Louis Becke - The Colonial Mortuary Bard; 'Reo, The Fisherman; and The Black Bream Of Australia

“What do you want, anyway?” asked Schlüter.

“Some tobacco, please. And a dollar or two. I can pay you back.”

“When?” said Hamilton the pilot incredulously.

The pipe described a semicircle. “Oh, to-morrow night—before, perhaps.”

They gave him some tobacco and matches, and four Bolivian “iron” half-dollars. He got up and went across to Volkner’s combined store and grog shanty, over the way.

“He’s gone to buy a bottle of square-face,” said Hamilton.

“He deserves it,” said Denison gloomily. “A man of his age who could jump overboard and swim ashore to this rotten country should be presented with a case of gin—and a knife to cut his throat with after he has finished it.”

In about ten minutes the old fellow came out of Volkner’s store, carrying two or three stout fishing-lines, several packets of hooks, and half a dozen ship biscuits. He grinned as he passed the group on the verandah, and then squatting down on the sward near by began to uncoil the lines and bend on the hooks.

Denison was interested, went over to him, and watched the swift, skilful manner in which the thin brown fingers worked.

“Where are you going to fish?” he inquired.

The broad, flat face lit up. “Outside in the dam deep water—sixty, eighty fa’am.”

Denison left him and went aboard the ancient, cockroach-infested craft of which he was the heartbroken supercargo. Half an hour later ‘Reo paddled past the schooner in a wretched old canoe, whose outrigger was so insecurely fastened that it threatened to come adrift every instant. The old man grinned as he recognised Denison; then, pipe in mouth, he went boldly out through the passage between the lines of roaring surf into the tumbling blue beyond.

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