LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.

PAGE

"POOR CHUMMY BRISTLED LIKE A PORCUPINE" _Frontispiece_

"WARRIGAL WAS BAGGED HIMSELF" 18

"THE BLACK FELLOWS WERE IN A VERY SAVAGE MOOD" 35

"ON THE ROCKY WALL A RED HAND" 40

"THE SNAKES' CORROBBOREE" 62

"H.M. DICK-A-DICK, KING OF THE POSSUM TRIBE" 72

"THE RUSHING FIRE WAS NOW STEERING STRAIGHT AT THEM" 92

"THEY FOUND THE FARMER CLINGING TO THE CHIMNEY" 112

"A ROUGH WOODEN CROSS SHOWED THEM A BUSH GRAVE" 126

"THE BLACKS RAISED A WILD HOWL AND FLED" 212

"MEN ON HORSEBACK WITH SADDLE-BAGS AND PISTOLS" 216

I.

VENUS AND WARRIGAL.

"The impudent scoundrel! Just look at this, mamma. I should like to see

him at it," exclaimed Sydney Lawson in great wrath, as he handed his

mother a very dirty note which a shepherd had brought home. On coarse,

crumpled grocer's paper these words were written in pencil: "Master

sidney i Want your Mare the chesnit with the white starr soe You Send

her to 3 Mile flat first thing Tomorrer Or i Shall Have to cum an Fetch

Her.--Warrigal."

"Sam says," Sydney went on in rising rage, "that the fellow had the

cheek to give it him just down by the slip-panels. He rode up to Sam and

Paddy Fury as coolly as if he was coming up to spend the night at the

house. If the great hulking fellows had a mite of pluck, they'd have

knocked him off his horse, instead of taking orders from a chap like

that. Paddy is fond enough of bragging about his _foightin'_ when

there's nobody to fight. But they're like all the people about here;

three parts of them funk the bushrangers, and the rest are in league

with them. He may well call himself Warrigal, the sneaking dingo! He

wouldn't have been game to talk about sticking us up, if he hadn't known

father was away. Send him my Venus! Mr. Warrigal must have gone cranky."

Sydney Lawson, who made this indignant speech at the tea-table of the

Wonga-Wonga station (and almost made the hot potato-cake jump off the

table with the thumps he gave it), was a tall, slim lad of fourteen. He

and his mother had been left in charge of the station, whilst his father

took a mob of cattle overland to Port Phillip. Sydney was very proud of

having the key of the store, counting in the sheep, peppering mangled

calves with strychnine to poison the native dogs that had mangled them,

and riding about all day cracking his stock-whip, heading back

store-bullocks that seemed inclined to make a rush at him, looking after

the men, and when meat was wanted, driving the beast into the stock-yard

himself, and shooting it with his own gun. Sydney thought himself a man

now, and was very angry that Warrigal should think he could be

frightened "like a baby."

This Warrigal was a bushranger, who, with one or two mates, wandered

about in that part of New South Wales, doing pretty much as he liked.

They stopped the mail, "bailed up" dray-men and horsemen on the road by

the two and three dozen together; "stuck up" solitary stores, and

publics, and stations, and once had been saucy enough to stick up a

whole township. The police couldn't get hold of them. Some people said

that the troopers were too lazy, and some that they were too cowardly.

The truth was that the troopers did not know the bush like the

bushrangers, and could not help themselves, as _they_ could, to fresh

horses when the ones they were riding were knocked up; and, besides, the

bushrangers had "bush telegraphs"--spies who let them know where it was

safe to rob, and did all they could to put the troopers on false scents.

The note that Sydney had received caused a good deal of excitement at

the Wonga-Wonga tea-table. Miss Smith, who helped Mrs. Lawson in the

house, and taught Sydney's sisters and his brother Harry, had not long

come out from London, and was in a great fright.

"Oh, pray send him the horse, Master Sydney," she cried, "or we shall

all be murdered in our beds. You've got so many horses, one can't make

any difference."

All the little Lawsons instantly turned on Miss Smith, though she _was_

their governess.

"I thought you English people were so brave," said satirical Miss

Gertrude: "you make yourselves out to be in your history-books."

But Sydney, though Miss Smith _had_ talked as if Venus was just like any

common horse, was very fond of Miss Smith. She was pretty, and only five

years older than himself. Besides, he was acting master of the house,

and a little gentleman to boot. So he said,

"Be quiet, children; you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Miss Smith

isn't used to the colony.--Don't be alarmed, Miss Smith. I will see that

you come to no harm."

And then he began to talk to his mother about what they had better do.

Just because he was a manly little fellow, he was not ashamed to take

his mother's advice.

Now Mrs. Lawson was as little disposed as Sydney to let Mr. Warrigal do

as he liked. She knew that her husband would have run the risk of being

"stuck up," if he had been at home, rather than have obeyed the

bushranger's orders, and that he would be very pleased if they could

manage to defy the rascal. Still, it was a serious matter to provoke

Messrs. Warrigal and Co. to pay the house a visit. She felt sure that

Sydney would fight, and she meant to fire at the robbers herself if they

came; but would she and Sydney be able to stand against three armed men?

Not a shepherd or stockman or horsebreaker about the place was to be

depended upon; and Ki Li, the Chinaman cook, though a very good kind of

fellow, would certainly go to bed in his hut if the robbers came by day,

and stay in bed if the robbers came by night. John Jones, the "new chum"

ploughman, whose wife was Mrs. Lawson's servant, slept in the house, and

he was too honest to band with the bushrangers in any way; "but then,

he's such a _sheep_, you know, mamma," said Sydney.

There was time to send word to the police at Jerry's Town; but who was

to go? Any of the men, except Ki Li and John Jones, would be as likely

as not to go to Warrigal's camping-place instead of to the Jerry's Town

police-barracks; and Ki Li would be afraid to go out in the dark, and

John Jones would be afraid to ride anything but one of the plough

horses, and that only at an amble. It wouldn't do for Sydney to leave

the place, since he was the only male effective on it; so what was to be

done? But little Harry had heard his mother and brother talking, and, as

soon as he made out their difficulty, he looked up and said,

"Why, mamma, _I_ can go. Syd, lend me your stock-whip, and let me have

Guardsman."

Neither mother nor brother had any fear about Harry's horsemanship

(up-country Australian boys can ride when they are not much bigger than

monkeys), but they scarcely liked to turn the little fellow out for a

long ride by night. However, he knew the way well enough. Three-Mile

Flat didn't lie in his road, and if he didn't fall in with any of the

Warrigal gang, nobody would harm him; and, finally, there was no one

else to go to Jerry's Town who would or could go in time.

So Sydney went to the stable and slipped the bridle on Venus, and rode

her down to the flat by the creek, to drive up Guardsman. And then he

put the saddle and bridle on Guardsman and brought him round to the

garden-gate, where Harry stood flicking about Sydney's stock-whip very

impatiently, whilst his mamma kissed him and tied a comforter round his

neck. Sydney gave Harry a leg up, and cantered with him to the

slip-panels, to take them down for him.

As soon as he was through, Harry shouted "Good night," and gave

Guardsman his head, and was off like a little wild boy. After one or two

failures, that made his face tingle, he managed to crack Sydney's

stock-whip almost as cleverly as Sydney could have done. It rang through

the still moonlight bush, and when Sydney lost sight of him, Harry,

tired of the monotony of flat riding, was steering Guardsman stem on for

a grey log that glistened like frosted silver in the moonshine.

When Sydney had stabled Venus again, and--an unusual precaution--turned

the key in the rusty padlock, and when he had given a look about the

outbuildings, it was time for him to go in to supper and family prayers.

He read the chapter, and Mrs. Lawson read the prayers. She was a brave

woman, but, with her little girls about her, and her little boy away,

she couldn't keep her voice from trembling a little when she said,

"Lighten our darkness, we beseech Thee, O Lord; and by Thy great mercy

defend us from all perils and dangers of this night."

Then the girls kissed their mother and their brother, and said "Good

night;" and Miss Smith kissed Mrs. Lawson, and said "Good night," and

said "Good night" to Sydney without kissing him (though he looked as if

he would have liked her to); and John Jones and his wife said "Good

night, ma'am," "Good night, sir," just as if Sydney had been a grown-up

master, and went to bed to snore like pigs, though they _were_

dreadfully afraid of bushrangers. Sydney went into his mother's

bed-room, and looked at the blunderbuss that stood by the bed-head (Mrs.

Lawson had selected the blunderbuss as her weapon, because she thought

she "must be sure to hit with that big thing"), and he showed her once

more how to pull the trigger. Then he bade her "Good night," and went

through the house, snacking the windows and fastening the shutters,

though that was as unusual at Wonga-Wonga as locking the stable-door.

And then he went along the verandah to his own little room at one end,

where he locked himself in, and drew the charge of his gun and loaded it

again, and looked at the chambers of his revolver, and put the caps on,

and laid it down on a chair ready to his hand. When his preparations

were completed, he said his prayers, and tumbled into bed with his

clothes on, and slept like a top.

Harry wasn't expected home until next day. He had been told to sleep at

the "Macquarie Arms," in Jerry's Town, when he had left his message at

the barracks, and come home at his leisure in the morning. About four

miles from Wonga-Wonga, the dreariest part of the road to Jerry's

Town--begins a two miles' stretch of dismal scrub. Harry put his heels

into Guardsman's sides to make him go even faster than he was going when

they went into the scrub, and was pleased to hear a horse's hoofs coming

towards him from the other end. He thought it was a neighbour riding

home to the next station; but it was Warrigal. As soon as Harry pulled

up Guardsman to chat for a minute, Warrigal laid hold of the bridle and

pulled Harry on to the saddle before him.

"Let's see, you're one of the Wonga-Wonga kids, ain't you?" said the

robber. "And where are you off to at this time of night? Oh! oh! to

fetch the traps, I guess; but I'll stop that little game."

Just then Harry gave a _coo-ey!_ He couldn't give a very loud one, for

he was lying like a sack on the robber's horse; but it made Warrigal

very savage. He put the cold muzzle of a pistol against Harry's face,

and said,

"You screech again, youngster, and you won't do it no more."

And then Warrigal took Harry and the horses into the scrub, and gagged

Harry with a bit of iron he took out of his pocket, and bailed him up to

a crooked old honeysuckle tree, with a long piece of rope he carried in

his saddle-bags.

"Don't frighten yourself; I'll tell your Mar where you are, and you'll

be back by breakfast," said Warrigal, as he got on Guardsman, driving

his own tired horse before him.

It wasn't pleasant for a little boy to be tied tight to an ugly old tree

in that lonely place, and to hear the curlews wailing just as the

bushrangers call to one another, and the laughing jackasses hooting

before daylight, as if they were making fun of him. But what vexed brave

little Harry most was that he hadn't been able to get to the police.

Next morning, just as day was breaking, Warrigal and his two mates, with

crape masks on, rode up to Wonga-Wonga. I don't know which were the

bigger cowards, those three great fellows going to bully a lady and a

boy, or the half-dozen and more of great fellows about the place who

they knew would let them do it. They made as little noise as they could,

but the dogs began to bark, and woke Sydney. When he woke, however,

Warrigal had got his little window open, and was covering him with his

pistol. Sydney put out his hand for his revolver, and though Warrigal

shouted, "Throw up your hands, boy, or I'll shoot you through the head,"

he jumped out of bed and fired. He missed Warrigal, and Warrigal missed

him, but Warrigal's bullet knocked Sydney's revolver out of his hand,

and one of Warrigal's mates made a butt at the bedroom door and smashed

it, and he and Warrigal (were they not heroes?) rushed into the room,

and threw Sydney down on the bed, and pinioned his arms with a sheet.

The other bushranger was watching the horses. By this time the whole

station was aroused. The men peeped out of their huts, half frightened

and half amused; not one of them came near the house. John Jones and his

wife piled their boxes against their room-door, and then crept under the

bed. Miss Smith went into hysterics, and Gertrude and her sisters

couldn't help looking as white as their night-dresses, though they tried

hard to show Miss Smith how much braver native girls were than English,

even if they did not know so much French, and Use of the Globes, and

Mangnall's Questions. Mrs. Lawson had fired off her blunderbuss, but it

had only broken two panes of the parlour-window, and riddled the

verandah-posts; so Wonga-Wonga was at the bushrangers' mercy.

They ransacked the house, and took possession of any little plate and

jewellery and other portable property they could find. When the robbers

had packed up what they called the "swag," and put it on one of their

horses, they pulled Ki Li out of bed, and made him light a fire, and

cook some chops, and boil some tea. (In the Australian bush the hot

water isn't poured on the tea, but the leaves are boiled in the pot.)

Then they marched Mrs. Lawson, and Miss Smith, and Sydney, and his

sisters, and Mr. and Mrs. Jones, and Ki Li, into the keeping-room, and

sat down to breakfast, with pistols in their belts, and pistols laid,

like knives and forks, on the table. The bushrangers tried to be funny,

and pressed Mrs. Lawson and the other ladies to make themselves at home

and take a good meal. One of the robbers was going to kiss Miss Smith,

but Sydney, pinioned as he was, ran at him, and butted him like a ram.

He was going to strike Sydney, but Gertrude ran between them, calling

out, "Oh, you great coward!" and Warrigal felt ashamed, and told the man

to sit down.

"We call him Politeful Bill," Warrigal remarked in apology; "but he

ain't much used to ladies' serciety."

When breakfast was over, Warrigal asked Sydney where the mare was.

"Find her yourself," said Sydney.

"Well, there won't be much trouble about that," answered Warrigal.

"She's in the stable, I know, and you've locked her in, for I tried the

door. I suppose you're too game to give up the key, my young

fighting-cock? You're game and no mistake, Master Cornstalk, and I'm a

native, too."

"More shame for you," said Sydney.

"That be blowed," went on Warrigal; "and since you're so sarcy, Master

Sydney, you shall come and see me take your mare. You might as well ha'

sent her instead of sending for the traps, and then I shouldn't ha' got

the bay horse too"--and he pointed to Guardsman hung up on the verandah.

There was no time to ask what had become of Harry. Warrigal hurried

Sydney by the collar to the stable, whilst the other men mounted their

horses, and unhooked Guardsman to be ready for their captain. Warrigal

blew off the padlock with his pistol, but Venus was fractious, and

wouldn't let him put on her halter. Whilst he was dodging about in the

stable with her, Sydney heard hoofs in the distance. Nearer and nearer

came the _tan-ta-ta-tan-ta-ta-tan-ta-ta_. Four bluecoats galloped up to

the slip-panels--three troopers and a sergeant; the sergeant with Harry

on his saddlebow. In a second Harry was down, and in three seconds the

slip-panels were down too. Up the rocky rise came the troopers as if

they were riding a steeple-chase. The waiting bushrangers saw the

morning sun gleaming on their carbines as the police dashed between the

aloes and the prickly pears, and, letting Guardsman go, were off like a

shot. Sydney banged to the stable-door, and, setting his back against

it, shouted for help. His mother and Gertrude, and even John Jones, as

the police were close at hand, rushed to his aid; and up galloped the

troopers. Instead of bagging Venus, Warrigal was bagged himself. He

fired a bullet or two through the door, and talked very big about not

being taken alive; but he thought better of it, and in an hour's time he

was jogging off to Jerry's Town with handcuffs on and his legs tied

under his horse's belly.

[Illustration: "WARRIGAL WAS BAGGED HIMSELF."]

If Warrigal had not bailed up little Harry, most likely he would not

have been taken; for when Harry had got to Jerry's Town, he would have

found all the troopers away except one. In the scrub, however, Harry

heard the sergeant and his men returning from a wild-goose chase they

had been sent on by the bush telegraphs, and managing at last to spit

the gag out of his mouth, he had given a great _co-oo-oo-oo-oo-ey!_

After that night Miss Smith always called Sydney _Mr._ Sydney, and

Sydney let Harry ride Venus as often as he liked.

II.

UP A SUNNY CREEK.

Soon after his adventures with Warrigal, Harry Lawson had a tutor to

teach him instead of Miss Smith, and when Harry was twelve, his cousin,

Donald M'Intyre, who was about his own age, came to live at Wonga-Wonga

to share the tutor's instructions. Harry considered this a very jolly

arrangement. Like most Australian boys, he was a very quick little

fellow, but he was inclined to be rather lazy over his lessons; and

Donald helped him in his Latin and French exercises, and made his sums

come right for him, and yet was just as ready for a spree out of school

as Harry was. Donald, too, had been born in the colony, and so the two

boys got on famously together.

One Christmas the tutor had gone down to spend his holidays in Sydney,

and Harry and Donald could do just as they liked. The papers were full

of some traces of Leichhardt, the brave Australian explorer, that had

recently been discovered, and the boys, of course, had read "Robinson

Crusoe" also; and so they resolved to set out on a secret exploring

expedition. They determined to go by water, because that would be both

more like Robinson Crusoe, and more of a change for them. They were very

fond of riding, but still they were as used to riding as English boys

are to playing at "foot it," and they had been only once or twice in the

"cot" which a North of Ireland man, who had come to the station as a

bush carpenter, had finished the week before, that the station people

might be able to cross the creek in time of flood, when no horse could

swim it or ford it.

One broiling December day--there is no frost or snow, you know, in

Australia at Christmas-time--Harry and Donald slipped down to the cot

directly after breakfast. They had a gun with them, and caps, and

powder, and shot, and colonial matches in brown paper boxes, and some

tea, and sugar, and flour, and three parts of a huge damper (that's a

great flat round cake of bread without any yeast in it), and a box of

sardines and a can of preserved salmon, that Sydney had given them out

of the store, and some salt, and two pannikins, and a Jack Shea (that's

a great pot) to boil their tea in, and a blanket to cover them by night,

and to hoist now and then as a sail by day. The cot had no mast, but

they meant to use one of the oars for that, and they had cut a tea-tree

pole to serve for a yard.

They were going up the creek, not down. They knew that the creek ran

into the Kakadua at Jerry's Town that way, and, of course, as explorers,

they wanted to go where they had not been before. So they shipped their

stores, and untied the painter--it was twisted round an old gum tree on

the creek-side--and pushed off from the bank, and began to try to pull

up stream. But they could not row nearly so well as they could ride, and

at first they made the cot spin round like a cockchafer on a pin. They

were sharp little fellows, however, and soon got under way, only

catching crabs when they tried to feather.

By the time they got abreast of Three-Mile Flat, though, their arms

ached; and Harry stopped pulling, as he made out, to tell Donald again

about Warrigal, and Donald stopped pulling, as _he_ made out, to listen

to Harry, although he knew the story by heart. Then they gave a spurt,

and then they stopped pulling again, and hoisted their blanket on one

oar, and tried to steer with the other; but it was a long time before

they could manage this properly. The sail was for ever flapping against

the mast--taken aback, as the sailors say--or else the cot was poking

her nose into the tea-tree scrub on one side of the creek or the other,

as if she wanted to get out of the hot sunlight into the moist shade.

Still, it would have been very pleasant, if there had not been quite so

many mosquitoes; but they hummed over the water in restless clouds like

fountain-spray. However there were native vines, with grapes like yellow

currants, twining round the lanky tea trees and lacing them together;

and the bell-birds kept on dropping down into the scrub, and flying up

into the gum trees, and calling _ting-ting_, _ting-ting_. It sounded

like a dinner-bell, and the boys determined to take an early dinner.

They ate up almost all their damper, and all their sardines, and picked

their dessert off the wild vines.

On they went again; but they had not gone far before they came to what

is called in Australia a "chain of ponds." The creek had partly dried

up, and they had to pull and push the cot from one pond to another. This

was hard work, and not very pleasant work either, for the sand-flies got

into the corners of their eyes as if they wanted to give them the

blight, and the leeches crawled up their trousers and turned their white

socks red with blood. Their heads throbbed so that they could hardly

bear to hear the locusts--thousands of them--clattering on the trees

like iron-ship wrights hammering, and they felt quite angry when the

long-tailed, brown coach-whip bird flew by, making a noise just like a

slavedriver cracking his lash. At last, however, they got into clear

water again--clear except for the grey snags and sawyers--and paddled

lazily along; listening to the twittering wood-swallows as they dipped

their blue wings into the water, and the great, black, sharp-winged

swifts screaming for joy as they tacked high overhead. Harry and Donald

could not help wishing that the cot (which they had christened the

_Endeavour_, in honour of Captain Cook) would dart along of herself like

the swifts.

It had taken such a time to get her through the chain of ponds, that

evening was coming on. Great flocks of cockatoos were circling round

their roosting-trees like English rooks, and parrots and lories--their

fine green, and red, and blue, and yellow feathers beginning to look

very dull and ragged, because moulting-time was near--were taking their

evening bath in the shallow water by the banks, splashing it over their

heads and wings, and chattering as if they were saying, "Isn't this

prime fun?" Presently the cockatoos lighted on the dark trees, and made

them look as if a hundred or two of ladies' pocket-handkerchiefs had

been hung out to dry on them, and then the boys thought it was time to

find a roosting-place themselves. They pushed the cot into a little bay

in the bank, and fastened her to an old black stump, and then they

scooped a hole in the ground for a fireplace, and gathered sticks, and

lighted a fire. But when they were going to cook their supper, they

found that they had lost their flour, and that their sugar-bag had got

so wet that there was only a little sweet mud left in it. But that did

not matter nearly so much as the loss of the flour. They boiled their

tea, and sweetened it with the mud, and after a good deal of trouble

they got the salmon-tin open. Harry, who was very hungry, was for

finishing the salmon and what was left of the damper; but Donald said,

"No; we must go on allowance now--we'll keep half for to-morrow's

breakfast, because, perhaps, we shan't be able to shoot anything

to-night--that's how explorers manage."

When supper was over, the moon had risen, and the boys went down with

their gun to the creek to see if they could shoot a duck. The dark water

was plated in patches with ribbed and circling silver, and, just in the

middle of one of the patches, up came a black something like a bottle.

"Hush! it's a water-mole," whispered Harry; but before he could point

his gun at it the queer duck-billed thing had gone under again. The boys

found no ducks, and did not go very far to look for them. They were

tired, and had had their supper, and were sure of a breakfast. So they

soon went back to their fire, piled more sticks on it, and then,

snuggling under their blanket, fell asleep. They said their prayers

before they fell asleep beneath the bright moon and stars, and, as they

said them, they thought for the first time that they had not done quite

right in leaving Wonga-Wonga without letting any one there know that

they were going.

When they woke in the morning, the sun was up, and the glossy magpies

were hopping about the logs, and everything looked cheerful. The boys

took a dip in the creek, and boiled their tea, and had their breakfast,

and then away they went again in high spirits, although now they had no

food except what they might shoot or catch. The kingfishers in their

blue coats and yellow waistcoats were darting backwards and forwards

over the water, and the fussy little sedge-warblers were dodging about

the reeds, and twittering a little bit of every bird's song they could

think of; but they weren't worth powder and shot. By noon--they could

tell the time pretty well by the sun--both Harry and Donald felt very

hungry, for they had had a very early breakfast. They began to wish that

they had saved some of the salmon for their dinner; but just then the

_Endeavour_ was gliding between banks that had no tree or scrub, but

only tufts of dry coarse grass on them, and Donald saw a bandicoot run

out of one of the tufts. Up went the gun to his shoulder, and in a

second Mr. Bandicoot had rolled over dead upon his back. A bandicoot is

a very big brown kind of rat--nicer to eat than any rabbit. The boys

soon made a fire, and baked the bandicoot in the ashes, in his skin; and

they relished him ten times more than the preserved salmon. Rat, and tea

without sugar or milk, may not seem a very inviting bill of fare, but

you know the Delectus says that hunger is the best sauce, and, besides,

baked bandicoot anybody might like.

Harry and Donald had some more shooting that day. About a mile from the

place where they had taken their dinner they found a break in the

creek-bank, filled up with tall rusty bulrushes. They got out of the

cot, and pushed their way through the rushes, looking out very carefully

for snakes, and sometimes sinking into the slush below the baked upper

earth, just as if their feet had gone through a pie-crust, and on the

other side they found a lagoon full of water-fowl. Then they forced the

_Endeavour_ through the rushes--she made a great black steaming furrow

in the yellow ground--and launched her down the dry border of the

lagoon, and pulled about in her, popping away in turns, and fancying

themselves in Fairy Land. There were two or three black swans cruising

proudly backwards and forwards, and fleets of piebald geese, and grey

geese, and sooty ducks, and silvery ducks, and chestnut ducks with

emerald necks, and musk ducks with double chins, and all their bodies

under water. It was very funny to see their heads and necks moving

about, as if they had lost their bodies and were looking for them. There

were coots, too, on the banks of the lagoon, and purple herons and white

herons holding up one leg as if they were trying how long they could do

it for a wager; and ibises with untidy tufts of feathers on their

breasts, that looked like costermongers' dirty cravats dangling out of

their waistcoats, and native companions, great light blue cranes lifting

their long legs out of the mud, and trumpeting "Look out!" to one

another, when the _Endeavour_ was coming their way. There were beautiful

water-lilies on the lagoon, also, with broad round leaves like shields

of malachite, and great blossoms of alabaster, and blue and

rose-coloured china. The boys, however, were too busy with the

water-fowl to look at the water-flowers. They kept on popping away until

the moon had been up for some time, and the bitterns were booming in the

swamps all round, and the nankeen cranes were stalking about, nodding

their white crest-plumes like Life Guardsmen, and croaking, "Now we'll

make a night of it."

When Harry and Donald left off shooting, they found that they had fired

away all their powder and shot except two charges, and that they had got

three little ducks. They made a very merry supper off one, baking it on

the lagoon bank, as they had baked the bandicoot, and then they went to

sleep by their fire. Early in the morning, just as the laughing jackass

was hooting before daybreak, Donald woke. The moon had gone down, and so

had the fire, and Donald, though it was summer, felt very chilly.

He got up to stamp his feet and stir up the fire. What do you think he

saw? An iguana--that's a great lean lizard--sneaking off with the two

ducks that were to serve for breakfast and dinner. Donald flung a hot

log at him, but it only made the lizard run the faster. Plenty of red

sparks were scattered about, but the two ducklings were not dropped.

"Hech, weel," said Donald (he had picked up a little Scotch from his

father). "it's nae guid greetin' ower spilt milk;" and he lay down again

and slept like a top, until Harry woke him, asking him what ever could

have become of the ducks? They had to breakfast on tea alone that

morning. They tried to shoot a duck, but they had made the birds wild,

and they were very anxious not to waste their precious powder, and so

they did not succeed.

When they had hauled the cot into the creek again, they were half

inclined to go back to Wonga-Wonga, but they determined to go on for one

day more.

They looked about eagerly for something to shoot, but everything except

insects seemed to have vanished from the creek. On both sides there were

stony ridges with scarcely a blade of grass on them. One landrail ran

along the bank, calling out "ship, ship," as if it was hailing the

_Endeavour_, but Donald missed it when he fired at it. Harry took the

gun then, and said he would try to shoot a fish. He saw something black

wriggling about in the water, which he thought was an eel, and he fired

and hit it; but it was a snake, and it bit itself before it died; so

they were obliged to leave it in the water, instead of cooking it on

shore and getting a dinner as white and delicate as a roast chicken.

Still, however, the boys determined not to turn back until next day; and

late in the afternoon they got more fish than they could eat. They came

upon a black fellow's "fish-trap"--a kind of little mud hut, thatched

with dry grass--and out of it they scooped up a score or two of black

fish, and what they call trout in Australia. They were not very tasty,

but the boys enjoyed the little fellows greatly when they had grilled

them, though they had no soy.

When they had finished their dinner, they rowed on to find the black

fellows' camp, which they knew could not be very far off. The moon had

come up again, however, before they reached it. The creek, fringed with

shea-oaks with dark long leaves like lanky tassels, wriggled about there

like a snake. Long before the boys got to the camp, they heard the

measured tramp of feet and fierce shouts, and when they got there they

saw ever so many black fellows, streaked with ochre, dancing and

brandishing their boomerangs and waddies, whilst the "gins" (that's the

women) in their 'possum cloaks and blankets, squatted on the ground

beating time.

Harry and Donald were not a bit afraid of black fellows. They were

generally very friendly in those parts, and often came to Wonga-Wonga.

But it happened that the black fellows were in a very savage mood. They

had been doing a little sheep-stealing, and an overseer had fired at

them, and killed one of them; and so they had made up their minds to

kill the first white fellow they came across, in revenge. As soon as

they saw the cot, they rushed down to the creek, shouting out, "Wah!

wah! wah!" and they pulled the boys on shore, and burnt the cot on the

great fire they had lighted to keep the "debil debil" away. Then they

jabbered for a long time, disputing which of the boys they should kill;

and Harry and Donald, brave little fellows though they were, most

heartily wished themselves back at Wonga-Wonga.

[Illustration: "THE BLACK FELLOWS WERE IN A VERY SAVAGE MOOD."]

All of a sudden, however, a black fellow held up his finger, and then a

dozen of them put their ears to the ground. It was horses' hoofs they

heard in the distance. Then they jabbered again, and all the blacks ran

into the scrub, leaving the boys, but carrying off their gun. In a few

minutes up galloped Mr. Lawson, and Sydney, and a stockman. The boys had

been hunted far and wide, but it was only that day that the cot had been

missed, and so a clue found to their whereabouts. Mr. Lawson, having

heard that the up-creek blacks were "in a scot," and fearing that the

youngsters might fall into their hands, had then started with his little

party in pursuit. Of course, he could not help feeling very angry with

the young truants, but there was no time to tell them so then.

Boomerangs and spears began to whiz out of the scrub, and there was no

good in three men stopping to fight with a hundred whom they could not

see. So Mr. Lawson pulled Donald on to his horse, and the stockman

pulled Harry, and off they galloped; whilst Sydney brought up the rear,

firing his revolver right and left into the scrub as he rode away.

III.

THE CAVE OF THE RED HAND.

Harry and Donald were not frightened out of their love for exploring by

their adventure up the creek. The next expedition they went on, however,

was by land. They had heard a good deal of the Cave of the Red Hand in

the Bulla Bulla Mountains, about ten miles from Wonga-Wonga; and one

Saturday afternoon, directly after dinner, they started in search of the

cave--Harry on his own horse Cornstalk, and Donald on his own mare Flora

M'Ivor. They knew that they had to steer for a very tall blasted gum

tree that stood on the top of a ridge, and that when they had "rose the

ridge," as Australians say, they would find the mouth of the cave

somewhere near at hand on the other side of the gully.

When they got down into the gully they dismounted, and hobbled their

horses where there was a little feed; and then they began to look about

them. It was some time before they found the cave's mouth, but, whilst

they were looking for it, they saw what neither of them had ever seen

alive before, though they were Australian-born; and that was one of the

shy birds after which the mountains were named. They got a full view of

the dingy cock-pheasant, as he stood between two clumps of scrub, with

his beautiful tail up like a lyre without strings. "Bulla, bulla, bulla,

bulla," he was gurgling like a brook; but, as soon as he saw the boys,

he was off like a shot.

"Here it is!" at last shouted Harry, and when Donald ran up, he found

his cousin standing outside a very gloomy-looking opening in the

hillside, with a moustache and whiskers of almost black brushwood about

the gaping mouth. On the rocky wall at the entrance, a red hand with

outstretched fingers pointed inwards; and when the boys had lighted

their lantern and groped their way into the cave, they found more red

hands on the walls, and white hands too--some pointing forwards and some

backwards, some up and some down.

[Illustration: "ON THE ROCKY WALL A RED HAND."]

"Don't they look queer, Donald?" said Harry; "just as if they were

murderers and people getting murdered poking their hands out of the

stone. I wonder who did them, and what they mean."

"Why, the _black fellows_ don't know," answered Donald. "They say the

_old people_ did them, but they don't know who the old people were. I

expect a flood drowned them. Do you know the story the black fellows

tell about the Flood? They say that somewhere or other in Australia the

black fellows' father lies asleep on the ground, with his head resting

on his arm; and that he woke up ever so long ago, and that then all the

country was flooded; and that when he wakes next, he will eat up all the

black fellows. They say he is a giant--taller than that blue gum on the

ridge. The old fellow puts them into a great funk. Up at our place I

went out one day with a black fellow after honey. He caught a native

bee, and stuck a bit of down on it, and chased it till it lighted on a

tree, and then he climbed up with his tomahawk, and tapped till he found

where the nest was. He cut out the combs and the bee-bread before you

could say 'Jack Robinson;' but he took precious care to leave some of

the honey for the old giant. If he's asleep, though, I don't see what

good it would do him."

"They're a queer lot, the black fellows," philosophically remarked

Harry; "but they're a long sight better than new chums--they were born

in the colony just like us. A black fellow can ride like a native, but

those Englishmen look so scared when a horse begins to buck."

Just then, however, it was Harry's turn to look scared, for a great grey

owl, with round eyes that gleamed like polished guineas, brushed against

his face, and directly afterwards two or three flying foxes floated by,

looking in the dark very much like dirty cherubim off a tombstone.

Donald laughed to see how the owl and the great bats made Harry jump,

when he had been talking so big the minute before. Presently they walked

into a cloud of great dusky moths that came fluttering about the lantern

like butterflies' ghosts, and then they saw stalactites hanging down

like sheets and chandeliers, and fruit and flowers, and plucked geese,

and organ-pipes, and joining on to the stalagmites on the floor, and

making columns and cloisters and great hour-glasses. Some of the

stalactites rang in tune when they rapped them, like harmonicons. It

would have been a very jolly place to wander about in, if the water had

not dropped off the roof down the napes of their necks, and if they had

not been obliged to look out so sharp to keep from tumbling down little

precipices, or into the streams they could hear running, and the ponds

they could sometimes see shining through the darkness.

They had scrambled down three or four of the little precipices (the

cave's floor was like a great rough flight of stairs) when they stopped

to look at a pillar that was just like a huge candle with a

"winding-sheet."

"Why, there's a red hand up there," said Harry, pointing to the

winding-sheet.

Donald could not see it, and so Harry put the lantern on to the end of a

long stick he carried, and held it up to what he said was the hand. But

still Donald could not see one.

"You must be blind, then," said Harry impatiently; "there, don't you see

now?" and he pushed the lantern against the stalactite.

Down the lantern dropped, rolled over for a few feet, and disappeared.

The boys joined hands, and groped with the stick after the lantern; but

presently the end of the stick ran on without anything to stop it, and

if they had not pulled themselves up very quick, they would have fallen

down the deepest drop they had come to yet. At the bottom was a light,

dancing about like a will-o'-the-wisp. The lantern had tumbled into one

of the black subterranean streams, and soon, either the water put the

candle out, or else the lantern was carried underground. At any rate,

Donald and Harry were left quite in the dark.

"We must keep on lighting matches," said Donald; "or, perhaps, we could

make torches out of this stick-it seems dry. Where are the matches?--You

had them."

But when Harry felt in his pocket, the matchbox was gone. He felt in all

his pockets, and Donald felt in all _his_ pockets, but not a single

match could they find. Then, at first, they did feel very much afraid,

and I think you would have been afraid, too, however plucky you may be.

The cave was pitch-dark where they had got to. They could hear water

dripping and dashing and running all round about them--some of it a long

way down. When they moved, they were forced to tap about with the stick

like a blind man, and to slide their feet along the ground at a snail's

pace, for fear of suddenly tumbling down some deep pit or into a

well-like water-hole. And if they could find their way back to the great

steps they had come down, it would be very hard to find the proper

places to ascend, and to scramble up them in the dark. It had not been

easy scrambling down them, even with a lantern. No wonder Donald and

Harry felt frightened. But funking, they knew, would do no good. If they

sat down scared in a corner, there they would have to starve, most

likely; for no one at Wonga-Wonga knew that they had started for the

cave.

"Let's say our prayers," said Donald (it was Harry told me); and when

they had said them, they gripped hold tight of one another's hands, and

set out.

At first they went quite wrong. After stumbling about for nearly half an

hour, they had got again to the top of the precipice the lantern had

tumbled down, instead of to the foot of the first one they had to climb

up; but then they felt their way along by the wall of the cave, until

they came at last to the bottom of the drop they wanted. They could not

always keep by the wall. Every now and then their guiding-stick went

splash into water. Sometimes, too, they ran full butt against rocks that

knocked sparks out of their eyes, and made their noses bleed, and tore

their clothes into ragged ribbons; and Donald lost one of his shoes, and

Harry both of his, in some mud, as sticky as birdlime, that they

floundered into. But, at last, as I have said, they came to the foot of

the first great step they had to mount. They felt about with their

stick, but for a long time they could find no foot or hand-hold. And

when they did come by-and-bye to jutting big stones, they were no good,

because a waterfall was tumbling down them. The stream it made below was

not very broad, but it ran so fast that the boys could not pole how deep

it was; and so they had to be very careful in crossing it, and they

would not have been able to cross it at all, if it had not been for a

great stone in the middle that the stick tapped against. As it was,

Harry (who was more slapdash in his ways than Donald) went into the

water up to his waist before he got to the other side.

When they had crossed, they seemed at first as far off from the cave's

mouth as ever; but, after ten minutes' groping about, they got into a

zigzag crack in the great step, through which, with more tearing of

clothes and bruising of shins, they managed to wriggle up to the sloping

platform above. They had learnt wisdom from experience, and did not try

to strike right across it. Perhaps you have tried to walk right across a

common in a fog, and have come out not far from the place you started

from: well, Donald and Harry had discovered that making short cuts in

the pitch-dark Cave of the Red Hand was like that, and so they tapped

along the edge of the step until they came to the cave's wall once more,

and then followed that--running up against rocks, and floundering into

mud and water as before--until they got to the foot of the next step.

When they had climbed a good way up the last step they had to mount,

they met with a great disappointment. There were no more stones sticking

out for them to take hold of. They swished the stick backwards and

forwards like a scythe, but it went over the rock just as if it had been

a brick wall.

So they had to go back and try again, and it was so long before they

found a mounting-place, that they began to lose heart, and fear that,

after all, they would have to die in the cave, with nothing but the

pointing red hand at the entrance to show where they were. But at last

their heads rose above the edge of the great step, and there, far away,

the moonlight was pouring in at the cave's mouth, and making silver

gauze of the mist just inside. Close by them the cave still looked very

gloomy; but oh, how jolly they felt! When the owls and the flying foxes

brushed against Harry now, he could have shaken hands--or wings--with

them, they seemed so much like old friends welcoming him back to life.

It did not take the boys long to get out of the cave when they had the

moonlight to guide them, and they did not stop long to look at the

inwards-pointing red hand, at which they had looked so curiously when

they were going to follow its direction. Then the faded red fingers

seemed burnt up by the blazing sunlight; now they pointed dim beneath

the dewy moonlight. When the boys thought of the dismal darkness the

hand pointed to, they hurried by it as if it had power to push them back

into the gloom. In spite of their hobbles, Cornstalk and Flora M'Ivor

had strayed a long way, and it was early Sunday morning before they and

their riders got back to Wonga-Wonga.

The bleeding, battered, tattered boys were so full of their adventure

that they were quite angry to find every one there sound asleep. They

went to bed without waking even the dogs, and heard next day at

breakfast that, as they had been seen riding in the direction of the

next station, it had been thought that they had been kept there to spend

the night. They felt doubly fortunate then in having got out of the Cave

of the Red Hand, for no one, plainly enough, would have dreamt of

looking for them in it.

IV.

ABOUT SNAKES.

There were plenty of things in the Wonga-Wonga garden, but they were not

arranged very tidily. It was hard to say where the beds ended, and the

paths began; and near the bottom fence there was a patch that was

exceedingly slovenly. In the midst of loquat trees and peach trees, and

ninety-days' corn, and sweet potatoes, and golden-blossomed pumpkin

vines, there was a coarse grass-plat, almost as big as a little paddock.

A clump of prickly pear grew in it, and one great aloe, with names cut

on some of its pointed leaves, and the ends of others hacked off as if

they were sword-bayonets broken in receiving a charge of cavalry. And

yet the grass-plat looked cosy too--shut in with fruit and flowers and

vegetables and green corn, or blossoming corn, or brown corn hanging

down great heavy cobs, like truncheons with brass-headed nails driven

close together into them, and with the hot Australian sunshine pouring

down on the long dry tangled grass. Bees buzzed about over it, and

butterflies, with white drops on their black velvet wings, found out its

flowers, and the pumpkins, squashes, cucumbers, vegetable marrows, and

rock and water-melons were fond of crawling into the hay-like grass, to

bulge out and ripen into gold and bloomy green, and speckled green and

yellow. The guinea-fowl and turkeys were very fond of laying their eggs

in the grass-plat too; and in late spring and summer, and early autumn,

snakes were very fond of it also. Up-country people in Australia get

careless about snakes, as colliers in England get careless about

fire-damp and choke-damp--just because they may be killed by them any

day.

One day Mrs. Lawson put on her sun-bonnet, with a curtain that came

half-way down her back, and went to the grass-plat to look for eggs, and

Harry went with her. All of a sudden she started up with a great black

snake coiled round her arm. Though Harry was a slapdash little fellow,

he could be cool enough sometimes. The instant he saw what was the

matter he darted at the snake before it could bite, just like a snake

when it springs, as stiff and as straight as an arrow, and caught it

round the throat so tightly with both hands, that it could not put its

horrid fangs either into them or into his mother's arm. Mrs. Lawson

didn't shriek, but stood quite still (though her face was very white,

both for Harry's sake and her own), so that the snake might not get a

chance to wriggle free: it was lashing about with its nasty tail, and

swelling out as if it wanted to burst itself. Harry knew that Sydney was

taking an after-breakfast pipe on the verandah, and shouted as loudly as

the throttling he was giving the snake would let him:

"Syd, there's a beastly snake on mamma! I've grabbed him."

All the Lawsons could put this and that together; so, before he rushed

to the rescue, Sydney dashed into the keeping-room for the

carving-knife. He was not long about it.

"Hold on like grim death," he said to Harry, when he ran down; and then

he sliced through the snake just under Harry's fingers. The head part

gave such a jump that, after all, the horrid fangs nearly went into Mrs.

Lawson's arm, but Harry managed to keep hold of the slippery thing until

he could fling it ever so far off; whilst the headless part untwined

from his mother's arm, and writhed about on the ground in a very uncanny

fashion. When the head had been smashed with a stone, and kicked up to a

great red boil of an ant-hill, and the tail dragged after it, for the

ants to pick the bones, both parts still kept twitching every now and

then.

"Snakes can't die outright, you know, until after sundown." said Harry.

"Confound the beast! He's made me break my pipe," said Sydney.

But though they talked in that cool way, they had both hugged their

mother like boa-constrictors when she was safe from the black snake; and

when she gave over kissing Harry for a minute, Sydney had clapped him on

the back, and said that he was proud to have a game little fellow like

that for a brother. Harry scarcely knew whether he was more pleased by

the kissing or the clapping--although he did not quite relish being

called a _little_ fellow.

Black snakes, and all kinds of snakes, swarmed about Wonga-Wonga in warm

weather. In cold weather--such cold weather, that is, as they have in

Australia--the snakes lie up in holes. They are not very brisk when they

first come out in spring. They seem to be rubbing their eyes, so to

speak, after their long sleep; but perhaps they are most dangerous then,

because they are more likely to let you tread on them, instead of

getting out of your way, as they are generally glad enough to do.

One bright spring morning in September (seasons are turned topsy-turvy,

you know, in Australia), Donald had gone down with John Jones's little

boy to pull up some night lines that Harry and Donald had set in the

creek, Harry was too lazy to turn out that morning, so Donald had got

little Johnny Jones to go with him. Johnny had no shoes or stockings on,

and as he ran to pull one of the lines up, he set his bare foot on a

sluggish snake, coiled up like a lady's back-hair, in a hollow of a

black log he was clambering over. Up came the flat head and bit Johnny's

great toe, and off the snake wriggled. Poor little Johnny was dreadfully

scared, but Donald made him sit down on the log, and tied one of the

fishing lines so tightly round the toe that it almost cut to the bone.

Then Donald went down on his knees, and sucked the poison out as well as

he could, and spat it out on the ground. What with the bite, and the

fright, and the tight string, Johnny could not manage to walk. So Donald

took him up on his back like a sack, and trotted off to the house with

him, and told Mr. Lawson about him. Mr. Lawson at once cut out the

bitten part with a sharp pen-knife, and blazed some gunpowder in the

hollow, and, except that he had to limp a little for a day or two,

Johnny came to no harm. But if it had not been for Donald, very likely

his leg would have swelled up, and he would have grown sleepy, and

perhaps died, long before the doctor could have been fetched from

Jerry's Town; and when the doctor had come, perhaps he would not have

been able to do any good. If "Old Cranky" or any of the black fellows

had been on the station, _they_ might have cured Johnny perhaps.

Old Cranky was a half-crazy, transported poacher, whom the squatters

paid to wander about their runs, killing dingoes. Though he _was_

half-crazy, he was sharp enough in doing that; and he was a snake-tamer

too. He used to carry little ones about in his cabbage-tree hat, and

trouser-pockets, and the bosom of his blue blouse, and pull out a bundle

of them every now and then like a pocket-handkerchief. He left the fangs

in them, and they sometimes bit him, but he had found out something that

always cured _him_ at any rate; and the blacks have got something of the

same kind.

Some people say that when a stump-lizard has been bitten in a fight with

a snake, it eats the leaves of a little herb that prevents the poison

from taking effect, and that the blacks and snake-charmers have found

out what the herb is. The stump-lizard is a thick spotted brown and blue

thing that is very fond of killing snakes; though it is so lazy

generally, that when it thinks you want to hurt it, it won't take the

trouble to run away, but only turns round and makes ugly faces at you.

To be sure it can give you a nasty bite if you do lay hold of it. The

big-headed laughing jackass is very fond, too, of stabbing snakes and

breaking their backs with its strong beak. It seems to enjoy the jobbing

job, as if it thought that it was only serving them out fairly for

eating birds and birds' eggs. One day Donald shot a snake that was

climbing up a tree to a bird's-nest; and another day he and Harry came

upon one that was mesmerizing a lot of little diamond sparrows. Half of

it was coiled up like a corkscrew, and the rest went backwards and

forwards, like a boat's tiller when no one has got hold of it; and the

little birds kept on coming nearer and nearer, as if they were being

drawn into its open mouth. When Harry shied a stick and frightened them

away, the snake looked round at him quite savagely before it rustled

off.

There were plenty of snakes, as I have said, about Wonga-Wonga. Great

black-backed and yellow-backed fellows crawled into the huts sometimes

when the men were away, and coiled themselves up in the boots and

blankets; and little lithe mud-brown whip-snakes used to pop out their

wicked-looking little heads between the planks of the wool-shed, and the

house verandah, and the weather-boards of the barn, and then pop in

again before a gun could be pointed at them. Whilst the snakes were

about, too, it was a hazardous thing to pull a log out of the wood-heap.

You might have fancied that Harry and Donald saw enough snakes to keep

them from wanting to hear about any more, but Old Cranky's snake stories

fascinated them as the snakes fascinate the little birds. He told them

about the death-adder, with its feet like a lizard's, and its sting like

a wasp's, besides the venomous fangs in its thick head; and of the huge

boas that he had seen "ever so far up country," joining the trees

together with great cat's cradles. There _is_ a stumpy snake in

Australia that is, perhaps, particularly dangerous, because it lies

still to be trodden on; and there _is_, also, a small python; and out of

these men like Old Cranky have made up their death-adders and their big

boas. When the boys asked him to let them get a peep at these hideous

creatures, he always put them off with the excuse that there were none

for miles thereabouts; but he did show them something in the snake line

that they did not forget in a hurry.

From wandering about the country so much alone, and not being afraid of

snakes, Old Cranky knew of places that even the blacks did not know of.

It was for one of these that he, and the boys, and his gingerbread

kangaroo-bitch, and a shaggy old mongrel, with an ear and a half and a

quarter of a tail, that could find game like a pointer and bring it in

like a retriever, started one summer's day. The old man made a great

mystery of what he was going to show the boys. Except that he took them

by short cuts that they were not familiar with, they saw nothing

remarkable until they came to the brim of a deep little basin, with a

big water-hole fringed with thick scrub at the bottom. They had not gone

many steps down the side before Lag--that was the mongrel's name--lifted

up his fore-foot.

"What's the dog pointing at?" asked Harry.

"Quail, I suppose?" said Donald.

"No, it ain't _quail_," Old Cranky answered with a grin. "Can't ye smell

'em? Well, ye'll see 'em soon. Keep close ahind me. Don't ye tread but

jest where I goes."

They _did_ see them soon. It was _snakes_ the old man meant. He had

brought them to what he called the Snakes' Corrobboree. There they were

in scores: snakes with backs like Spanish leather, and snakes with backs

like a gaudy-patterned carpet; snakes with white china bellies and with

striped china bellies; snakes with verdigrised-copper bellies, and with

scoured-copper bellies; snakes of all colours and all sizes, up to seven

feet or so; snakes wriggling like eels through the water, and floating

on it like straight sticks; snakes undulating through the scrub; snakes

basking on dry ground, curled up like coils of rope, or littered about

like black cravats untidily thrown down upon the floor; snakes twined

round tree-poles like variegated creepers, and snakes dangling their

heads from grey branches like waving clusters of poisonous fruit.

[Illustration: "THE SNAKES CORROBBOREE."]

"I'll go bail ye niver see the like of that afore," said Old Cranky.

"Ain't it a pretty sight? I niver showed it to nobody afore. I likes to

come an' watch 'em by myself. Me an' the dog, that is. Lag likes it

'most as well as me. Fan, there, is afeard. She stayed outside, ye see."

The boys felt almost as afraid of Lag and Old Cranky as they were of the

snakes when they heard of such peculiar tastes. Heartily glad were they

when they joined the kangaroo-bitch outside the horrible basin, and they

felt relieved, too, when they reached a track they knew, and the crazy

old snake-charmer slouched off on his way to the next station with his

dogs behind him.

Tired as they were with their long walk when they got back to

Wonga-Wonga, Harry and Donald did not have "pleasant dreams and sweet

repose" that night. They both of them dreamt of the Snakes' Corrobboree;

and, I scarcely need say, they never took the trouble to find their way

to it again.

V.

LOST MAGGIE.

Black fellows and old bushmen--and young bushmen too, for the matter of

that--cannot make out how it is that "new chums" lose themselves in

Australia. _They_ can tell which way to go by the place of the sun, and

the dip of the country, and all kinds of little things that new comers

would not understand even if they noticed them; and so they laugh at new

comers for getting lost. But for all their bumptious talk, people of

"colonial experience" sometimes get lost in the bush, and are never

heard of again, like ships that have gone down at sea without any

surviving eye, except God's, to see them sink.

Sad stories are told about these poor lost people. Sometimes they

disappear for ever, like rain-drops swallowed by the ocean; sometimes

they are found wandering about mad; sometimes they are found starved to

death; sometimes just dying. Sometimes a heap of picked and bleached

bones is found, with nothing to tell the name of the person whose flesh

has been torn or has rotted off them. Sometimes the name, and one or two

sprawling, half-unintelligible words have been feebly scratched on the

pannikin that rusts hard by.

You may fancy, then, how dreadfully frightened a mother in the bush is

when her little child is missing. But, though some of the little strays

are never recovered, a great many of them are wonderfully protected, and

come upon at last. It is about a little girl that was lost in the bush

that I am going to tell you.

One morning I had ridden over to Wonga-Wonga, and was having lunch with

Mr. Lawson and Sydney, when Mrs. Jones rushed into the room, crying as

if her heart would break.

"Oh, master," she sobbed out, "I can't find my Maggie; an' I've been

seekin' her an hour an' more. Oh! it was you who persuaded Jones to come

when you was over at home, an' if you don't find my Maggie, I shall do

myself or some on ye a mischief, I feel sure I shall. Oh, oh, oh! my

'ead feels fit to burst!"

Mr. Lawson quieted the poor screaming woman, and, when he found that

little Maggie was really lost, he had horses run up, and every man and

boy about the station started in search of Mrs. Jones's lost lamb.

Little Maggie was a flaxen-haired, blue-eyed, laughing, lisping little

pet; but if she had been a crosspatch everybody would have looked for

her just as carefully. Harry and Donald bounced out of the weather-board

cottage that was used for a school-room, like pellets from a popgun,

when they heard the news; and after them the tutor rushed to horse,

though he wasn't much of a rider. John Jones was fetched up from the

paddock where he was ploughing, and when he heard that little Maggie was

lost, he made a rush at a young horse that had only had the tacklings on

once or twice, and would have got on it too, somehow, though he _had_

been thrown over its head the next second, if the horsebreaker had not

laid hold of him, and given him a leg up on to a horse fitter for his

riding.

In the course of the day the news spread to the stations round about,

and before nightfall the whole countryside was up hunting for poor

little Maggie. The shepherds left their dogs to look after their flocks,

if they _had_ dogs, and their flocks to look after themselves if they

_hadn't_ dogs, to scour the bush.

Mrs. Lawson and her girls searched all round the head station as if they

were looking for a pin. Even Miss Smith mastered her dread of the bush,

and went quite a quarter of a mile away from the house, all by herself,

as she afterwards related proudly, even into places where she couldn't

see the house, and where she was dreadfully afraid that a bushranger

would carry her off, or a snake would bite her, or the little imported

bull would run at his timorous countrywoman. As for poor Mrs. Jones, she

kept on rushing out into the bush, determined to walk on until she

dropped, and then rushing back, before she had walked a mile, to hear

whether little Maggie, or any tidings of little Maggie, had been brought

home.

Some of those who had been hunting for the little girl gave up the hunt

at the end of the first day; some went on hunting with fire-sticks

during the night, and then went back to their work next morning very

cross because nothing had come of their kindness, and also because--pity

often makes people cross--they couldn't help thinking of the poor father

and mother, and of how _they_ would feel if _their_ little ones had

"gone a-missing." Others camped out when the sun had gone down on one

day's unsuccessful search, that they might be fresh to renew their

search on the morrow. Harry and Donald were two of these. They had

thoroughly fagged themselves out, poking here and poking there, and then

riding, as if for a wager, to some place where one or other of them had

fancied they might, perhaps, find some traces of poor little Maggie.

They were too tired even to be hungry when they got off their horses, as

the stars were coming out. They almost fell asleep as they took the

saddles off their horses, and were soon snoring between the saddle-flaps

they used for pillows.

When the boys woke next morning they were as hungry as fox-hunters, but

what were they to do for a breakfast? Donald saw a grass tree, and

remembered what he had seen the black fellows do with grass trees on his

father's station, which was farther up the country than Wonga-Wonga.

"It looks as if it would come up easy," said Donald; "let's loosen the

earth round it a bit though. Now then, Harry, lay hold, and pull with a

will, as old Tom the sailor says."

The two boys laid hold of the queer crooked stump, and pulled with

_such_ a will that presently flat they tumbled on their backs, with the

grass tree between them. The root was rotten, and swarmed with fat

grubs. They made a black fellow's breakfast off these, and then they

saddled their horses, and off they rode again.

They had not gone far before they came upon King Dick-a-Dick, admiring

himself at a water-hole. He was in full dress, and he seemed very proud

of it, as he made a looking-glass of the water, and then tossed up his

head again. His Majesty's crown was a battered white hat, and he wore a

pair of light-striped knee-breeches--that was all his dress. He had had

the hat and the breeches given him at some of the stations near, and the

settlers about there had given him a brass chain too, and a brass plate

engraved--

"H.M. Dick-a-Dick,

King of the 'Possum Tribe,"

[Illustration: "H.M. DICK-A-DICK, KING OF THE POSSUM TRIBE."]

with a 'possum engraved underneath. The 'possum was the crest, so to

speak, of King Dick-a-Dick's tribe. Now this was the tribe from which

Harry and Donald had had such a narrow escape, and, therefore, they felt

rather nervous when they saw King Dick-a-Dick standing by the water-hole

with his spear in his hand. But his Majesty was anxious to conciliate.

He was fond of tobacco and flour, and he and his people had run short of

both since they had been on bad terms with the whites. So, as soon as he

saw the boys rein in, he stuck his spear, point downwards, into the

ground, and beckoned to them to come on, grinning as if the top of his

head was coming off. That was _his_ way of giving "a winning smile."

When he learnt what the boys' business was, he chuckled greatly at the

thought of white fellows trying to find any one in the bush without

black trackers, and then proposed that he and the boys should share the

credit of finding the little girl. He made sure that he _could_ find

her. The direction in which she had left the station was known, so

Dick-a-Dick took the boys back to within about a mile and a half of

home, and then began to beat about. He went down on his hands and knees,

and put his nose to the ground like a dog. Presently he stopped at an

ant-hill, peered about for a minute, and then jumped up, and cut a

caper. The boys couldn't make it out, but he had discovered the mark of

a tiny little bare heel in a dent on the ant-hill. When he had once

found Maggie's track, he scarcely ever lost it. On he went, walking with

his nose almost as low as his toes. He found out little stones that had

been moved, and grass-blades that had been scarcely brushed by poor

little Maggie's bare feet. He found out too the blood that had come from

a scratch in one of them, got by scrambling over a splintery log.

"Dat where piccaninny lubra stop to drink," said Dick-a-Dick, pointing

to a "crab-hole"--the hole made by a bullock's hoof--on whose side he

could see the print of a chubby little brow. "Missy proud now, pick

waratah," said Dick-a-Dick soon afterwards, as he gathered up the still

crimson leaves of the flower which the little girl had bruised and

thrown down. "Now Missy 'fraid o' debil-debil," said Dick-a-Dick

by-and-bye, when he came to a place in which the tracks, invisible to

the boys' eyes, were so bewilderingly visible to him on all sides that

he did not know at first which to follow. He soon found the right one,

however, and led the boys to a place in which he said the little girl

must have slept.

So they kept up the search until, after travelling for hours in a

circuitous zigzag, they came upon poor little Maggie, not four miles

from home, but on the opposite side of the station to that from which

she had started, coiled up in a black, jagged, charred tree-stump, with

bright-eyed, basking little lizards watching her. Of course, the lizards

vanished as Dick-a-Dick and the boys drew near, but his sharp eyes had

seen something peculiar in their bright ones. Poor little Maggie was

sound asleep; her fat little face, and neck, and arms, and legs, were

sadly scratched. In a scratched, podgy little hand she held a posy of

withered wild flowers.

When she woke and saw Dick-a-Dick, trying to look specially amiable,

grinning down upon her, she shrieked out, "Mammy!" But when she saw the

boys, she jumped up and ran to them, and hid her face between them, and

clung to them with two little leech-like arms. They tried to explain to

her that if it had not been for her "nas'y b'ack man" she might never

have seen her "Mammy" again; and Dick-a-Dick grinned his broadest grin

to propitiate her; but it was no use. She screamed whenever her eyes

fell upon Dick-a-Dick. And yet, according to her own pretty little

prattle, she had not been "_much_ f'ightened in the thoods." She had

seen "nas'y b'ack 'igglin' thin's," but "the kin' yady"--whoever that

might be--"thoodn't 'et 'em bite me."

Harry took Maggie on his horse, and cantered on in front, and Donald and

Dick-a-Dick cantered behind on Flora M'Ivor.

What a reception they had when they got to the station, for they were

getting anxious there about the boys as well as the little! The

head-station shepherds had come in with their sheep, and a good many of

the people who had been searching for a couple of days had gathered at

the station quite dispirited at their lack of luck. They all gave a

great cheer when Cornstalk and the mare laid down their ears, and

brought up their four riders at a steeple-chase gallop.

When Mrs. Jones had almost squeezed the breath out of poor little

Maggie, she tried to garotte Harry and Donald, and then hugged

Dick-a-Dick; and John Jones seemed inclined to hug all three of them,

too, when he had done his best to press the little life his wife had

left in her out of little Maggie; and then Mrs. Jones went into

hysterics, and John Jones ran indoors and hid his face in the

bed-clothes, and blubbered for a quarter of an hour; and everybody

thought the better of him because he blubbered.

Just wasn't there a supper at Wonga-Wonga that night! And didn't

Dick-a-Dick tuck into it? And didn't Harry and Donald, between them, eat

nearly half as much as he did?

VI.

AN AUSTRALIAN DROUGHT.

"What a set of crawlers you are in Jerry's Town, Mr. Howe!" said Harry

Lawson to me, one frizzlingly hot day. I was staying in Jerry's Town

then, and Harry had ridden in to meet the mail, and take back the

Wonga-Wonga newspapers and letters. "I shouldn't like," Harry went on,

"to live in a town. I should feel choked with such a lot of houses about

me. Father talks about England sometimes, but I'm sure he likes the

colony twenty times better. Houses everywhere, and all the little bush

you've got left cut up into paddocks! _I_ wouldn't live in England if

you paid me for it. You brag about your horses, but they can't run

against ours, when they do come out. I wonder they live out the voyage,

from the way I've heard you coddle them. Look at _our_ horses--_they_

don't want corn and cloths, just as if they were babies. You can ride

them for a hundred miles, and turn them out to grass all in a sweat, and

yet they're as fresh as paint for another hundred miles next day--aren't

you, Cornstalk?" said Harry, proudly patting the damp neck of his

favourite steed.

Harry was always very fond of "cracking up the colony," but he was

especially inclined to do so that forenoon, having had his temper

somewhat irritated (although he protested that he was as cool as a

water-melon) by the hot wind that had been blowing for three days. I

have been in glassworks, and close by the mouths of blast-furnaces, but

the heat of an Australian hot wind is worse than theirs. The

perspiration it brings out does not cool, and the warm beads are licked

up the instant they ooze out upon the forehead and the cheeks. If a

vitrifying brick could feel, it would sympathize with a "new chum" in an

Australian hot wind. When the "southerly buster" comes after the hot

wind, rushing with the chill still on from the South Pole, I have seen

people ripping open their shirts to let the cold breeze blow right round

them. The hot wind, too, makes the eyes smart and itch dreadfully.

When Harry was talking to me that day--shamming that he did not feel the

heat in the least--a good many people in Jerry's Town had got "the

blight." Their eyes were bunged up just as if they had been fighting,

though they did keep on dabbing rags dipped in alum-water up to them.

And then, as if the blight was not bad enough, flies got into the

corners of the eyes, and sucked away with their thirsty probosces. I

have heard of a Frenchman who committed suicide because, as he left a

letter to say, he was "so bothered by the flies that life was not worth

keeping at such a price." I think that foolish man must have been an

Australian immigrant. The flies at the time I am telling you about were

really a dreadful nuisance in Jerry's Town. They buzzed about one's head

like swarming bees, they covered one's back like a shirt of mail, at

mealtimes they made the chops and steaks look as black as if they had

been smothered in magnified peppercorns. It _was_ hot then. The mercury

stood at a good bit over 100^o in the shade: it was almost impossible to

find out what it stood at in the sun without getting a sunstroke. At

every corner poor dogs were lying with their tongues out askew, panting

like high-pressure steamboats just about to blow up.

For some time we had seen a few dark clouds on the hilly horizon, and

heard the low rumble of distant thunder. Oh, how we hoped that the storm

would work up our way, and drench us; but for months not a drop of rain

had fallen in our parts. Even in Jerry's Town we began to feel anxious

about our water-supply; both the creek and the Kakadua had sunk so

low--the creek had become a mere straggling chain of very shallow

ponds--and so many bullocks, and sheep, and horses had been driven in,

or had found their way, from long distances round, to drink up what

water there was to be had.

The tall emu, with its hairy rusty-black feathers, is a shy bird, and,

though Jerry's Town was a very quiet little place, an emu had not been

seen within a dozen miles of it for years; but during that long drought

the emus stalked right through Macquarie Street in Jerry's Town to get

to the water. Some of them were shot; one of them was so very thirsty

that it let itself be knocked on the head like a "booby," through its

anxiety to crook its long neck into the creek; but the poor birds were

not nearly so fat as they generally are. They were half-starved as well

as parched with thirst. Very little oil (emu oil is a Bush all-heal) was

got out of them when they were put into the pot. I dare say you have

often growled over wet English weather--especially when it put off a

picnic or a cricket match--but, you see, people in Australia are not as

ready as you are to say,

"Rain, rain, go away,

And come again some other day."

Sunlight is a very beautiful thing, but when it threatens to kill one it

does not seem so beautiful.

When Harry made the polite speech to me I quoted at starting, I was

lounging, smoking, in a rocking-chair on a verandah, and could not help

feeling that I _must_ look very much like "a crawler" to the upright

little fellow who looked down on me from the top of Cornstalk, with his

leather letter-bag strapped across his grass-cloth jumper. He had ridden

ever so many miles through the hot wind, and was going to ride back ever

so many miles through it, and yet he gave himself the unconcerned airs

of a young salamander.

"My word! you _are_ a lazy lot," he proceeded presently. "Nobody here

seems to be doing anything but smoking and nobblerizing. There's a whole

mob of fellows shouting for spiders and stone fences at the 'Macquarie

Arms,' and the 'Royal,' and the 'General Bourke,' and when I came by the

police-barracks I saw the sergeant and all the constables with their

coats off under the fig tree in the yard--half of them asleep, and the

other half smoking. What do you think that lazy old pig Reynolds was

doing? I had to take a message to him from father about some Court House

business, and when I got to his place I couldn't make anybody hear. So I

went in and poked about till I got down into that little cellar of his

where he keeps his beer, and there was old Reynolds, with all his

clothes off, on the bricks, and his Chinaman pitching water on him out

of a bucket. _He's_ a nice fellow to be Clerk of Petty Sessions! If

Englishmen can't stand our climate, they oughtn't to come to it, and

then expect us to pay them wages for shirking their work.

"There's old Biggs, the postmaster. He's been long enough in the colony,

you'd think, to get used to it--he might almost have been one of the

First Fleeters--and yet he kept me waiting ever so long for my letters.

He was 'so overcome with the heat,' poor man! in lifting the mail-bag

out of the cart, that he had to go and nobblerize at the 'Royal' before

he felt equal to opening it. I declare little Marston, the mail guard,

is the only fellow I have seen in Jerry's Town to-day with a mite of go

in him--though he _is_ an Englishman. But then they say he used to be a

lieutenant in the army. Look there, Mr. Howe: your English officers,

that you think such heavy swells at home, are glad to get us to employ

them as mail guards, and milkmen, and things like that. I wonder how

little Marston likes carrying a carbine and lugging about the

letter-bags."

The heat, although he professed not to care a pin for it, had so plainly

affected Harry's temper that I invited him to get off his horse and

finish his abuse of things English in the shade of the verandah. At

first he loftily declined to dismount, but he did get down, and stayed

chatting with me so long that I could see he did not quite relish the

thought of his hot ride home. Harry's was not cooling conversation.

Marston had told him of dozens of teamsters that the mail had passed on

the road "stuck up" round dry water-holes and fast-drying fords, with

three-fourths of their bullocks dead, and the others so weakened that

they could only get upon their knees when they tried to rise from the

ground. Harry had had a chat, too, with a bullock-driver who had managed

to struggle on into Jerry's Town that morning.

"He looked just like a black fellow," said Harry, "with the dust and the

heat; and he says that up the country on M'Grath's Plains there is not a

drop of water to be got for fifty miles any way, and the sun and the

bush-fires have burnt every bit of grass right down to the roots. The

country looks as black as if it was covered with cinders, he says, and

there are cracks a foot wide in the ground."

Things were not much better at Wonga-Wonga, Harry informed me. Most of

the water-holes were dried up, and bulls and bullocks, cows and calves,

sheep and lambs, brood-mares and foals, were lying rotting round them,

with crows and carrion hawks feasting on their carcases, or else half

buried in the sticky mud at the bottom which the sun was baking as hard

as brick. The sheep that were left alive were lying panting under the

trees, too languid even to bleat; and the bullocks were standing crowded

together in what had once been swamps and chains of ponds, bellowing

dolefully, or lashing off the flies in silent despair. Mr. Lawson, and

Sydney, and the overseer were riding about in search of grass and water,

so that they might not "lose all the beasts," and everything in the

garden and cultivation-paddocks was shrivelled up into tinder and

touchwood. That morning, as Harry rode in, he had seen parrots and

lories gasping like fishes out of water on the grey branches, and

falling dead, as if they had been shot by the sunbeams, when they tried

to fly across the open. When Harry galloped homewards at last through

the blazing light and the fiery air, it seemed strange that he did not

drop to the ground like the parrots.

We had had bush-fires in our neighbourhood for some time, but that night

the bush seemed to be alight for miles all round Jerry's Town; and next

day, although the flames were not so plain (until the sun had gone down

again), grey and black smoke dimmed even the blazing sun, and rolled in

stifling clouds into the little town. When everything is dried up as

things get dried up in an Australian drought, a lucifer match, or the

ashes of a pipe, carelessly thrown down, may set square miles of forest

on fire; an old pannikin or an empty bottle may act as a burning-glass,

and do the same; and sometimes, for the sake of the luxuriant young

grass that will spring up where old withered grass has been burnt, when

the rains come, settlers selfishly set fire to it, if the wind is not

blowing towards their homesteads, reckless of the loss of life and

property they may cause--it is impossible to say how far beyond. That

night and day (as I guessed at the time, and as I learnt afterwards)

were a dreadful night and day for my Wonga-Wonga friends. Mr. Lawson,

and Sydney, and the tutor, and the boys, and a good many of the men too,

sat up all night. The women and girls went to bed, but they couldn't go

to sleep, the air was so stiflingly close and smoky, and it was so

startling when they looked out of their bed-room windows to see the

flames leaping redder and redder out of the brooding and rolling

smoke-clouds. The moon was up, but her light--made bloody by the lurid

atmosphere through which it seemed to have to _force_ its way--only gave

a still more uncanny look to the landscape.

Poor Miss Smith was half wild with fear, and Mrs. Lawson and her girls,

although they did not show their fear so much, were really more

frightened at heart, perhaps, because they understood better what their

fate would be if from one quarter or another a roaring bush-fire rushed

down right upon them. Not much breakfast was eaten at Wonga-Wonga next

morning: haggard, pale faces looked anxiously across the table at one

another.

Thicker and thicker the smoke rolled in; the heat every moment grew

hotter. The head-station sheep were still in their hurdles, gasping for

breath. What was the good of sending them out into the burning bush,

even if the shepherds would have gone with them? The men stood about

watching the fires, and wondering what was to become of them. They would

have made a rush for Jerry's Town, and Mr. Lawson would have sent all

his womenfolk thither too, but the bush was on fire between the station

and the township. Harry and Donald, of course, were scared like other

people, but--boys are such queer little animals--in the midst of their

fright they could not help feeling pleased that they would have no

school that day, and so they half enjoyed the general consternation.

The hot wind was blowing directly from the north, driving the roaring,

crackling flames and the suffocating smoke before it. If it had kept in

that quarter, the house, and huts, and outbuildings at Wonga-Wonga would

have been in great danger, since the broad road of destruction which the

fierce fire was eating through the bush would have passed within a

furlong or two of the house, and that and its belongings might easily

have been gobbled up with a side-lick or two of the bush-fire's forked

tongues. But when the wind veered about half a point towards the

northwest, the Wonga-Wonga people thought it was all up with them. The

rushing fire was now steering straight at them like an inevitable

express train. The blinding, throat-tickling, lung-clogging smoke-clouds

rolled in denser and denser. In spite of the sunlight, the grey clouds

spat out pink, and russet, and golden flame plainer and plainer. Flocks

of wild cockatoos flew wildly screaming overhead, making the already

scared tame cockatoo grovel like a reptile as they flew by. Singed

kangaroos and wallabies bounded over the garden fence. Dingoes, looking

more cowardly than ever, but cowed into tameness, put their tails

between their legs and slunk into the barn. Snakes wriggled along half

roasted. Mobs of horses and cattle went by like a whirlwind and an

earthquake in a mad stampede. Poor stupid sheep, their small brains

quite addled by terror, ran hither and thither purposelessly, stood

stock-still to let the flames catch them, or plunged right into the

flames. It was an awful time; but so long as the merest chance of life

remains, it is the best policy, and our duty to Him who gave us our

lives, to do our best to save them, if they can be saved without

disgrace.

[Illustration: "THE RUSHING FIRE WAS NOW STEERING STRAIGHT AT THEM."]

Mr. Lawson and Sydney spirited up the men, most of whom were "astonied"

like the sheep. They thought that a doom was coming down on them which

it was hopeless to fight against, and so were inclined to hang down

their arms helplessly. To the astonishment of all, John Jones--the

"sheep," as his fellows were fond of calling him--behaved more pluckily

than any of the other men. Besides his own life, he had his wife's and

his children's to battle for; he was conscientiously devoted to his

master's interests; and moreover, he seemed pleased at getting a chance

of proving that, though he couldn't sit a buck-jumper, he could play the

man better than those who jeered at his clumsy, timid horsemanship, when

he and they had to confront a common peril on equal terms.

On roared and rushed the fire. Where there was scrub the earth seemed to

be belching smoke. In the bush the giant boles of the gum trees stood

up, grimly showing through their winding-sheets of smoke, and holding

flags of flame in their gaunt arms. If any water had been left in the

creek, the inhabitants of Wonga-Wonga would have plunged into it, even

if they had run the risk of drowning in it. But there was not enough

water left in the creek to wet the sole of the foot. On and on, with a

roar and a crackle like that of huge crunched bones, as the trees

toppled over into the under-smoke, came the fire from the north-west;

and in the opposite direction, and on both sides, the bush was also on

fire.

Mrs. Laws on gathered her girls, and Miss Smith, and Mrs. Jones and

_her_ little ones, and the other woman servant, about her in the

keeping-room, and there, in a voice clear, though it trembled, she

prayed, in the midst of a chorus of wails and sobs, for resignation, and

preparation for the apparently certain fate, and yet for help to her

husband and her boys and the men, who had mustered to give the

inhabitants of Wonga-Wonga their last chance. In the line of the

on-rushing fire there was a dried-up maize-paddock, which, if it once

fairly caught, would bring the fire right down upon the station

buildings. If that could be kept unburnt, the fire might just possibly

pass them by.

Harry and Donald, I heard afterwards from Mr. Lawson, were just as brave

as Sydney (and that was a good deal for Mr. Lawson to say, since he was

very proud of Sydney) in this "beating-out" business. Fence-rails had

hardly been torn down for weapons to fight against the fire, before the

sapless crop caught. Men and boys (Mr. Lawson, Sydney, Harry, Donald,

the tutor, and John Jones, in the van) rushed at the flames, mowing

right and left, and striking down, like Highlanders with their

broadswords. Donald had Highland blood in him, and wielded his timber

claymore so courageously, and yet so coolly, that those who saw him felt

half inclined to cheer him, in the very face of the quickly crackling

flames that were changing, as if by magic, the withered maize into red

ashes. Harry was as courageous as Donald, but he was not as cool. He

would have been smothered in the smoke into which he had heedlessly

plunged, if Sydney had not dashed in to bring him out. Tall men as well

as Harry were struck down by the heat of the fire and the heat of the

sun combined. John Jones got a sunstroke that knocked him down as a

butcher knocks down an ox. The horsebreaker took hold of poor John's

head, and the tutor took hold of poor John's legs, and between them they

dragged him off the blazing heap of maize-stalks on which he had fallen

face downwards. Mr. Lawson, who had a great respect for honest John,

rushed up then, and stopped beating-out for a minute or two, to carry

him as far as possible out of harm's way--if any place at such a time

could be called out of harm's way. Then Mr. Lawson rushed back again,

slashing away and giving the "seventh cut" with his wooden broadsword,

as if he wanted to make up for lost time, and after him, up to the

thickest of the fire, dashed Sydney, and Donald, and Harry, still giddy

from the smoke he had swallowed.

The men, too, fought the flames with almost desperate daring, but, in

spite of what any one could do, they gained on the paddock. More than

half of it had been consumed when the wind slanted to the N.E. farther

and more suddenly than it had veered to the N.W. The fire went by the

head-station buildings, gobbling up an outlying hut or two, and many a

rod of fencing; but the house and most of the huts, the barn, store,

wool-shed, &c., were only blistered.

Mr. Lawson, nevertheless, was a good deal poorer at night than he had

been when the morning dawned through the ominous banks and wreaths of

smoke; but when he gathered all his people together in the evening to

return thanks to the good God for their great deliverance, he felt

happier, perhaps, than he had ever felt before in his life. The house

verandah was the place of common worship. The air was still stiflingly

close, and poor little "salamander" Harry fainted as he leaned his

scorched face against one of the half-charred verandah-posts. Sydney

carried him to bed, and heroic Harry had to submit to the

indignity--fortunately without being conscious of it--of being "tucked

in" and kissed, not only by "dear mamma and the girls"--theirs he would

have considered, perhaps, rather over-fussy, but still legitimate

attentions--but also by Miss Smith and Mrs. Jones.

VII.

AN AUSTRALIAN FLOOD.

A few days after the great bush-fire I told you about in my last

chapter, Harry and Donald came to spend a week or two with a friend of

Mr. Lawson's who lived just outside Jerry's Town. The hut that was used

for school-room at Wonga-Wonga had come to grief in the fire, not a bit

of it being left standing, except the blackened brick chimney. The tutor

was laid up, owing to his unwonted exertions at the fire, and it was

thought that a little change would do the boys no harm. Accordingly,

their saddle-bags were bulged out with changes of raiment ("creases" are

not thought so much of in the Bush as they would be by Belgravian

swells), and Harry and Donald cantered into Jerry's Town on Cornstalk

and Flora M'Ivor.

The first week they were in the township the weather was as hot as ever.

Although the doors and windows were all wide open, we gasped for breath

at church; and though the clergyman's surplice looked cool, his face was

so red that you could not help fancying that he wanted to pray and

preach in unbuttoned shirt-sleeves. If he had been obliged to wear a

thick black gown, I think he would have been suffocated. But when the

boys' second Sunday in Jerry's Town came, a good bit of Jerry's Town was

under water, Jerry's Flats were an inland sea, and some of the

worshippers who had hung up their horses on the churchyard rails the

Sunday before had had to take refuge in the township with scarcely a

shirt or a gown that they could call their own.

On the Wednesday night after that first Sunday we had gone to bed as

late as we could in Jerry's Town, outside the bed-clothes, and with as

little covering of any kind as was practicable. After tossing and

tumbling about, and getting up every now and then to light pipes to

"cool ourselves," and drive away the humming, bloodthirsty mosquitoes,

we had at last fallen asleep at the fag end of the "small hours" of

Thursday morning. When we awoke, with a chill on, the rain was coming

down as if it did not like its own business, but wanted to get it over,

and let sunlight reign and roast once more. It had knocked off shingles,

and was pouring into rooms in gallons. Imagine a shower-bath without a

perforated bottom--the whole of the mysteriously upheld water coming

down bodily the instant the string is touched--and then, if you imagine

also that the shower-bath is constantly refilled for a week or so, and

that you are obliged to stand under it all the time, you will get some

faint notion of the suddenness and force of Australian rain. More

"annual inches" of rain, I have read, fall in sunny Australia than in

soppy Ireland, and therefore, when the Australians have learnt--perhaps

from the Chinamen, whom they tried hard to keep out of their country,

but to whom they are grudgingly grateful now for "summer cabbage," &c.,

that they could not get from any British-blooded market-gardener--when

they have learnt, I say, to wisely manage and husband their bountiful

water supply, by damming rivers, and draining what would otherwise be

flooded country into reservoirs, Australia will become, in many a part

where it is now barren, one of the most fertile lands that the sun

shines on. With such a reserve fund of water to use up, the hot

Australian sunbeams will be a boon instead of a bane. In my time,

however (and, according to the _Sydney Morning Herald_ and the

_Melbourne Argus_, things are not very different now), up-country

Australia periodically suffered from a fast from water or a feast of

it--the feast, in some respects, being even worse than the fast.