Rio Grandes Last Race, Etc. | Page 7

beyond credence, looking at death eye to eye: This was
his formula always, `All man go dead by-and-bye -- S'posing time
come no can help it -- s'pose time no come, then no die.'
Dived in the depths of the Darnleys, down twenty fathom and five;
Down where by law and by reason, men are forbidden to dive; Down in
a pressure so awful that only the strongest survive:
Sweated four men at the air pumps, fast as the handles could go,
Forcing the air down that reached him heated, and tainted, and slow --
Kanzo Makame the diver stayed seven minutes below;
Came up on deck like a dead man, paralysed body and brain;

Suffered, while blood was returning, infinite tortures of pain: Sailed
once again to the Darnleys -- laughed and descended again!

. . . . .
Scarce grew the shell in the shallows, rarely a patch could they touch;
Always the take was so little, always the labour so much;
Always
they thought of the Islands held by the lumbering Dutch,
Islands where shell was in plenty lying in passage and bay, Islands
where divers could gather hundreds of shell in a day: But the lumbering
Dutch, with their gunboats, hunted the divers away.
Joe Nagasaki, the `tender', finding the profits grow small, Said, `Let us
go to the Islands, try for a number one haul! If we get caught, go to
prison -- let them take lugger and all!'
Kanzo Makame, the diver -- knowing full well what it meant -- Fatalist,
gambler, and stoic, smiled a broad smile of content, Flattened in
mainsail and foresail, and off to the Islands they went.
Close to the headlands they drifted, picking up shell by the ton, Piled
up on deck were the oysters, opening wide in the sun, When, from the
lee of the headland, boomed the report of a gun.
Once that the diver was sighted pearl-shell and lugger must go. Joe
Nagasaki decided -- quick was the word and the blow --
Cut both the
pipe and the life-line, leaving the diver below!
Kanzo Makame, the diver, failing to quite understand,
Pulled the
`haul up' on the life-line, found it was slack in his hand; Then, like a
little brown stoic, lay down and died on the sand.
Joe Nagasaki, the `tender', smiling a sanctified smile,
Headed her
straight for the gunboat -- throwing out shells all the while -- Then
went aboard and reported, `No makee dive in three mile!
`Dress no have got and no helmet -- diver go shore on the spree; Plenty
wind come and break rudder -- lugger get blown out to sea: Take me to
Japanee Consul, he help a poor Japanee!'

. . . . .
So the Dutch let him go, and they watched him, as off from the Islands
he ran, Doubting him much, but what would you? You have to be sure
of your man Ere you wake up that nest-full of hornets -- the little brown
men of Japan.
Down in the ooze and the coral, down where earth's wonders are spread,
Helmeted, ghastly, and swollen, Kanzo Makame lies dead:
Joe
Nagasaki, his `tender', is owner and diver instead.
Wearer of pearls in your necklace, comfort yourself if you can, These
are the risks of the pearling -- these are the ways of Japan, `Plenty more
Japanee diver, plenty more little brown man!'
The City of Dreadful Thirst
The stranger came from Narromine and made his little joke -- `They
say we folks in Narromine are narrow-minded folk.
But all the
smartest men down here are puzzled to define
A kind of new
phenomenon that came to Narromine.
`Last summer up in Narromine 'twas gettin' rather warm --
Two
hundred in the water-bag, and lookin' like a storm --
We all were in
the private bar, the coolest place in town,
When out across the stretch
of plain a cloud came rollin' down,
`We don't respect the clouds up there, they fill us with disgust, They
mostly bring a Bogan shower -- three rain-drops and some dust; But
each man, simultaneous-like, to each man said, "I think That cloud
suggests it's up to us to have another drink!"
`There's clouds of rain and clouds of dust -- we'd heard of them before,
And sometimes in the daily press we read of "clouds of war": But -- if
this ain't the Gospel truth I hope that I may burst -- That cloud that
came to Narromine was just a cloud of thirst.

`It wasn't like a common cloud, 'twas more a sort of haze;
It settled
down about the streets, and stopped for days and days, And not a drop
of dew could fall and not a sunbeam shine
To pierce that dismal sort
of mist that hung on Narromine.
`Oh, Lord! we had a dreadful time beneath that cloud