Summary

Set in 1892, Australia, “The Bones” begins with a camel, first-person narrator, telling the story of the night he dies. He sits around the campfire with Master Mitchell, who is asleep, and Henry Lawson, the famous Australian poet. In this imaginative reconstruction, Henry Lawson is merely a “poet drifter” (3), who drunkenly addresses the camel. A goanna wanders around the campfire as Lawson talks.

Lawson complains that Mitchell should have “put the bones back,” claiming that Mitchell will “go to hell” for stealing them (4). Lawson compares Mitchell to Ebenezer Scrooge from Charles Dickens’ "A Christmas Carol," then remembering how his mother read Charles Dickens and Edgar Allen Poe to him as a child. The camel does not know if Lawson is addressing him or not, but enjoys the conversation, for it reminds him of his old master, Zeriph.

Lawson continues...