The Romance of a Station

"There's a fire at the South End, Mrs. Ansdell. Your husband is
signalling for Rame's boat. You'll see him this evening."

I ran out to the verandah of the Police Magistrate's house. Yes,
there was the beacon light shining like a big red star, low down in
the heavens, far off across Gundabine Bay. I heard one of the pilots
shouting at the verandah of the wooden public-house opposite:

"Rame, I say! Hurry up with your nobbler. There's Ansdell on the
Island signalling to be brought over." Then I saw Rame slouch out of
the bar, wiping his mouth on the sleeve of his Crimean shirt, and trot
down to the wharf; and I knew that in two or three hours' time my
husband would be with me, and I was glad, for I was a bride, and this
had been our first week of separation.

"I shall go back with my husband to-morrow," I declared resolutely.

Mrs. Jarvis, the Police Magistrate's wife, shook her head
remonstrantly.

"It will be much wiser to wait a little longer. The house isn't
ready for you: I fancy the carpenters are at work still."

"I'll help the carpenters," I replied.

"There are no servants, and you aren't used to roughing it in the
bush."

"Oh, yes, I am. Why, I have lived all my life in the bush, and I
love it. If you had ever seen dear old Bungroopim, Mrs. Jarvis, you
wouldn't wonder that I am glad to have married a squatter instead of a
townsman."

We both laughed, for we both knew that that wouldn't have made any
difference; and Captain Jarvis put in--

"Oh, yes; I know what your 'bush' was like--cool verandahs covered
with roses and Cape jasmine and grape-vines, mountains in the
distance, good buggy roads, and plenty of neighbours--lots of girls
and young men, and races and picnics, and good times all round. That
was kid-glove roughing it, Mrs. Ansdell, and you'll find life on the
Island a different sort of thing."

"The roses and the Cape jasmine will cover the verandah in time," I
answered; "and as for the girls and the young men and the good times,
I don't care about all that now."

"But the mosquitoes, Mrs. Ansdell?" said his wife. "You can't
imagine how bad they are on the Island at this time of the year. Don't
you think it would be wiser to wait till the plague has lessened?"

"The mosquitoes could not be worse than they are here," I returned;
for as we sat in the verandah the air was full of the buzzing of
insects, and we flourished whisks of horsehair while we talked.

"I am sorry to disturb your calm resignation," said Captain Jarvis,
"but I am afraid they will if I do not. The Island mosquito is a
peculiarly ferocious beast. Let me give you a bit of advice, Mrs.
Ansdell. Buy up all the gauze netting and all the Persian insect-
powder in Gundabine before you go over. It's a fact that Lambert and
his hands always went out mustering with their heads in bags."

Lambert was the former owner of the Island, from whom my husband had
a few months before bought the station and the cattle which ran upon
it.

In spite of Captain Jarvis's warnings, and Mrs. Jarvis's gentle
dissuasion--in spite also of a certain sinister suggestiveness in the
compassionate interest which was shown in me by every inhabitant of
Gundabine, from the postmistress to the storekeeper's assistant, my
resolution, fixed some days before, had not wavered. I was determined
to brave all discomfort--to brave even my husband's opposition, and to
insist upon returning with him.

I had been married only a month. I was longing to start on my new
life, and to settle into my new home, the blue shores of which were
tantalisingly visible across the bay; and here I was, imprisoned in
this dreary coast township in sight of the Promised Land, and
forbidden to pass the strip of water that separated me from it. I
liked the idea of living on an island. This stretch of country, forty
miles long by fourteen broad, was to be our kingdom--my husband's and
mine. There was no one to dispute possession except a little colony of
pilots who lived at the lighthouse and telegraph station quite at the
north end, and with whom I determined to make friends--they had
already sent me wedding presents of coral and mother-of-pearl from the
nautilus shell.