Over There with the Australians | Page 7

remember that he, too, had offered his life a ransom for past sins, which
were many.
"For ours shall be Jerusalem, the golden city blest, The happy home of
which we've sung, in every land and every tongue, When there the pure
white cross is hung, Great spirits shall have rest." [1]
Prince Dressup was the dandy of the ship, a "swell guy" even at sea.
His singlets were open-work, his moleskins were tailor-made, and his
toe-nails were pedicured. The others wore only singlets and "pants,"
but had the regulation costume been as in the Garden of Eden, his
fig-leaf would have been the greenest and freshest there!
At one time he had been the best-dressed man in Sydney, giving the
glad and glassy optic to every flapper whose clocked silk stockings
caught his fancy. Some girl must have jilted him, and this was his
revenge on the fluffy things, the choice of a life where none of them
could feast their eyes on his immaculate masculine eligibility. Or,
maybe, he was really in love, and some true woman had told him only
to return to her when he had proved himself a man. If so, he had chosen
the best forcing-school for real manhood that existed prior to the war.
And there was real stuff in Prince Dressup; for, although there was
distinction and style even in the way he opened shell-fish, he took his
share of the dirty work, and when the time came he would not let
another man take his place in the ranks of the fighters for Australia's

freedom. He said, when we knew of the war, "that it would be rather
good fun," and when he died on Gallipoli, the bullet that passed
through his lungs had first of all come through the body of a comrade
on his back.
Chum Shrimp's size was the joke of the ship--he must have weighed
three hundred pounds. He could only pass through a door sideways,
and the "Binghis" (natives of New Guinea), when they saw him,
blamed him for a recent tidal wave, saying that he had fallen overboard.
He was the most active man I have ever known, and on rough days
would board the schooner by catching the dinghee boom with one hand
as it dipped toward the launch, and swing himself hand over hand
inboard. I never expected the schooner to complete the opposite roll
until Chum was "playing plum" in the centre.
Chum's parentage was romantic--his father a government official and
his mother an island princess--he himself being one of the whitest men
I have ever been privileged to call friend. We never thought he would
get into the army, for though he was as strong as any two of us, he
would require the cloth of three men's suits for his uniform, and he
would always have to be the blank file in a column of fours, as four of
his size would spread across the street, and to "cover off" the four
behind them would just march in the rear of their spinal columns,
having a driveway between each of them.
He was determined to enlist, and a wise government solved the
problem by making him quartermaster, thus insuring in the only way
possible that Chum would have a sufficient supply of "grub." This job
was also right in his hands, because he possessed considerable business
instinct; and you remember Lord Kitchener said of the quartermaster
that he was the only man in the army whose salary he did not know!
The fifth Britisher of our crew will growl himself into your favor, being
a well-bred British bulldog, looking down with pity on the tykes of
mixed blood. Even before the war he showed his anti-German feelings
by his treatment of a pet pig that we had on the schooner.
As I look back on it, our evening sport was a prophecy of what is

to-day happening on the western front. "Torres" would stand growling
and snapping at the porker, which would squeal and try to get away,
but his hoofs could not grip the slippery deck, and though his feet were
going so fast as to be blurred he would not be making an inch of
progress. The Germans have been squealing and wanting to get away
from the British bulldog but they do not know how to retire without
collapse.
This pig had a habit of curling up among the anchor chains, and while
we only used one anchor he escaped injury, but one rough day when
both anchors were dropped simultaneously, piggy shot into the air with
a broken back. The Germans have withstood the Allies so far, but now
that America is with us, the back of the German resistance will soon be
broken.
Of course Torres enlisted!