Joe Wilson and His Mates

  The Chinaman's Ghost.

  'Simple as striking matches,' said Dave Regan, Bushman; 'but it gave methe biggest scare I ever had--except, perhaps, the time I stumbled inthe dark into a six-feet digger's hole, which might have been eightyfeet deep for all I knew when I was falling. (There was an eighty-feetshaft left open close by.)

  'It was the night of the day after the Queen's birthday. I was sinking ashaft with Jim Bently and Andy Page on the old Redclay goldfield, andwe camped in a tent on the creek. Jim and me went to some races that washeld at Peter Anderson's pub., about four miles across the ridges, onQueen's birthday. Andy was a quiet sort of chap, a teetotaller, andwe'd disgusted him the last time he was out for a holiday with us, so hestayed at home and washed and mended his clothes, and read an arithmeticbook. (He used to keep the accounts, and it took him most of his sparetime.)

  'Jim and me had a pretty high time. We all got pretty tight after theraces, and I wanted to fight Jim, or Jim wanted to fight me--I don'tremember which. We were old chums, and we nearly always wanted to fighteach other when we got a bit on, and we'd fight if we weren't stopped. Iremember once Jim got maudlin drunk and begged and prayed of me to fighthim, as if he was praying for his life. Tom Tarrant, the coach-driver,used to say that Jim and me must be related, else we wouldn't hate eachother so much when we were tight and truthful.

  'Anyway, this day, Jim got the sulks, and caught his horse and went homeearly in the evening. My dog went home with him too; I must have beencarrying on pretty bad to disgust the dog.

  'Next evening I got disgusted with myself, and started to walk home. I'dlost my hat, so Peter Anderson lent me an old one of his, that he'd wornon Ballarat he said: it was a hard, straw, flat, broad-brimmed affair,and fitted my headache pretty tight. Peter gave me a small flask ofwhisky to help me home. I had to go across some flats and up a long darkgully called Murderer's Gully, and over a gap called Dead Man's Gap,and down the ridge and gullies to Redclay Creek. The lonely flatswere covered with blue-grey gum bush, and looked ghostly enough in themoonlight, and I was pretty shaky, but I had a pull at the flask and amouthful of water at a creek and felt right enough. I began to whistle,and then to sing: I never used to sing unless I thought I was a coupleof miles out of earshot of any one.

  'Murderer's Gully was deep and pretty dark most times, and of course itwas haunted. Women and children wouldn't go through it after dark; andeven me, when I'd grown up, I'd hold my back pretty holler, and whistle,and walk quick going along there at night-time. We're all afraid ofghosts, but we won't let on.

  'Some one had skinned a dead calf during the day and left it on thetrack, and it gave me a jump, I promise you. It looked like two corpseslaid out naked. I finished the whisky and started up over the gap. Allof a sudden a great 'old man' kangaroo went across the track with athud-thud, and up the siding, and that startled me. Then the naked,white glistening trunk of a stringy-bark tree, where some one hadstripped off a sheet of bark, started out from a bend in the track in ashaft of moonlight, and that gave me a jerk. I was pretty shaky beforeI started. There was a Chinaman's grave close by the track on the topof the gap. An old chow had lived in a hut there for many years, andfossicked on the old diggings, and one day he was found dead in thehut, and the Government gave some one a pound to bury him. When I was anipper we reckoned that his ghost haunted the gap, and cursed in Chinesebecause the bones hadn't been sent home to China. It was a lonely,ghostly place enough.

  'It had been a smotheringly hot day and very close coming across theflats and up the gully--not a breath of air; but now as I got higher Isaw signs of the thunderstorm we'd expected all day, and felt the breathof a warm breeze on my face. When I got into the top of the gap thefirst thing I saw was something white amongst the dark bushes over thespot where the Chinaman's grave was, and I stood staring at it withboth eyes. It moved out of the shadow presently, and I saw that it wasa white bullock, and I felt relieved. I'd hardly felt relieved when, allat once, there came a "pat-pat-pat" of running feet close behind me!I jumped round quick, but there was nothing there, and while I stoodstaring all ways for Sunday, there came a "pat-pat", then a pause, andthen "pat-pat-pat-pat" behind me again: it was like some one dodging andrunning off that time. I started to walk down the track pretty fast,but hadn't gone a dozen yards when "pat-pat-pat", it was close behind meagain. I jerked my eyes over my shoulder but kept my legs going. Therewas nothing behind, but I fancied I saw something slip into the Bush tothe right. It must have been the moonlight on the moving boughs; therewas a good breeze blowing now. I got down to a more level track, andwas making across a spur to the main road, when "pat-pat!" "pat-pat-pat,pat-pat-pat!" it was after me again. Then I began to run--and it beganto run too! "pat-pat-pat" after me all the time. I hadn't time to lookround. Over the spur and down the siding and across the flat to the roadI went as fast as I could split my legs apart. I had a scared idea thatI was getting a touch of the "jim-jams", and that frightened me morethan any outside ghost could have done. I stumbled a few times, andsaved myself, but, just before I reached the road, I fell slitheringon to my hands on the grass and gravel. I thought I'd broken bothmy wrists. I stayed for a moment on my hands and knees, quaking andlistening, squinting round like a great gohana; I couldn't hear norsee anything. I picked myself up, and had hardly got on one end, when"pat-pat!" it was after me again. I must have run a mile and a halfaltogether that night. It was still about three-quarters of a mile tothe camp, and I ran till my heart beat in my head and my lungs choked upin my throat. I saw our tent-fire and took off my hat to run faster. Thefootsteps stopped, then something about the hat touched my fingers, andI stared at it--and the thing dawned on me. I hadn't noticed at PeterAnderson's--my head was too swimmy to notice anything. It was an old hatof the style that the first diggers used to wear, with a couple of looseribbon ends, three or four inches long, from the band behind. As longas I walked quietly through the gully, and there was no wind, the tailsdidn't flap, but when I got up into the breeze, they flapped or werestill according to how the wind lifted them or pressed them down flaton the brim. And when I ran they tapped all the time; and the hat beingtight on my head, the tapping of the ribbon ends against the strawsounded loud of course.

  'I sat down on a log for a while to get some of my wind back and cooldown, and then I went to the camp as quietly as I could, and had a longdrink of water.

  '"You seem to be a bit winded, Dave," said Jim Bently, "and mightythirsty. Did the Chinaman's ghost chase you?"

  'I told him not to talk rot, and went into the tent, and lay down on mybunk, and had a good rest.'