My name's Dick Marston, Sydney-side native. I'm twenty-nine years old,
six feet in my stocking soles, and thirteen stone weight.
Pretty strong and active with it, so they say. I don't want to blow
-- not here, any road -- but it takes a good man to put me on my back,
or stand up to me with the gloves, or the naked mauleys.
I can ride anything -- anything that ever was lapped in horsehide --
swim like a musk-duck, and track like a Myall blackfellow.
Most things that a man can do I'm up to, and that's all about it.
As I lift myself now I can feel the muscle swell on my arm
like a cricket ball, in spite of the -- well, in spite of everything.
The morning sun comes shining through the window bars;
and ever since he was up have I been cursing the daylight, cursing myself,
and them that brought me into the world. Did I curse mother,
and the hour I was born into this miserable life?
Why should I curse the day? Why do I lie here, groaning;
yes, crying like a child, and beating my head against the stone floor?
I am not mad, though I am shut up in a cell. No. Better for me if I was.
But it's all up now; there's no get away this time; and I, Dick Marston,
as strong as a bullock, as active as a rock-wallaby,
chock-full of life and spirits and health, have been tried for bush-ranging
-- robbery under arms they call it -- and though the blood
runs through my veins like the water in the mountain creeks,
and every bit of bone and sinew is as sound as the day I was born,
I must die on the gallows this day month.
Die -- die -- yes, die; be strung up like a dog, as they say.
I'm blessed if ever I did know of a dog being hanged, though,
if it comes to that, a shot or a bait generally makes an end of 'em
in this country. Ha, ha! Did I laugh? What a rum thing it is
that a man should have a laugh in him when he's only got
twenty-nine days more to live -- a day for every year of my life.
Well, laughing or crying, this is what it has come to at last.
