Dave Regan, Jim Bently, and Andy Page were sinking a shaft at Stony Creek in search of a rich quartz reef that was supposed to exist in the vicinity.
The creek held plenty of fish, providing both sport and food for the men. There came a time, however, when the fish, for some reason best known to themselves, refused to bite. The creek at this time was reduced to a series of water-holes, and Dave, who was subject to what are popularly known as "brain waves, " conceived the idea of blowing the fish up with a cartridge similar to those which they used for blasting the rock.
He thought the thing out, and Andy worked it out, making the cartridge about three times the ordinary size, Jim Bently remarking that it was big enough to blow the bottom out of the river. After covering the thing with several coatings of canvas and tallow, Andy stood it carefully against a tent peg and wound the fuse loosely around it. Then he went to the camp fire to try some potatoes which were boiling in a "billy. "Dave and Jim were at work in the claim that morning. They had a big black young retriever dog, a big, foolish, four-footed mate, who was always slobbering round them and lashing their legs with his heavy tail, which swung round like a stock-whip.
He seemed to take life, the world, and his own instinct as a huge joke. He"d retrieve anything : he carted back most of the camp rubbish that Andy threw away.
He watched Andy with great interest while the cartridge was being made, then went off to meet Dave and Jim. Andy was cook that day; Dave and Jim stood with their backs to the fire waiting till dinner should be ready. The retriever went nosing round after something he seemed to have missed. Presently, Dave glanced over his shoulder to see how the chops were doing-and bolted. Jim looked behind, and bolted after Dave. Andy stood stock still, staring after them.
"Run, Andy, run! " they shouted. "Look behind you, you fool! " Andy turned slowly and looked, and there, close behind him, was the retriever with the cartridge in his mouth-wedged into his broadest and silliest grin. But that wasn"t all. The dog had come round the fire to Andy, and the loose end of the fuse had trailed over the burning sticks, and the firing end was now hissing and spitting properly.
Andy"s legs started with a jolt, and he made after Dave and Jim. The dog followed Andy, leaped and capered round him, delighted to find his mates, as he thought, ready for a frolic.
They could never explain why they followed each other; but so they ran, Dave keeping in Jim"s track, Andy after Dave, and the dog circling round Andy-the live fuse swishing in all directions and hissing and spluttering. Jim yelled to Dave not to follow him; Dave shouted to Andy to go in another direction-to " spread out "; and Andy roared at the dog togo home. Then Andy"s brain began to work. He tried to get a running kick at the dog, but the dog dodged; he snatched up sticks and stones and threw them at the dog and ran on again.
The retriever saw that he had made a mistake about Andy; so he left him and bounded after Dave. Dave made a dive for the dog, caught him by the tail, and, as he swung round, snatched the cartridge out of his mouth and flung it as far as he could. The dog immediately bounded after it and retrieved it. Dave roared at the dog, who, seeing that Dave was offended, left him and went after Jim, who was well ahead. Jim swung to a sapling and went up it like a native bear. It was a young sapling, and Jim couldn"t safely get more than ten or twelve feet from the ground. The dog laid the cartridge, as carefully as if it were a kitten, at the foot of the sapling, and capered and leaped and whooped joyously round under Jim. The big pup reckoned that this was part of the lark-he was all right now-it was Jim who was out for a spree. The fuse sounded as if it were going a mile a minute. Jim tried to climb higher, and the sapling bent and cracked. Jim fell on his feet and ran. The dog swooped on the cartridge and followed. It all took but a very few moments. Jim ran to a digger"s hole, about ten feet deep, and dropped into it. The dog grinned down on him for a moment, as if he thought it would be a good lark to drop the cartridge down on Jim.
"Go away, Tommy, " said Jim, feebly. The dog bounded off after Dave, who was the only one in sight now. Andy had dropped behind a log.
Drawn by Nancy Liddelow
"The dog laid the cartridge at the foot of the sapling. "There was a small hotel or shanty on the road. Dave wasdesperate, so he made for the shanty. There were several bushmen on the veranda and in the bar; Dave rushed into the bar, banging the door behind him. "Look! " he gasped, in reply to the astonished stare of the publican; " he"s got a live cartridge in his mouth- "The retriever, finding the front door shut against him, had bounded round and in by the back way, and now stood smiling in the doorway from the passage, the cartridge still in his mouth, and the fuse spluttering. They burst out of that bar. Tommy bounded first after one and then after another, for, being a young dog, he tried to make friends with everybody.
The bushmen ran around corners, and some shut themselves in the stable. There was a new kitchen and wash-house on piles in the back yard, with some women washing clothes inside. Dave and the publican bundled in there and shut the door. The retriever went under the kitchen; but, luckily for those inside, there was a vicious yellow mongrel cattle dog under there-a sneaking, fighting, thieving cur, whom neighbours had tried for years to shoot or poison. Tommy saw his danger and started out across the yard, still sticking to the cartridge.
Half-way across the yard, the yellow dog caught and nipped him. Tommy dropped the cartridge, gave one terrified yell, and took to the bush. The yellow dog followed him to the fence and then ran back to see what he had dropped. Nearly a dozen other dogs of varied breeds came round, but kept at a respectable distance from the nasty yellow dog. He sniffed at the cartridge twice, and was just taking a third cautious sniffwhen- Bang!
Bushmen say that that kitchen jumped off its piles and on again. When the smoke and dust had cleared away, the remains of the nasty yellow dog were lying against the paling fence of the yard. Several saddle-horses, which had been "hanging up " round the veranda, were galloping wildly down the road, and from every point of the compass came the yelping of dogs.
For half an hour or so after the explosion, there were several bushmen behind the stable who crouched, doubled up, against the wall, trying to laugh without shrieking. Two women were in hysterics, and a half-caste was rushing aimlessly round with a dipper of cold water.
The publican was holding his wife and begging her, between her squawks, to "hold up, for my sake, Mary. "Dave decided to apologize later on, "when things had settled a bit ", and went back to camp. The dog that had done it all, "Tommy, " the great idiotic mongrel retriever, came slobbering round Dave, lashing his legs with his tail, and trotted home after him, smiling his broadest, longest, and reddest smile of amiability, apparently satisfied for one afternoon with the fun he"d had.
Henry Lawson, in Joe Wilson"s Mates
General.-No sadness here, but farcical mirth instead. Even if the story is not literally true, how true is the study of the faithful, blundering dog! Pick out passages that prove this. Tell a funny story of your own dog. If dogs could speak, how would the retriever tell the tale? Once, when a man said a dog had attacked him, Charles Lamb wanted to hear " the dog"s side of the story. "