第42章 Part II.(6)

I'd lost my hat,so Peter Anderson lent me an old one of his,that he'd worn on Ballarat he said:it was a hard,straw,flat,broad-brimmed affair,and fitted my headache pretty tight.

Peter gave me a small flask of whisky to help me home.I had to go across some flats and up a long dark gully called Murderer's Gully,and over a gap called Dead Man's Gap,and down the ridge and gullies to Redclay Creek.The lonely flats were covered with blue-grey gum bush,and looked ghostly enough in the moonlight,and I was pretty shaky,but I had a pull at the flask and a mouthful of water at a creek and felt right enough.I began to whistle,and then to sing:I never used to sing unless I thought I was a couple of miles out of earshot of any one.

`Murderer's Gully was deep and pretty dark most times,and of course it was haunted.Women and children wouldn't go through it after dark;and even me,when I'd grown up,I'd hold my back pretty holler,and whistle,and walk quick going along there at night-time.We're all afraid of ghosts,but we won't let on.

`Some one had skinned a dead calf during the day and left it on the track,and it gave me a jump,I promise you.It looked like two corpses laid out naked.I finished the whisky and started up over the gap.

All of a sudden a great `old man'kangaroo went across the track with a thud-thud,and up the siding,and that startled me.

Then the naked,white glistening trunk of a stringy-bark tree,where some one had stripped off a sheet of bark,started out from a bend in the track in a shaft of moonlight,and that gave me a jerk.

I was pretty shaky before I started.There was a Chinaman's grave close by the track on the top of the gap.An old chow had lived in a hut there for many years,and fossicked on the old diggings,and one day he was found dead in the hut,and the Government gave some one a pound to bury him.When I was a nipper we reckoned that his ghost haunted the gap,and cursed in Chinese because the bones hadn't been sent home to China.It was a lonely,ghostly place enough.

`It had been a smotheringly hot day and very close coming across the flats and up the gully --not a breath of air;but now as I got higher I saw signs of the thunderstorm we'd expected all day,and felt the breath of a warm breeze on my face.When I got into the top of the gap the first thing I saw was something white amongst the dark bushes over the spot where the Chinaman's grave was,and I stood staring at it with both eyes.It moved out of the shadow presently,and I saw that it was a white bullock,and I felt relieved.I'd hardly felt relieved when,all at once,there came a "pat-pat-pat"of running feet close behind me!

I jumped round quick,but there was nothing there,and while I stood staring all ways for Sunday,there came a "pat-pat",then a pause,and then "pat-pat-pat-pat"behind me again:it was like some one dodging and running off that time.I started to walk down the track pretty fast,but hadn't gone a dozen yards when "pat-pat-pat",it was close behind me again.I jerked my eyes over my shoulder but kept my legs going.There was nothing behind,but I fancied I saw something slip into the Bush to the right.It must have been the moonlight on the moving boughs;there was a good breeze blowing now.I got down to a more level track,and was making across a spur to the main road,when "pat-pat!""pat-pat-pat,pat-pat-pat!"it was after me again.

Then I began to run --and it began to run too!"pat-pat-pat"after me all the time.I hadn't time to look round.Over the spur and down the siding and across the flat to the road I went as fast as I could split my legs apart.

I had a scared idea that I was getting a touch of the "jim-jams",and that frightened me more than any outside ghost could have done.

I stumbled a few times,and saved myself,but,just before I reached the road,I fell slithering on to my hands on the grass and gravel.

I thought I'd broken both my wrists.I stayed for a moment on my hands and knees,quaking and listening,squinting round like a great gohana;I couldn't hear nor see anything.I picked myself up,and had hardly got on one end,when "pat-pat!"it was after me again.

I must have run a mile and a half altogether that night.

It was still about three-quarters of a mile to the camp,and I ran till my heart beat in my head and my lungs choked up in my throat.

I saw our tent-fire and took off my hat to run faster.The footsteps stopped,then something about the hat touched my fingers,and I stared at it --and the thing dawned on me.I hadn't noticed at Peter Anderson's --my head was too swimmy to notice anything.It was an old hat of the style that the first diggers used to wear,with a couple of loose ribbon ends,three or four inches long,from the band behind.As long as I walked quietly through the gully,and there was no wind,the tails didn't flap,but when I got up into the breeze,they flapped or were still according to how the wind lifted them or pressed them down flat on the brim.

And when I ran they tapped all the time;and the hat being tight on my head,the tapping of the ribbon ends against the straw sounded loud of course.

`I sat down on a log for a while to get some of my wind back and cool down,and then I went to the camp as quietly as I could,and had a long drink of water.

`"You seem to be a bit winded,Dave,"said Jim Bently,"and mighty thirsty.

Did the Chinaman's ghost chase you?"

`I told him not to talk rot,and went into the tent,and lay down on my bunk,and had a good rest.'

The Loaded Dog.

Dave Regan,Jim Bently,and Andy Page were sinking a shaft at Stony Creek in search of a rich gold quartz reef which was supposed to exist in the vicinity.There is always a rich reef supposed to exist in the vicinity;the only questions are whether it is ten feet or hundreds beneath the surface,and in which direction.They had struck some pretty solid rock,also water which kept them baling.

They used the old-fashioned blasting-powder and time-fuse.