The Wet Blanket

by Ralph Stock

THE WET BLANKET

By RALPH STOCK

IT is difficult to describe Bowker.

Outwardly he was sufficiently unremarkable to cheat analysis. Small, quick, busy about being busy, you may find his prototype in any City office. But that is precisely where you would never find Bowker. It is the first peculiarity to be noted in the man that he shunned the environment to which he so obviously belonged. It was ever the "great outside" for him, the home of big men and big things, where, by the way, he looked uncommonly like a black-beetle strayed from its fastness in the light of day.

From this it must not be inferred that Bowker was incapable of holding his own in the strenuous sphere of his choice. He chose it for the very reason that amongst men of his own calibre his cunning would be met, perhaps submerged, by a like quality in others, whereas amongst the comparatively unintelligent he passed for a man "with a headpiece."

In dispute, for instance, his tongue took the place of his fist with surprising effect. A large, more or less inarticulate man knows what to do with one of his own species, but how is he to treat a physical worm who in a few well-chosen words flays his adversary alive and holds the carcase up to public ridicule? Bowker came to be known in the toughest camps as a man best left alone.

At work he contrived to make as good a living as most by manual labour in a world of manual labourers, which is something of an accomplishment for a man of five feet four with flat feet and a thirty-inch chest. He had merely plumbed the fundamental truths that brains will tell even in the wielding of a pickaxe, and that, apart from his own particular genius for successful malingering, there was a knack in most things, which, once mastered, gained the utmost effect with a minimum of effort.

Had not the final futility of all human endeavour so impressed him, it is probable that he would have made an excellent inventor of labour-saving devices. The spectacle of a strong man employing the last ounce of his strength filled Bowker with pitying contempt. He longed to argue with the fellow, show him the error of his ways. And this, during a nomadic career, he came to do. It grew to be his hobby, his mission, if you will, to preach the doctrine of "What's the use?" to assail all forms of honest endeavour with the battering-ram of destructive logic, and watch the effect. It amused him.

From which it will appear that Bowker was not a pleasant sort of person. He was not, though you would never have thought it—at first.

Bob Kemp, for instance, engaged in the pristine struggle for independence, via poultry, a few miles out of Sydney, found him a distinct asset for nearly a month. Bowker had tired of wharf-lumping, or wharf-lumping had tired of Bowker, and he had undertaken to watch the incubators and the house for his board and a nominal wage, while Kemp worked about the place or went to town with produce. The position suited Bowker to a nicety. A corrugated iron shed called a house, set in a dusty expanse of nothing in particular, needs little watching. As for the incubators, they gave equally little trouble, and both tasks could be accomplished with no more effort than was necessary to sit in the sun and smoke.

He also watched Kemp. It afforded him endless entertainment. The man was quietly working himself to death. As well as pandering to the wants of countless silly fowl that appeared to indulge in every ailment from "pip" to plain inanition, and produced a grossly inadequate number of eggs in return, he was digging a well. During his spare time, which consisted, at the most, of an hour or two after dark, Kemp was digging a well. And all for what? There were moments when Bowker could have laughed aloud, but he never did. It was contrary to his methods.

"How is it going?" he would ask, his small mouth twisting into a smile as his bone-weary employer dropped into a chair.

"Not so bad," was Kemp's invariable response.

"Think you'll strike water?" Bowker enlarged on one occasion.

"May," grunted Kemp. "Worth while trying, anyway."

"I suppose it is," mused Bowker, with a delicate upward inflection of the voice that converted the remark into a question.

Kemp looked up, his tired eyes momentarily alert.

"It'll just about treble the value of this place," he asserted. "Think what it'd mean, water laid on instead of man-handling it." He relapsed into blissful reverie at the prospect. Bowker contemplated the strip of nothing in particular comprising "the place that would be trebled in value," and contrived not to smile.

"Yes," he said. "To be sure, yes."

"And that reminds me," Kemp went on presently. "I've been meaning to make a suggestion to you, and somehow haven't. It's the devil trying to get water and work this place at the same time. Sometimes I'm quite tired of a night—must be getting old or something. What do you say to taking on a bit more than you do at present?"

Bowker appeared to ponder the matter, but in reality he was doing nothing of the sort.

"Do you mean I'm not worth what you're paying me?" he suggested gently.

"Heavens, no!" protested Kemp. "You're doing all you agreed to for the money offered, doing it well. I'm not complaining, but if you care to take a real grip of things, I'd be willing to give you real wages."

"Could you afford it?"

Kemp examined his broken finger-nails. He had made no secret of his position when hiring Bowker, so he could hardly resent the unusual question.

"I'd see that you got your money," he defended.

"I don't mean that," said Bowker; "I know I should get it if you said so. I simply mean, can you afford it?"

"You're thinking of me?"

"Yes."

Kemp flushed.

"Well, rightly, I can't," he confessed. "It's an uphill game, this, and things are not exactly what you could call rosy; but a fellow's got to take a chance if he's to get anywhere, and water's going to be mine."

"Just where do you expect to get?" suggested Bowker in his quiet fashion.

"Well, it's looking rather a long way ahead, and it's the getting there that troubles me at the moment, but I can see things humming here—in time. The birds must pick up before long, eggs are high, birds are high, the market's at the door, and the town's growing. With water, labour would be cut in half——" Kemp leant forward, with the light of enthusiasm in his eyes. "I'll tell you what I'll do. You take on the well. If we fail, you get standard wages; if we succeed, you get taken into partnership!" He leant back expectant.

The naïve suggestion caused Bowker's mouth to twitch. It was incredible that such fools existed.

"Thanks, no," he said.

"Why?" demanded Kemp.

"Do you really want to know?"

"Yes."

"It's against my principles."

"Partnership?"

"No."

"Then what?"

Bowker drew a deep, satisfied breath. The fellow had asked for it. Very well…

"I'll put it to you this way," he said. "What have you got that I haven't?"

The question plunged Kemp into an unaccustomed sea of thought.

"I don't know what you have," he answered cautiously on coming to the surface.

"What you see," declaimed Bowker with outflung hands—"enough clothes for decency, food, a bed, tobacco."

Kemp was still thinking when Bowker went on—

"You have a certain number of diseased birds, a place, and an infinite amount of worry and work which I do not envy you in the least; but of the good things of this life—leisure to think, see, and do the things you want to, a contented mind, and all the rest of it, where are they?"

"Coming along," said Kemp—"at least, I hope so."

"So do I," echoed Bowker, "sincerely, for your sake. But if and when they do come, what then? You will only have got as far as I have at the present moment. No one can go further. And look at the trouble you will have had in getting there."

Kemp sat staring at him dully.

"You're a proper sea lawyer," he said, "but there's something in what you say. A fellow is a fool to thrash away at a thing, but—he does. Why?"

"Don't ask me," returned Bowker; "that's your business."

"I suppose it must be something," muttered Kemp, groping in the murky alleys of his mind, "something I can't put a name to, anyway," he ended shortly.

"Shall we call it a natural desire for progress?"

"Yes, maybe that's it."

"Well, what is progress? More money, more happiness, what? If you can answer that, you'll have solved the riddle of the universe. What are you all doing with this wonderful progress of yours, but making the world harder and harder to live in?"

"Electric light, telephones, machinery," muttered Kemp, "what's the matter with them? What should we do without 'em?"

"Much as we did before we had them. They've only made life swifter and more complicated. They haven't helped much in the long run."

Kemp sat staring at his gnarled hands. Bowker leant back, puffing his pipe with relish.

"No," he said, "this 'something' that you say makes you keep on keeping on, what is it but an illusion I Take a good look, and it isn't there. Even if you're reduced to calling it work for work's sake, what then? What is work but the curse of Adam? Eliminate the work, and you've rid yourself of a curse, that's all."

"Then you're for doing nothing?"

The question constituted a challenge which Bowker took up with gusto.

"If you like to put it that way. Mind, you asked for this, for my principles, and there they are. Anything wrong with them?"

Kemp gave a sort laugh, and reached for his pipe.

"Oh, I couldn't begin to argue with you," he said. "You've got me tied in a knot with the ends spliced already. I can't think as far ahead, and back and sideways as you do. I daren't, for one thing, and haven't the time for another. There are the birds."

Bowker sighed, and drew from his pocket a small black notebook and a pencil. Here was a case calling for practical demonstration. He proceeded to supply it.

"Concerning these birds," he said. "As you infer, I've had time to think about them. Would you care to know what I've found out?"

"If you've found out anything more than I have about them, I'll lie down and you can walk over me," offered Kemp.

"Very well, then."

There was literally nothing that Bowker could not prove with his notebook and pencil. It was a species of Doomsday Book, a final summing up in the cold light of figures. In it, and by a simple sum of proportion, he had demonstrated to a fence post-hole digger of the plains that bar accidents, and if he persisted in his arduous task at the present speed, it would be finished in a fraction over three years; that when the fence was completed, it was a ten to one chance that the first post would have begun to rot, and that from a financial stand point he would be slightly in arrear of the position he occupied at the moment. As to what the fence post-hole digger did about it, the notebook held no record, but he certainly omitted to shoot Bowker, for here he was dealing with Kemp.

In rather less than twenty minutes he had reduced his already harassed employer to a state bordering on mental collapse by proving beyond doubt that, given the most favourable conditions, it was a physical impossibility to live by poultry rearing. He took the table bird as an example, and showed that, unless one had sufficient acreage to grow feed, the bird cost more during its life than it fetched at death.

The argument at first appalled, then fascinated Kemp. He was a simple soil. If the fellow were right, which ho certainly was.… Kemp's brain reeled. He laughed weakly and went to bed

At breakfast he was dumb, ate next to nothing, and sat with puckered brow. Bowker was making some cheerful remark about the weather, when, without the slightest warning, his employer's massive fist descended on the table.

"You're right!" he thundered, à propos of nothing, and fell to loading his pipe with vicious deliberation. "I didn't sleep last night for thinking about it," he continued between clenched teeth. "I went over the figures again, and they're right. Your whole scheme's right, and I'm wrong. I'm selling out."

And he sold out. The last news concerning him was of his arrest during a drunken brawl up country. The man who bought him out struck water six feet further down and made a success of the place, which, by the way, ultimately went as town lots at an exorbitant figure.

*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*⁠*

There followed the case of the much-blessed immigrant of the bush whom Bowker succeeding in convincing, and with truth, that by the time he had cleared sufficient acreage of giant eucalyptus to support his family, he would be in his grave. Then Bowker made the gross mistake of going to the Islands.

Not that there is anything against this delectable spot, but it was the wrong place for Bowker. It is one thing to preach a doctrine amongst the heathen, and quite another to carry it to its natural home.

He was attracted thither by visions of absolute instead of partial indolence, and for a time, and by the usual methods, he realised them. Then he met Adams, and anyone who has been in Papua knows what that means. There was gold in the mountains, it seemed—so much was established—but Adams happened to have picked up inside information in respect to a district where it literally lay on a dried river-bed waiting to be picked up by the handful. They would take no one with them but the native who had supplied the information, so that expenses would be reduced to the minimum—sufficient for a grub stake, that was all—but unfortunately Adams was not possessed of even that amount at the moment. Yes, he agreed with Bowker's views of life in toto. He had seldom met a man so entirely of his way of thinking, but this was an exceptional case. There was no work attached. It was simply a matter of strolling at leisure through some of the grandest country in the world, and returning with a fortune that would render it unnecessary to so much as lift a finger in the future. Look at the thing in its worst possible aspect, say they found no gold—which was, of course, absurd—and what had they lost? Nothing.

Baldly, very baldly, that was the project as set forth by Adams. It may seen incredible that one of Bowker's cunning should have been lured from his cast-iron principles by anything so crude, but it is impossible to convey Adams's subtlety of approach. Unwittingly Bowker had met a past master in the art of which he was merely an able exponent. Also it must be noted that he knew nothing about prospecting, and still less about Papua. He was lured.

Two days later, and following in the wake of a furtive-looking Kanaka with splay feet and an engaging habit of carrying tobacco in his ears, the expedition plunged into the dank silence of the jungle.

For a time there were tracks, so-called, though you would have hardly noticed them, then they camped for the night at a village which Adams rather surprised Bowker by referring to as the starting-point. He had been under the impression that they had started already. During the day he had contracted aching limbs, sundry scratches from encroaching vegetation, and a curious sensation under his toe-nails; he knew that. But he held his peace. It was not until on the following day, when all signs of tracks had vanished, and Adams had thrust a hatchet into his hand with the brief injunction to help cut their way through an apparently impenetrable tangle of underbrush, that Bowker began to give vent to his feelings.

"I like your 'grandest country in the world,'" he observed in a tone of light badinage that he was far from feeling.

"Takes some beating, doesn't it?" said Adams, the perspiration pouring from him in a torrent. "Thousands of acres of this—valuable timber, most of it—untouched. You'd get more out of that tool if you held it so," he added irrelevantly, illustrating his meaning on the hatchet handle with a hairy maw.

"And I like your idea of 'strolling through' it," supplemented Bowker a little later.

Adams regarded him for a moment through narrowed eyelids.

"Do you?" he said. "Then that's all right."

There was no gainsaying that Adams was not the same person at a bar that he was in the Papuan jungle. Bowker was beginning positively to dislike him.

By nightfall they had won their way to the foothills of a mighty range, glimpsed at intervals through the roof of tangled foliage. The heat, the sense of oppression, were indescribable. When camp was made, Bowker lay where he fell, staring stonily at a luminous fungus. By its ghostly light he saw many things. He wanted to think them out, dispose of them, but it was impossible under the present conditions of physical discomfort. With an oath he tore the boots from his feet and clutched at his toes.

"Jiggers," commented Adams, and, despite Bowker's protestations to the contrary, proceeded to extract the insidious insects with a jack-knife. "Mustn't let 'em get too far in," he explained cheerily during the operation; "they don't know enough to come out when they've finished."

There was something immutable about Adams—the jungle Adams. It frightened Bowker. He had never felt so helpless in dealing with anyone. The man's singleness of purpose and determination were appalling. But one more day of mental and physical torture drove Bowker to summon all his forces, whatever the result. He began very mildly:

"Are you sure this is worth while?"

"What?" said Adams. That was all. "What?"

"This," replied Bowker, staring at his feet.

"Jiggers? Oh, they're nothing. Bound to get 'em sooner or later, like fever."

"No, I mean the whole thing. I've been thinking. How do we know.…" He was launched. There was no turning back. He talked as even he had never talked in his life. He put pertinent questions, and answered them himself for the simple reason that no one else did. The native blinked, and Adams yawned. Even the Doomsday Book, with its persuasive columns of "for" and "against," failed to impress.

When he had done, and mopped the moisture from his brow, Adams turned with his slow drawl—

"Feeling a bit cheap, aren't you?" he suggested good-naturedly.

Bowker made a noise in his throat and collapsed.

If he had remained in that condition, all might have been well, for Adams was the kindliest of men—up to a point. He carried Bowker bodily for a considerable distance the next day, treating him like a sick child. But Bowker continued to air his principles with such insistence that when camp was made, Adams came and stood before him, his long legs apart, his hands on his hips. It was an unconscious attitude of his, denoting that the limit had been reached, but Bowker was unaware of it.

"Have you been like this long?" inquired Adams.

"If you mean have I been, able to sum up a given situation and decide on the best course, I have been like it all my life."

"Married?"

"No; but what has that to do with it?"

"Anyone dependent on you?"

"No, why?"

Adams took a turn of a few paces, thinking deeply, then returned.

"And you think it best to turn back?"

"I do. You misrepresented this undertaking——"

"We're after gold," snapped Adams. "At least, I am, and I thought you were."

"Yes, but I had no idea the hardships——"

"Call this hardship?" boomed Adams. "Why, man—but what's the use of talking? What you seem to expect is something for nothing, and you won't find it in this old world."

"You agreed with my views before we started."

"About work? I still agree. As little as possible of that commodity for yours truly, that's why I don't feel like packing you any further."

"You're leaving me here!" Bowker started into a sitting position.

Adams did not answer at once, but stood looking down on Bowker with grave, discerning eyes.

"You know," he said slowly, "I can't see that you're any use to anyone. Can you?"

"You're going to leave me here!" repeated Bowker.

"Not a bit of it. I'm not going to carry you any more, that's all. We're coming to some rather stiff country. You want to turn back. All right."

"You know I can't go—alone."

"It isn't as if you were really sick," mused Adams. "You're all right, bar jiggers, and they're nothing. I've never had dealings with your sort before, and you've got me beat. But you're not going to be carried. I know that."

The rest of this little scene in the green heart of the Papuan jungle is rather distressing, and, for Bowker's sake, is best left unrecorded. Adams never mentions it. He simply relates that Bowker elected to remain where he was, with his full share of provisions, and be picked up on the return journey. Well, that return journey occurred only two weeks later, and there were enough provisions to have lasted him at least a month. But when, after a pretty strenuous time, Adams reached the spot, bursting with the information that for the first time in history a Kanaka had not lied, and out of the fulness of his heart quite prepared to recognise the partnership, Bowker was not there.

Perhaps he had underestimated the chances of Adams's return, or overestimated his own ability to estimate with no one to listen to him. Perhaps—— But "perhaps" is a small word and an infinite possibility in Papua.