It
was the Land o' Promise and Plenty, topful o' gold, strewn over with
nuggets that only waited for hands to pick 'em up.--Lies!--lies from
beginnin' to end! I say to you this is the hardest and cruellest
country ever created, and a man like me's no more good here than the
muck--the parin's and stale fishguts and other leavin's--that knocks
about a harbour and washes against the walls. I'll tell you the only
use I'll have been here, doctor, when my end comes: I'll dung some bit
o' land for 'em with my moulder and rot. That's all. They'd do better
with my sort if they knocked us on the head betimes, and boiled us down
for our fat and marrow."

Not much in that line to be got from YOUR carcase, my friend, thought
Mahony, with an inward smile.

But Tangye had paused merely to draw breath. "What I say is, instead o'
layin' snares for us, it ought to be forbid by law to give men o' my
make ship room. At home in the old country we'd find our little nook,
and jog along decently to the end of our days. But just the staid,
respectable, orderly sort I belonged to's neither needed nor wanted
here. I fall to thinkin' sometimes on the fates of the hundreds of
honest, steady-goin' lads, who at one time or another have chucked up
their jobs over there--for this. The drink no doubt's took most: they
never knew before that one COULD sweat as you sweat here. And the rest?
Well, just accident ... or the sun ... or dysentery... or the bloody
toil that goes by the name o' work in these parts--you know the list,
doctor, better'n me. They say the waste o' life in a new country can't
be helped; doesn't matter; has to be. But that's cold comfort to the
wasted. No! I say to you, there ought to be an Act of Parliament to
prevent young fellows squanderin' themselves, throwin' away their lives
as I did mine. For when we're young, we're not sane. Youth's a fever o'
the brain. And I WAS young once, though you mightn't believe it; I had
straight joints, and no pouch under my chin, and my full share o' windy
hopes. Senseless truck these! To be spilled overboard bit by bit--like
on a hundred-mile tramp a new-chum finishes by pitchin' from his swag
all the needless rubbish he's started with. What's wanted to get on
here's somethin' quite else. Horny palms and costive bowels; more'n a
dash o' the sharper; and no sickly squeamishness about knockin' out
other men and steppin' into their shoes. And I was only an ordinary
young chap; not over-strong nor ov