The Gold-Stealers | Page 2

farther out
of plumb every day. But the ingenuity of Waddy was not exhausted: a
few hundred feet of rope and a winch were borrowed from the Peep o'
Day; the rope was run round the schoolhouse, and the building was
promptly hauled back into shape and fastened down with long timbers
running from its sides to a convenient red-gum stump at the back. Thus
it remained for many years, bulging at the sides, pitching forward, and
straining at its tethers like an eager hound in a leash.
It was literally a humming hot day at Waddy; the pulsing whirr of
invisible locusts filled the whole air with a drowsy hum, and from the
flat at the back of the township, where a few thousand ewes and lambs
were shepherded amongst the quarry holes, came another insistent
droning in a deeper note, like the murmur of distant surf. No one was

stirring: to the right and left along the single thin wavering line of
unpainted weatherworn wooden houses nothing moved but mirage
waters flickering in the hollows of the ironstone road. Equally deserted
was the wide stretch of brown plain, dotted with poppet legs and here
and there a whim, across the dull expanse of which Waddy seemed to
peer with stupid eyes.
From within the school were heard alternately, with the regularity of a
mill, the piping of an old cracked voice and the brave chanting of a
childish chorus. Under the school, where the light was dim and the air
was decidedly musty, two small boys were crouched, playing a silent
game of 'stag knife.' Besides being dark and evil-smelling under there,
it was damp; great clammy masses of cobweb hung from the joists and
spanned the spaces between the piles. The place was haunted by
strange and fearsome insects, too, and the moving of the classes above
sent showers of dust down between the cracks in the worn floor. But
those boys were satisfied that they were having a perfectly blissful time,
and were serenely happy in defiance of unpropitious surroundings.
They were 'playing the wag,' and to be playing the wag under any
circumstances is a guarantee of pure felicity to the average healthy boy.
Probably the excessive heat had suggested to Dick Haddon the
advisability of spending the afternoon under the school instead of
within the close crowded room; at any rate he suggested it to Jacker
McKnight, commonly known as Jacker Mack, and now after an hour of
it the boys were still jubilant. The game had to be played with great
caution, and conversation was conducted in whispers when ideas could
not be conveyed in dumb show. All that was going on in the room
above was distinctly audible to the deserters below, and the joy of
camping there out of the reach of Joel Ham, B.A., and beyond all the
trials and tribulations of the Higher Fifth, and hearing other fellows
being tested, and hectored, and caned, was too tremendous for
whisperings, and must be expressed in wild rollings and contortions
and convulsive kicking.
'Parrot Cann, will you kindly favour me with a few minutes on the
floor?'

It was the old cracked voice, flavoured with an ominous irony. Dick
paused in the middle of a throw with a cocked ear and upturned eyes;
Jacker Mack grinned all across his broad face and winked meaningly.
They heard the shuffling of a pair of heavily shod feet, and then the
voice again.
'Parrot, my man, you are a comedian by instinct, and will probably live
to be an ornament to the theatrical profession; but it is my duty to
repress premature manifestations of your genius. Parrot, hold out!
They heard the swish of the cane and the school master's sarcastic
comments between the strokes.
'Ah-h, that was a beauty! Once more, Parrot, my friend, if you please.
Excellent! Excellent! We will try again. Practice of this kind makes for
perfection, you know, Parrot. Good, good--very good! If you should be
spoiled in the making, Parrot, you will not in your old age ascribe it to
any paltry desire on my part to spare the rod, will you, Parrot?'
'S'help me, I won't, sir!
There was such a world of pathos in the wail with which Parrot replied
that Dick choked in his efforts to repress his emotions. The lads heard
the victim blubbing, and pictured his humorous contortions after every
cut--for Parrot was weirdly and wonderfully gymnastic under
punishment--and Jacker hugged himself and kicked ecstatically, and
young Haddon bowed his forehead in the dirt and drummed with his
toes, and gave expression to his exuberant hilarity in frantic pantomime.
The rough and ready schoolboy is very near to the beginnings; his
sense of humour has not been impaired by over-refinement, but remains
somewhat akin to