Page:While the Billy Boils, 1913.djvu/362



were ten of us there on the wharf when our first mate left for Maoriland, he having been forced to leave Sydney because he could not get anything like regular graft, nor anything like wages for the graft he could get. He was a carpenter and joiner, a good tradesman and a rough diamond. He had got married and had made a hard fight for it during the last two years or so, but the result only petrified his conviction that 'a lovely man could get no blessed show in this condemned country,' as he expressed it; so he gave it best at last―'chucked it up,' as he said―left his wife with her people and four pounds ten, until such time as he could send for her and left himself with his box of tools, a pair of hands that could use them, a steerage ticket, and thirty shillings.

We turned up to see him off. There were ten of us all told and about twice as many shillings all counted. He was the first of the old push to go―we use the word push in its general sense, and we called ourselves the mountain push because we had worked in the tourist towns a good deal―he was the first of the mountain push to go; and we felt somehow, and with a vague kind of sadness or uneasiness, that this was 328