UP AND AWAY 259 



" If you make yourself a fool like that, no more work 

 from that boy. Don't be a fool and spoil this game. 

 We're out till November. Let's make the best of it." 



It was not clean work. The reek of the fish — raw, 

 cooked, smoked, and drying in the sun — saturated 

 everything, even the damper. The brown, shrivelled 

 things were scattered in orderly profusion wherever 

 the sun could catch them to top them off prior to bag- 

 ging. The bitter, eye-searing smoke from the red man- 

 grove fire in the hold, where the meagre catch of yester- 

 day was lying on a couple of trays, stung the nostrils. 

 The odour was as interminable as the half-accomplished 

 tune, and Breezy Bill writhed. He was not new to the 

 game, but bad luck had been the portion of the ship from 

 the start, and small things irritated him, rasping his 

 far from sensitive soul. 



"I think you are going to catch fever, Jim. That's 

 what's the matter with you. At the mission I used 

 to read about that bird you call the brain-fever bird. 

 It just keeps on whistling the same old thing, and white 

 men go mad. That 'Last Rose of Summer,' it's got 

 hold of you. Don't be a fool ! It's only a good tune 

 half done. It won't kill anybody — at any rate, a 

 tough old shell-back like you !" 



"Oh, bother ! Stinks and rotten 'Last Rose of 

 Summer' are driving me mad. I could stand lots of 

 both if we were doing well. They might be forty over- 

 proof and played by forty bands, and every darned 

 piccolo of them out of tune, if only we were making 

 money. Come, let's up stick and away. We can't 

 do worse and we might do better on that bit of reef 

 Mammerroo talks about. Here, Mammerroo, stop that 

 blasted corroboree ! Come and tell us where that 

 little fella reef sit down." 



Mammerroo shuffled down to the hatchway covering 



