DERELICT.

Otago Witness, Issue 2921, 9 March 1910, Page 83

DERELICT.

By S'Hasta. Always, since the beginning of things, it seemed" to him that he had been a wanderer. As he sat on his swag by the roadside, with his battered black billy at his feet, staring vacantly into the west, he could not remember jxist when he left the ranks .of the workers and became a sundowner. There was nothing to mark the point of his divergence; he had simply drifted. Once he had had a name and fixed place or abode, as other men have. Alick Watson, tho strong young fisherman, had sailed fearlessly out from Port of Ness, with the swiftwinced fishing fleet, a man among men; now he was just "old Sandy, the swagman." Was it he who had once dreamed of a home, with Enopie Howe as its mistress? ~ all. seemed so long ago, and yet he ku-i./ that, with the fisher-lass by his side, he had stood by the shores of that grey sea on an evening of sullen grey clouds, and ■ Eppie's scornfully-spoken words still echoed down the years. Why should she marry a careless, shiftless man such as he when she might have Stephen Murray with his fishing smack and cosy cottage? Why, indeed? So, bsing without safe anchorage of home or kindred, he went adrift. Looking backward through the intervening years, he saw lumber camps in Canada, goldfields in Australia, boundary-riders' huts on far-back stations, past which his wandering feet had' taken him. Like all drifters, his camp-fires had burned in strange places Always at last his aimless journeyings led him to a seaport, and there, before the mast, he found work on some ocean tramp. Finally he drifted into the Bluff on a, barque from the Islands. Carrying a swag and a new and shining billy-can, he took tho inland road. He remembered cheery vagabonds whose company he had sought; merry fellows who carried their swags jauntily and exchanged racy yarns as they passed along the dusty by-roads. At some outlying farm or station he would work for days, or it may be for weeks, till the old ache; •for the freedom of the road becoming unbearable, he would demand his cheque, roil tip "bluey " and go out on the track again. Often—pathetically often—he would fare .no ■farther than the nearest hotel. From the ruck of the tatterdemalion sundowners, one thing distinguished old Sandy: he clung tenaciously to one vanity, and never went unwashed and unkempt. His clothe? mi"ht be threadbare, sun-bleached, nondescript, but ragged never. One accomplishment remained ever from seafaring days. He could sew. , . TT Sandy had his own code of ethics. -tie did not steal, he never left a gate open, and he was careful of fires and lighted matches He never frightened a child, and would go hungry rather than ask food from the women of lonely farm-houses. He went straight to the "boss" for whatever he needed. The boss would offer him a bed or a meal, carelessly, as he might toss a bone to his collie. ' "Queer chap, old Sandy, but a harmless old beggar," the boss would remark, and old Sandy had his own off-hand greeting from many a boss and his own particular corner in many a barn and stable-loft. There was one farm-house, the only one on a long and lonely road, which he liked to reach at nightfall. Two dark-eyed little «drls were sure to find him, sitting on his swa°- by the gate, and come out to him laden with' gocd things. The "master would hail him cheerily, kindly, for he never forgot that a tramp was still a man, and old Sandy, in his indefinite way, felt dimly grateful. For months he did not pass that way, and when, just at sundown, he came to the familiar gate no one came to him. Then a man, red-haired and of truculent aspect, followed by a dog, also redhaired and of truculent aspect, came to the gate and ordered him- off in no uncertain manner. "The master was dead and the children gone away," he Eaid, "and he wouldn't abide no swaggers hanging about his place, that he wouldn't. He'd set the dog on to him if he didn't move off, that he would." Sandv wearily took up his swag and tramped onward in the gathering dusk. That night he went supperlsss and slept under a hedge. Another of the slender threads binding him to other men had snapped. Sandy no longer seeks the company of swagmen on tho°road as with bent shoulders and slow, deliberate stec he moves along the highway. Nature spreads her glad pageantries of sunrise, of flitting cloud forms, and of sunsets, but'he heeds them not. He hears the lark's morning song, the gentle rustling of flaxblades by the river-side, and the soft whisperings of wind in the tree-tops, but they carry no mesages of hope to him. In a vague way he feels that it is all beautiful, all a part of his life. He knows that he can never again spend his days bcxina ni by a dull round of duties, nor his nights hemmed in by the four walls of a house. A barn wall is more companionable. There are always cracks for the stars to shine through, and the warmth is pleasant on a nis-ht of storm. For the rest, if one has but sufficient food and a pipeful of tobacco nothing else matters much. For Sandy, walking furtively in the shadow of the hedge, the past is gone and done with, while the future, Vke the road before him, stretches on indefinitelv. For him there are no •orohlems of life and death, of duty, or of punishment and reward. Somewhere he knows there is an ending to the road and a .safe haven for derelicts. He shall pass into the peace of that harbour alone. Not for him are white hosnital beds, the care of soft-voiced, deft-handed nurses. Not for j him are the murmured prayers of the beloved. Your civilised man seeks healinc' for his j injuries, compassion for his sufferings, hut

the instinct of the wild thing is ever to hide its pain. With the primeval instinct strong in the heart of him. Sandy, with the wild, frightened look of the stricken thing in his eyes, will one day creep into the dark shelter of the bush—to die. The wren calling mournfully from the sombre depths of the forest shall sing his only threnody. So, in the end, shall the derelict drif into port.