X
Cadets

Some keen, some lazy, some knew everything,
  Some stuck like Englishmen and came out top.
Two found the prospects so disheartening
  That "A" turned parson, "B" he kept a shop.

A "new chum" ¹in New Zealand is usually regarded by the old hands with an amused and kindly contempt. A queer beast he is to them; interesting too, in a way, for you never know how or what he is thinking, or what absurdity he may be up to next; and so, unless he puts on airs, a creature rather to be pitied and helped than to be kicked, This attitude of mind may, I think, be illustrated by a sentence from a letter I once saw, written by a native-born on his first visit to England: "It's most extraordinary, the whole bally shop seems chock-a-block with new chums." The writer meant by this term, people who have been all their lives so far removed from the bases of life, that they would be quite lost if they had to make a livelihood in any sort of direct contact with nature.

On a sheep farm it was quite usual for there to be one or two pupils or cadets who, to gain experience, would work for a year for their keep. They were usually young and fresh from the Old Country, and they naturally differed much, both in character and capabilities. There was, for Instance, the cocksure type of youth who knew everything already. "D'ye think I never harnessed a horse before?" said to us one of this sort, and then put on the beast's collar back first and wrong way up. He knew, too, all there was to know about packhorses; so we sent him down the road to fetch up some stores. He took all day for a three hours' job, and only brought up half a load at that, but we all enjoyed seeing his return. The poor horse was so wound up on a sort of loose cocoon of straps and ropes that we wondered how ever he could have got along. We sent him to town on old Balaam, noted for his quiet unprovokable placidity, having first warned the boy to be very careful, as he was about to mount a horse of spirit. On his return we stood round in an. admiring circle, asking him how he had got on. "Oh, he tried on his games with me all right," he said. "But at the first buck I clapped in the irons and let him know who was master, and I had no more trouble. You page 66needn't think a fellow can't ride just because he happens to be a new chum."

Yet I am not quite sure whether it is not these self-confident asses who get their experience quickest, for the lessons they get must often be pretty painfully impressed on their minds.

But paekhorse work is really no joke, for though it is fairly plain sailing, dealing with goods of standard size, such as coils of fencing wire, and bags of flour, you often have the devil and all of a job when it comes to mixed merchandise and household stuff, especially if your horses are new at it. The main load is then usually packed in two equally heavy sacks, one for each side of the horse, and all impracticable oddments must be so fixed as effectually to resist the extraordinary vigour with which everything does its level best to get loose and off. We ended by actually sewing things on.

Old pack-horses get pretty knowing. When it was a question, once, with professional packers, of getting a very big flat case of pictures through some miles of narrow bush track, "You needn't worry," they said, "we'll put it on old Maria, shell manage it." I watched her, a bony chestnut, picking her way along the very narrow, boggy, rooty track, close-lined with tree-stems, the page 67big case high In air on one side and sticking out several feet low down on the other. She had evidently often carried loads that jarred her when they hit things, for she never touched a single tree; she seemed to keep one eye glued on the lower side of that case all the time. But we had to train our own Marias.

To return to our cadets. Trainer, of quite another type, was one of our best, a strong willing chap, with plenty of commonsense, an enormous appetite, huge feet, and a certain amount of not quite unwoundable dignity. So, when they sent up to camp his new boots, "Trainer's tens," one on each side a special packhorse, he was a little hurt, nor was he amused by the boy's conundrum, "Why is Trainer like the Martini service rifle?" "Because he is a long, strong, clumsy thing with a very sharp 'twist' in his inside."

He had not been long with us when one night he felt his bed sharply pulled. Half dreaming of the practical jokes of school life, he reached out for the nearest missile and heaved it with all his force under the bed. It was only next day that he realised that what he had actually slung his boot at was an earthquake. Small earthquakes are not infrequent, and page 68no one bothers much about them. it is, however, a trifle disconcerting, when sitting on the ground at lunch, to see as I once did, the trees round you distinctly sway backwards and forwards for several seconds, and a series of quick tides in a puddle is not a reassuring phenomenon.

A third boy we had always did his best. But there was a distinct hitch in his mental equipment, poor chap. He had had so moral a bringing-up that, if allowed, he would sit on his bunk for half-an-hour in the morning considering which boot it would be right for him to put on first; although when it came to such a thing as a job of work, it was rarely possible for him to concentrate his thought on it for even a whole minute.

We were making a track up a bush gully, and I said to him: "You're quite right, Jephson, there really is a very pretty view from here. If I were you I would stand by and have a really good look at it, See how fine is the contrast where that brown bracken slope cuts against the great blue bush range beyond it, and note the way that branching cabbage tree stands out against the rushing river below." It was a false move on my part. He solemnly stuck in his spade and embarked on a comprehensive contemplation page break

Plate XI
Down the Coast

page 69of the whole visible countryside, which, had it not been interrupted, would probably have gone on for hours. He was quite serious; was always so, in fact, as, indeed, I take it, are most lunatics.

Hard by the station a little railed enclosure, originally protecting a single eucalyptus on a lonely mound, had been christened "The Silent Tomb." "What's it called that for?" asked Jephson. "Oh, that's Perkins," we replied, "quite a decent chap he was, but rather useless—hardly worth his keep, in fact—so H. knocked him over the head with a spade and we planted him there." "But why is the big gum tree green while all the small ones round are almost blue?" was the next question, "Oh, well," he was told, "it also was blue when we planted it, but when its roots got down to Perkins, it had to go green; it couldn't help itself," Jephson, after seriously reflecting on these things, worked well for nearly three-quarters of an hour. He was, as I have said, a serious youth.

"Hi, Jephson!" shouted my peppery brother—at a crisis in sheep work at the yards—"dance round smart now and kick up a row; kick up a hell of a row, Jeph, quick!" Jephson's upbringing stood him in good stead, "I will not kick up a hell of a row," he, with great dignity, answered his exas-page 70perated boss, "but I will make a great noise." He once electrified the family by suddenly appearing and putting to them, in open-mouthed horror, this query: "What shall I do? I have swallowed a large fly?"

The poor chap seems to have brooded over the fact that we comparatively wicked people seemed to get along in our dally life more easily than he did, and when there arose some little bother or other over his kit, to have sought relief in putting his thoughts on paper. The following note was picked up in camp: "Boots too large, spurs too small." A concise statement of fact, to which was added the moral reflection, "All success seems to come from the Devil." With this distinct "score" on his part I leave him.