AN OLD-FASHIONED AUSTRALIAN WELCOME 13
received ten dollars a month plus tucker and nothing on anything else except jail if caught with "snide."
"The
pearl shell brings nine hundred dollars a ton in the open market and
the big boss buyers have it all their own bloody way. The damned
pearlers are a mangy lot, and the scurvy supercargoes are thieving
crows, although I says it as should not."
He
hiccupped disdainfully when he spoke of the stingy saloon-keepers in
town, nor di-d he spare his own understrappers, whom he dubbed eadging
boozefighters and gangrened pimps—for he was just in the mood to
tackle all that were for or against the Government.
Being
a gallant Irishman even in his cups, he spared the ladies. But how much
more information could you wish to get for five rounds of "Three Star,"
three of gin and bitters, and a Benedictine or two thrown in?
When
I arrived in Broome, the pearling-fleet was out at work and hardly a
single vessel was in port. I had not yet seen a proper pearling-lugger,
and so when someone told me that one had just sailed into the
creek—whether to unload shell and retucker or merely to bring ashore a
dead or paralyzed diver, he could not say—I hurried down to look at her.
There
she was, with her sails neatly stowed, a small two-masted craft of from
eight to ten tons. There were nine men working about her, and an
obliging smooth fellow who stood idly by picking the remnants of an
early breakfast out of his teeth kindly volunteered the information
that the fat chap on board who seemed to be in danger of bursting his
leather belt was the something or other shell-opener, the small
pockmarked Jap was the tender, the squat nimble Jap the diver, the
Malay with the saucepan in his hand and the live cock under his arm, as
I surmised, the cook, and the four men lugging two heavy sacks and two
skips between them were the common crew. The last he said belonged to
four different races of island Malays. The lack of a common tongue was
sufficient to stop them from hatching rebellion among them.
"The shell-opener," said my informant, eyeing me and de-
