cheap-jack couch and old red chairs became alive. Dave would thump, keeping time with his body till the hair got in his eyes and he had to throw his head back to keep it out. There was big drinking done, with everyone in. You put down ten bob and there wasn’t much change, but you wouldn’t put down any more for a long time, or maybe at all unless you were one of the cows who never went home. Sailor could take more than any of them, and when old Martin the publican got too shikkered to deal anything out Sailor used to take over. There was one thing about Sailor; he could take any amount himself, but when he was behind the counter he would never give it out to anyone who couldn’t take it. Instead he’d fix up a bed with his coat out in the passage and tuck you up there, and every so often he would go out and see if you were O.K. At about 1 o’clock most Sunday mornings old Mrs. Martin would turn on a *, bit of supper, good hunks’ of bread and cheese and a cup of tea. If you were hungry she would sometimes let you get ’ "(continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) to work over thé open fire with bacon and eggs, but if you ‘wanted that you had to pay for it. : Well, when Andy got through the nurse said, Yes, Johnnie was O.K., noth. ing to worry about. And Andy thought anyway he’s insured; thank God for that. He went back into the parlour where the men were drinking with two men from the dredge. They were drinking beer straight but Sailor's wife was mopping up gin and looking a bit glazed already, although it meant nothing except that she was getting away from the cooking and the sandwiches and the house under the hill with the bush leaning on it. She always got that glazed look but she was good for a few hours yet. They were telling yarns, and Ben was just going to tell the one about the maid with housemaid’s knee when Charlie from Mura Creek came in with his wife and two kids so he told them the one about the Irishman and the Maori instead. It looked like being quite a social evening and no one worried much about Johnnie now that he was going

to be UKM. hey started pouring the ‘stuff down steadily, feeling the watm glow rising inside and out, and not taking any notice of the rain when they went outside. ¥ * * BUT up at the mill little Johnnie heard his Dad come in late and knew by the way he laughed when he tripped over his boots on the back porch that

he was drunk and would have something for him, but when he came in he asked, "How’s Johnnie, Pop?" And his Dad sat back on the bed and laughed, "Johnnie’s all right, young feller; he’s in the money." And he explained to young Johnnie with a lot of flourishes the current meat prices, so much for one finger, so much for two fingers, so much for a‘hand or an arm; so much for a toe, and so on until he had young Johnnie laughing. And then suddenly he got up and went outside again and was sick on Mum’s flash nasturtium. * * * Sf BiG Johnnie lying in hospital felt the leg ease. The sheets were starched cool and smooth, and there was no sag in the bed like the one in his shack. The walls were white, and he realised suddenly that the walls of his shack were dirty and the air was never sweet, but always foul from old clothes and tobacco and spilt beer. Christ, there were worlds within worlds and all of them different, but linked somehow. You opened or shut doors. Chance did it mostly, a job took you there. And so you went down a mine or on a dredge .or into the bush, and after a few days you had been doing it all your life and ; you let it happen to you.... Until one day the weight came down too hard and you fought back or cracked up. Everyone cracked up sometime, some on

booze or women, some on horses of! against the law. You couldn’t go on day after day, with the wet and the weight of the trees bearing down on you. Now he was out of it, and he wasn’t sorry. Through the ward window before the blinds were drawn he could see trees. Trees separately were good things. He could see them standing detached, poplars and pinus _ insignig, planted trees with spaced lawns between them. Further back, even here, the hills were thick with native growth; but it was beaten back, knocked back with axe and saw and fire, the stumps standing black, the cattle grazing in the rubble. When the nurse came in with a cup of tea he smiled, and she noticed that even one of his teeth was missing. * * * EXT morning was Saturday so young Johnnie went out with his Dad and Sailor. He had his crib with him for morning tea and rode out on the engine. When the whistle blew he turned and waved to his mother until the houses and the clothes lines were swallowed up by the trees, and you couldn’t tell

what was smoke or mist or steam rising as the sun tried to break through. Young Johnnie liked riding on the engine and no one had to tell him to look out. After an accident everyone was careful. When Ben and Sailor got to work he hung around for a while. But at morning tea he asked where Big Johnnie was hurt, and later when they went ‘to

work again he went over that way. He was thinking about big Johnnie and what they had said, and suddenly he realised that all night he had been wanting to look. He had a funny kind of feeling inside him, a sort of knot that made him breathe queerly. He ran forward, noting the ringed trees, big Johnnie’s work, And then he came to the place. In an open patch before a native birch he saw the thing that had made Johnnie faint. Not the toes, lying like dead catetpillars, for the rats would ‘leave nothi:= so choice lying about for a whole day and night. What young Johnnie saw was what big Johnnie had forgotten and then suddenly remembered. What young Johnnie saw was what no one should have seen, and ten to one no one would ever have seen among all that slush and rubble and the creeper fighting for life among the tall trees, if big Johnnie hadn’t been little Johnnie’s hero and if little Johnnie hadn’t been lying awake half the night wanting to look. He saw a big red boot standing there obscenely with half an inch of water in it and the instep gnawed by a bush rat, but no mark on the smooth round toe. With a little cry Johnnie ran forward and picked it up. With a queer twisted look on his face he threw it far, far into the scrub. Then he walked back to where Sailor and Ben were working.