When they had thrashed the whole campaign over from start to finish,
making maps on my bed with hair brushes, razors and things, they got to
talking of Australia; and that was all about fighting too: dog fights,
fist fights between bullockies on the long road from Northern
Queensland, riots in Perth when the pearlers came in off the Barrier
Reef to spend their pay, rows in the big shearing sheds when the Union
men objected to unskilled labour--you'd have thought Australia was one
big battlefield, with nothing else but fights worth talking of from dawn
till dark.

The doctor was one of those tightly-knit, dark-complexioned little men
with large freckles and brown eyes, who surprise you with a mixture of
intense domestic virtue and a capacity, that shouldn't mix with it at
all, for turning up in all the unexpected places. You meet his sort
everywhere, and they always have a wife along, who worships them and
makes a home out of tin cans and packing-cases that would put the
stay-at-home housekeepers to shame. They always have a picture on the
wall of cows standing knee-deep in the water, and no matter what their
circumstances are, there's always something in reserve, for guests,
offered frankly without apology. Never hesitate with those folk, but
don't let them go too far, for they'll beggar themselves to help you in
a tight place, if you'll let them. Ticknor his name was. He's a good
man.

"Say, Grim, there's a case in the Sikh hospital that ought to interest
you," he said at last. "Fellow from Damascus--Arab--one of Feisul's
crowd. He wouldn't let them take him to the Zionist hospital--swore a
Jew knifed him and that the others would finish the job if they got half
a chance. They'd have been arguing yet, and he dead and buried, if I