A BREEZE IN YER BREECH
Taranna to Long Bay five mile straight straight as the backbone of a herring by the string rather than the bow but up and down like a tinker’s elbow this tramway ran straight from Cap’n Booth’s brainpan ‘cos passage from Hobartown ‘cross Storm Bay was rough as it runs supply ships yelling under a southerly burster from the shallows of Norfolk Bay flat as a packed mud floor to the Coal Mines westward, Saltwater River and south to Arthur’s penal pile where sixty, seventy rashers of wind centipedes of the carrying gang heaved huge, breakback spars on bloodraw shoulders, where the dockyard gang got the rheumatics and guggled up to their nappers thick woods, all bars and spikes and briery wires like the hatch to a hulk’s hold, rang with the sawyer’s axe, the chock of logsplitters and grunts of grubbers, where basils bit wrists and sparks burnt throats sniggers! leastways i could shake a leg
we up jig a pint o’ skilly for stirrupcup stirred our stumps, broke to an eggtrot tipped our rags a gallop and fizzed away ankle chains clinking a jingle o’ silver chinks iron wheels clacketing along hardwood rails three chapped chums per waggon o’ goods a hoppole hallion, a block, in sooth a vinegarpisser, bunky and bumptious and yours ‘umbly a Billy boy blab and cheekish lurker our livery o’ woollens dyed canary forever sopped and dullstained the colour o’ wet sand; or magpie halfblack, halfyellow deadly ugly stingers run quick as a pudding would creep and you’d jink tin with a jacketing ‘I’ll fleece your hide, you crawling scoundrel! Throw your carcass down the BlowHole!’ barked a brassface, a blush on his bowsprit an officer of feet ‘Look lively ho!’ ‘tis certain you don’t need no tripes aboard
we prentices to the tranter trade might carry live lumber too such as Captain Copperthorne’s crew hardly a God permit this threehorse power newfangle facing me, bolted upright, a broody gen’leman with fierce mustarshes, a dial black as thunder sporting a frockcoat blue as a razor corduroys and riding boots of black leather and what’s this, back to me? laced mutton, i declare, but no Bartholomew baby in fact, a reg’lar lady, seated it seemed, on a bag o’ fleas shying neath the curved rim of a straw bonnet its pale blue ribbons teazing my peepers neatly rigged, she was under a cream shawl that she bunched up in her little fist and coughed into, a dress of rose pattern and ruffled sleeves a hint of lavender put me in mind of the Garden back Home when i was a fancier of flowers a knight o’ the busk, as t’were and by and by the wives‘garden wives of the gen’lemen in red my eyes she’d take the starch out of any cove of the ken the stuff of sweet dreams on my pallet, amen i must’ve stared like a stuck pig when this pumpthunder started me ‘You there, goggles, cease thine ogling! Lest you desire a lick o’ the whip! Remember your station, gyp!’
how could i forget? ah, the importance of the quality is above bearing Dame Fortin would ne’er smile ‘pon the likes o’ me i don’t care a fig flog and be damned! but faked the civil rig for there was no turning the corner of Bolt Street to pike away on nimble feet Woody Island’s signal station peering o’er tops o’ trees a distant skelington so we rode a wild mare harumscarum helterskelter steaming swelter out o’ kilter in a muck o’ sweat we leaped off to push ‘n’ pull more ‘n’ half a ton o’ hulky stores uphill roarers hollering leaping on again, what thrills the wind in yer jib o to rush a flatcock’s frills! a shoot dipped toward Long Bay head some mile and a half in downward glide ‘Hold on, the heavy hill! Crossbars! Hold hard!’ but we game cocks couldst not drag the waggons back try as we might we had no might without Sir Tristram’s knot – or threat of it! save the crowbar to try lock a wheel any stone, bough or full bob might dispatch our waggons to mortal smash
aye, a tumble would’ve give marm more than a green gown, i own
so blazed our trail as the devils rail halloobaloo, hullabaloo beat a thousand wings to woody canopy a scatter o’ gems in spangles o’ light trees, ferns, brush dashed by dash’d brisk skirrying huff and ding o for a drop o’ stingo by the living jingo a capital go halloo! hallo! not till we hopped in near Earthly Hell i catched the wind o’ the word the cut of her la’ship’s jib sunk and drawn pocked right plaguily the shakes’d shook the ghost back into me
Michael Small
September 24October 19, 2007