Half Crown Bob

Big, burly Tom M'Grundy, with the thirst of a sponge, features of a
red, red nose, the heart of an angel, and the financial genius of a
Wilkins Micawber--his I. O. U.s and P. N.s would have covered the Old
Man Plain with a pavement of tesselated indebtedness--drove up to the
boats as they were raising steam for the trip to Echuca. They had
dropped down from the wharves overnight, and had tied up at the south
bank of the Murrumbidgee, just below the bend in the stream where the
one hundred and fifty acre police paddock runs into Mungadel Station.
Both the steamers--the Jessie Jane and the Resolution--were under
M'Grundy's agency, and while there was no dodge that Mac could not
work to steal a march upon an opposing firm--the rivers ring yet with
the way he "did" McCulloch's Hay manager (Fehon, present N. S. W.
Railway Commissioner, was boss of the big concern then) out of £2000
worth of wool freight--he was studiously just to the several owners he
represented. He tapped them for loans and drinks with equal
impartiality, and he gave the "little" men with the one cranky steamer
and the solitary crazy barge the same show for cutting a plummy slice
out of the rich cake of the season's wool-traffic, as he did the
"bigger" men, who had half-a-dozen steamers and twice as many barges.
No flunkeyish, kiss-his-hand favouritism to the well-in owner was ever
shown by Tom M'Grundy, and it would have been better for the small men
on the rivers had all the agents and managers followed his lead.

The Jessie Jane was a small man's craft, skippered by its owner, and
under the double disadvantage of carrying with its cargo an eternally-
on--the-eve-of-going-to-blazes boiler and a tremendous mortgage; while
the Resolution belonged to a man who was being helped literally by a
bank, and who--though bound to go under some time like all bank-made
creatures (some day I'll recite certain legends of a Riverina bank-
sweating room)--would be "on the top" for five seasons or so.
Therefore Tom M'Grundy would, without doubt, have found it in the long
run much more to his own profit had he favoured the Resolution. But
that was not his way of doing business.

As he drew rein on the sandy hummock, he hailed the crafts which the
freshet was jostling restlessly against one another. The gilded,
brassy Resolution, with a barge lashed a-beam, lay astern of the
beggarly Jessie Jane, which looked as if the current half-year's
interest on the mortgage now just due would sink her to the bottom of
the river; and the big boat now and then stuck her nose more viciously
into her shabby rival, as though she would smash her from very
contempt. The Resolution and her barge were carrying twelve hundred
bales of "way back" clips, and the tarpaulined pile towered
majestically above the four hundred which were all the Jessie and her
barge were permitted by stern Tommy Freeman, the Echuca representative
of the Melbourne Underwriters' Association, to load up with.

The contrast between the two crafts was so forcible, that even
unreflective Tom Mac was struck by it, and hesitated, after hailing,
as to whether it would not, as a mere matter of business, be the
better policy to give the commission direct to the Resolution, instead
of making it a matter of competition. Before he could decide, however,
slim Jim Barton, owner and master of the Jessie Jane, was clambering
up the bank in answer to his call.

"Morning, Mr. Mac! What's up? Anything fresh?"

"Morning, Jim. Yes, there's a fresh freight offering, but I'm going
to give you and the Resolution the chance of it. It will all depend on
who can get to Echuca first, and back to Mungadel!"

"Oh, racing!" Jim's face, which had lit up with the agent's first
words, lost its animation. "I'm not on. I can't race, and I'm not
going to run risks of that sort."

"Well," said sympathetic Mac, "it isn't exactly a race, Jim. But look
here, wait till that lazy lubber of a Linton comes. Damn. You'd think
that chap was commodore of the Pacific squadron, he puts on so much
side! Now, Linton--I say, Linton, Skipper Linton, hurry up, man!"

"Aye, aye, Mr. M'Grundy, I'm coming!" and slowly, as became the
master of the dashingest new boat on the rivers, not to mention his
antecedents as an officer of Money-Wigrams line, he walked from his
state-room--they were "state-rooms" on the Resolution, and "cabooses"
on the Jessie Jane--to the gangway. There he stopped.