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
His efforts to cast out this personal "debil" were futile, and as the
poor creature lapsed into unconsciousness he would blow gusty breaths
upon her big black eyes. It was his method of revivification. In my
ignorance I knew none more to the purpose. But it was all in vain. The
great eyes of this specimen of uncivilised humanity clouded over, and
then brightened. She moaned in response to Tom's well-intended but too
forcible massaging. Nelly applied without ceasing the one means of
relief that she possessed, the heated "Raroo" leaf, to cheek and
forehead, while we exhausted our woefully meagre stock of knowledge in
endeavouring to ease the last moments of the dying.
But poor "Little Jinny's" creditor was not to be denied. He was
exacting, cruelly exacting, imperious, implacable. He would have the
uttermost farthing's worth of her poor, crude life.
Nelly might sigh and use the whole armful of "Raroo" leaves; Tom might
massage, and the others do their best, which was pitiably poor, and
their uttermost, which was ever so mean and little, the Conquering Worm
would have its victim. And so with a few long-drawn, gulping sighs, each
at a longer interval than the last, until the final one, "Little Jinny"
passed away as the sun touched the dark blue barrier of mountains
across the channel to the west.
Then Nelly's sighs changed into a wail, in which the other members of
the camp joined, a penetrating falsetto cry which continued for two
days, mingled with the strong man's expression of woe, a low, weird yet
not inharmonious hum. For two days they chanted the virtues of the dead,
told of her likes and dislikes, and of their grief, crouching beside the
blanket-covered form. Then they buried her in the smoky hut in which she
lived, digging a shallow grave in the black sand, and there she rests
with them.
Tom has put on the mourning of his tribe, and will not for several years
eat of a certain fish associated with "Little Jinny's" original name.
Nor can he bear to be reminded of her. The day after she was buried he
spent the hours between daylight and sunset wandering about wherever
"Little Jinny" had been wont, obliterating the tracks made by her feet.
With the keenest of sight, which is one of the superior qualifications
of the race, he discerned the tracks on the sandy, forest-clad flat, and
rubbed them out with his foot.
Just as love-lorn Orlando ran about the forest of Arden carving on
"Every tree
The fair, the chaste, the unexpressive she,"
so this tough, rude savage, spent the, whole day smothering the marks
that would "sad remembrance bring" of the poor creature for whom he had
that kind of feeling that in the savage stands for love. Nature would
have performed the office as effectually, and perhaps more tenderly, but
Tom's hasty grief drove him remorselessly, until no outward and visible
sign of the dead girl remained to challenge it.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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