The Confessions of a BeachcomberBanfield, E. J. (Edmund James)
History
The Confessions of a Beachcomber
Banfield, E. J. (Edmund James)
Dunk Island (Qld.); Natural history -- Australia -- Queensland
He told me that he felt cowed--he could never face the sea again. Once
before he had given up "sailorising," not then on account of his
nerves, but because ambition to possess a sweet-potato patch, pumpkins
and a few bananas, melons, mangoes, had got hold of him. He had taken up
a piece of land, but having no money his flimsy fencing was no barrier
to the wallabies, and he abandoned the enterprise to them. Now he had
abandoned his beche-de-mer project, had bought wire netting to keep out
the wallabies, and would make a second effort to settle down. A little
net fishing would help to keep him going. "As for the sea," said he,
"I have had enough--too much. It is all right while your pluck lasts, but
once get a shake, and you had better give it up. And the little boat!--I
broke that rail as I was getting poor Andrew's body on board. She is all
right, but for that--and she's for sale!"
In an hour, having concocted some stew and baked his damper, the
single-handed nerve-shaken, old sailor set sail, and I knew him no more.
Another of poor old "Yorky's" adventures is worth telling. While out on
the Barrier Reef, the black crew of his beche-de-mer boat mutinied, and
knocking him and his mate on the head, threw them overboard. The sudden
souse into the water restored "Yorky" to consciousness, and he swam
back to the cutter whence the blacks had hastily fled in the dingy. It
was a desperate struggle for a one-armed man to cling to and clamber up
the side of the boat, but "Yorky" has never yet failed when his life
was at stake. He won the deck at last, but at the expense of a broken
rib and the flesh on the best part of his side tom bare to the bones.
Still dazed, he chanced to look over the side, where he saw his mate's
head bobbing up and down in the water. Hard as it had been for him to
save himself, it was more difficult still to rescue the body from the
sharks. Frantically using rough-and-ready methods, he hauled it on
board, and disposed it as decently as circumstances permitted.
"Yorky," great of heart, is quite unused to the melting mood. He admits
that he felt pretty bad mentally. But whatever his feelings towards his
sodden mate lying there with watery blood oozing from wounds on his
head, exhibiting the marks of the necessarily rough-and-ready means
that had been taken for his rescue, they had to be suppressed. Wet,
dizzy, and sadly battered, with little more apparent reason for the
possession of the breath of life than his companion, he set sail,
slipped the anchor, and steered for the nearest port. Some distance
on the way, to use "Yorky's" own and sufficient words--"The dead
man came to life!" Both had to submit to the restraint of hospital
treatment for many weeks ere physical repairs were complete.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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