Harder 'n nails they are, and sharp as needles. You
ask me why I do my walkin' out in the night-time? It's so's to avoid the
sight o' their mean little eyes, and their greedy, graspin' faces."
Mahony's murmured disclaimer fell on deaf ears. Like one who had been
bottled up for months, Tangye flowed on. "What a life! What a set! What
a place to end one's days in! Remember, if you can, the yarns that were
spun round it for our benefit, from twenty thousand safe miles away. It
was the Land o' Promise and Plenty, topful o' gold, strewn over with
nuggets that only waited for hands to pick 'em up.--Lies!--lies from
beginnin' to end! I say to you this is the hardest and cruellest country
ever created, and a man like me's no more good here than the muck--the
parin's and stale fishguts and other leavin's--that knocks about a
harbour and washes against the walls. I'll tell you the only use I'll
have been here, doctor, when my end comes: I'll dung some bit o' land
for 'em with my moulder and rot. That's all. They'd do better with my
sort if they knocked us on the head betimes, and boiled us down for our
fat and marrow."
Not much in that line to be got from YOUR carcase, my friend, thought
Mahony, with an inward smile.
But Tangye had paused merely to draw breath. "What I say is, instead o'
layin' snares for us, it ought to be forbid by law to give men o' my
make ship room. At home in the old country we'd find our little nook,
and jog along decently to the end of our days.
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