Read Online Best Australian Short Stories by Douglas Stewart, Beatrice Davis - Free Book Online

grease was guttering on the floor, and he had evidently got to the end of the original subject, for he was relating the incidents connected with a gold rush, or a shearing riot, or something of the sort. I suggested briefly that I was going to bed, and he faded out of the door, and came back with a fresh candle, and faded again, and came back once more to supply some further information, and then he faded away for the third time, and I rushed at the door and locked it to keep him out. After a while he returned and made a frantic struggle to get into the room, but, failing in this, he retired with a heavy sigh and went to bed.
    The little town was unutterably still. There was a ripple on the water, but it was merely the impalpable ghost of an absent sound, and was hardly more definite than the, footsteps of the moonlight as it began to steal softly through the window. But despite the stillness and my own weariness I could only lament inwardly, and accumulate cramps. Sleep had left me. By and by, however, I began to drift into that undefinable condition when a man is always doing something and never getting it done, or perpetually falling down somewhere and never reaching the bottom, or is filled with the tail-end of a thousand brilliant ideas and loses them all the next instant. Probably I might have dropped off, only the afflicted landlady suddenly went into hysterics over her lost daughter and filled the building with shouts and disjointed observations.
    Probably her husband emptied a water-jug over her, for she dropped screaming and took to scolding instead. She was evidently in the next room, and it was also evident that she was a large female, for I heard her come out of bed with a thud, and then there came a series of hollow reverberations as she plunged and gambolled about on the floor. The next moment a window opened, and a long white figure galloped along the unsafe and treacherous-looking balcony which fronted the building. Another figure, a short, fat one, appeared in the moonlight a second later and went by at a resolute trot carrying its pants in one hand and a hat in the other, and presently a wild-looking object also flew by, throwing its limbs out in great, loose strides, and uttering Irish ejaculations of surprise. There was an excited argument at the other end of the balcony, and the hysterical female seemed to make several efforts to throw herself over into the street, but at length she became pacified, and retuned in a faint and limp condition—in other words, her husband trailed her along in a series of short jumps, and puffed a good deal under the exertion. He wore his hat over one ear this time, and carried his pants in his teeth. The third individual did not assist, but as the landlord jumped his insensible prey back through the window that fainting lady partially woke up and gave her follower notice to quit the house in the morning.
    The place grew quiet again after this—all except a dog-and-goat fight in the street below. One of the combatants gave away most of his ear in the course of the difficulty, and the other had his tail wrecked. Finally, they both departed in a cloud of dust, and escaped over the horizon, and left silence behind them, and I resolved to go back to bed again, and fall asleep.
    The bed was not favourable. It seemed to be stuffed with bricks and coal, and it described such an angle to the horizon that I had to brace my feet against the lower end of it in order to keep my position. This is a hard world, and if my feet slipped it was evident I would fall on to one of the hardest parts of it. When I realized this fact I sat up and made a remark—a long infuriated remark which was unfit to print, and while I was making it the bedclothes slipped on to the floor and when I hauled them up they were tied in a hard knot, so that when I tried to get into them I merely came out again at the other end. Then I looked for the candle, with a view to putting things right once for all, and I