Part 23 (2/2)
After the heat and ”drouth” we could have loitered in that pleasant shade; but we were due at the Red Lilies ”second night out”; and it being one of the unwritten laws of a ”n.i.g.g.e.r-hunt” to keep appointments--”the other chaps worrying a bit if you don't turn up”--soon after four o'clock we were out in the blazing heat again, following the river now along its higher flood-bank through gra.s.sy plains and open forest land.
By five o'clock Dan was prophesying that ”it 'ud take us all we knew to do the trick in daylight,” but at six o'clock, when we were still eight miles from the Red Lilies, the Maluka settled the question by calling for a camp there and then. ”The missus had had enough,” the Maluka decided, and Dan became anxious. ”It's that drouth that's done it,” he lamented; and although agreeing with the Maluka that Jack would survive a few hours' anxiety, regretted we had ”no way of letting him know.” (We were not aware of the efficiency of smoke signalling).
We turned back a short distance for better watering for horses, settling down for the night at the second ”duck-under”--McMinn's bar--within sound of the rus.h.i.+ng of many waters; for here the river comes back to the surface with a mighty roar and swirling currents. ”Knockup camp,” Dan christened it in his pleasant way, and Sambo became unexpectedly curious.
”Missus knock up?” he asked, and the Maluka nodding, Sambo's question was forgotten until the next mid-day.
By then we had pa.s.sed the Red Lily lagoons, and ridden across the salt-bush plain, and through a deep belt of tall, newly sprung green gra.s.s, that hugged the river there just then, and having been greeted by smug, smiling old black fellows, were saluting Jack across two or three hundred feet of water, as we stood among our horses.
”Slewed!” Jack called in answer, through hollowed hands. ”Didn't worry.
Heard--the--missus--had--knocked--up,” and Dan leaned against his horse, limp with amazement.
”Heard the missus had knocked up?” he gasped. ”Well, I'm blowed! Talk of surprise parties!” and the old black fellows looked on enjoying the effect.
”Black fellow plenty savey,” they said loftily, and Dan was almost persuaded to a belief in debbel-debbels, until our return to the homestead, when Jimmy's Nellie divulged the Court secret; then Dan e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed another ”Well, I'm blowed!” with the theory of second-sight and thought-reading falling about his ears.
After a consultation across the river in long-drawn-out syllables, Jack decided on a horse muster for the return trip--genuine this time--and went on his way, after appointing to meet us at Knock-up camp next evening. But our horses refusing to leave the deep green feed, we settled down just where we were, beside the river, and formed a curious camping-ground for ourselves, a small s.p.a.ce hacked out and trampled down, out of the dense rank gra.s.s that towered above and around us.
But this was to be a record trip for discomfort. Dan, on opening out the tucker-bags, announced ruefully that our supply of meat had ”turned on us”; and as our jam-tin had ”blown,” we feared we were reduced to damper only, until the Maluka unearthed a bottle of anchovy paste, falsely labelled ”Chicken and Ham.” ”Lot's wife,” Dan called it, after ”tackling some as a relish.”
Birds were everywhere about the lagoons--ducks, s.h.a.gs, great geese, and pigmy geese, hovering and settling about them in screaming clouds; and after dinner, deciding we might as well have a bit of game for supper, we walked across the open salt-bush plain to the Big Red Lily. But revolvers are hardly the thing for duck shooting, and the soft-nosed bullets of the Maluka's rifle reducing an unfortunate duck to a tangled ma.s.s of blood and feathers we were obliged to accept, w.i.l.l.y-nilly, the prospect of damper and ”Lot's wife” for supper. But our hopes died hard, and we sneaked about the gorgeous lagoons, revolvers in hand, for a good hour, ”larning a thing or two about the lagoons” from Dan as we sneaked.
The Red Lily lagoons lie away from the Roper, on either side of it, wide-spreading and shallow--great sheets of water with tall reeds and rushes about them, and glorious in flowering time with their immense cup-shaped crimson blossoms cl.u.s.tering on long stalks above great floating leaves--leaves nearly approaching three feet in diameter I think; and everywhere about the leaves hover birds and along the margins of the lagoons stalk countless waders, cranes, jabiroos, and oftentimes douce native companions.
Being so shallow and wide-spreading, the lagoons would dry up early in the ”dry” were it not that the blacks are able to refill them at will from the river; for here the Roper indulges in a third ”duck-under,” so curious that with a few logs and sheets of bark the blacks can block the way of its waters and overflow them into the lagoons thereby ensuring a plentiful larder to hosts of wild fowl and, incidentally, to themselves.
As the mystery of this ”duck-under” lies under water, it can only be described from hearsay. Here, so the blacks say, a solid wall of rock runs out into the river, incomplete, though, and complicated, rising and terminating before mid-stream into a large island, which, dividing the stream unequally, sends the main body of water swirling away along its northern borders, while the lesser current glides quietly around the southern side, slipping partly over the submerged wall, and partly through a great side-long cleft on its face--gliding so quietly that the cleft can be easily blocked and the wall heightened when the waters are needed for the lagoons. Black-fellow gossip also reports that the island can be reached by a series of subterranean caves that open into daylight away at the Cave Creek, miles away.
Getting nothing better than one miserable s.h.a.g by our revolvers, we faced damper and ”Lot's wife” about sundown, returning to camp through a dense Leichardt pine forest, where we found myriads of bat-like creatures, inches long, perhaps a foot, hanging head downwards from almost every branch of every tree. ”Flying foxes,” Dan called them, and Sambo helped himself to a few, finding ”Lot's wife” unsatisfying; but the white folk ”drew the line at varmints.”
”Had bandicoot once for me Christmas dinner,” Dan informed us, making extra tea ”on account of 'Lot's wife'” taking a bit of ”was.h.i.+ng down.”
Then, supper over, the problem of watering the horses had to be solved.
The margins of the lagoons were too boggy for safety, and as the horses, fearing alligators apparently, refused the river, we had a great business persuading them to drink out of the camp mixing dish.
The sun was down before we began; and long before we were through with the tussle, peculiar shrilling cries caught our attention, and, turning to face down stream, we saw a dense cloud approaching--skimming along and above the river: a shrilling, moving cloud, keeping all the while to the river, but reaching right across it, and away beyond the tree tops.
Swiftly it came to us and sped on, never ceasing its peculiar cry; and as it swept on, and we found it was made up of innumerable flying creatures, we remembered Dan's ”flying foxes.” In unbroken continuity the cloud swept out of the pine forest, along the river, and past us, resembling an elongated kaleidoscope, all dark colours in appearance; for as they swept by the s.h.i.+mmering creatures constantly changed places--gliding downwards as they flew, before dipping for a drink to rise again with swift, glancing movement, shrilling that peculiar cry all the while. Like clouds of drifting fog they swept by, and in such myriads that, even after the Maluka began to time them, full fifteen minutes pa.s.sed before they began to straggle out, and twenty before the last few stragglers were gone. Then, as we turned up stream to look after them, we found that there the dense cloud was rising and fanning out over the tree tops.
The evening drink accomplished, it was time to think of food.
Dan welcomed the spectacle as an ”impromptu bit of education. Learnt something meself, even,” he said with lordly superiority. ”Been out-bush forty years and never struck that before ”; and later, as we returned to camp, he declared it ”just knocked spots off De Rougemont.”
But it had taken so long to persuade the horses that a drink could proceed out of a mixing dish, that it was time to turn in by then; and Dan proceeded to clear a s.p.a.ce for a sleeping ground with a tomahawk.
”Seems no end to education once you start,” he chuckled, hacking at a stubborn tussock. ”Reckon no other woman ever learned to make a bed with a tomahawk.” Then Sambo created a diversion by asking for the loan of a revolver before taking a message to the blacks' camp.
”Big mob bad fellow black fellow sit down longa island,” he explained; and Dan, whimsical under all circ.u.mstances, ”noticed the surprise party wasn't exactly going off without a hitch.” ”Couldn't have fixed up better for them if they've got a surprise party of their own up their sleeves,”
he added ruefully, looking round at the dense wall of gra.s.s about us; and as he and the Maluka swung the two nets not six feet apart, we were all of one mind that ”getting murdered was an experience we could do nicely without.” Then Sambo returning and swinging his net in the narrow s.p.a.ce between the two others, set Dan chuckling again. ”Doesn't mean to make a target of himself,” he said; but his chuckle died out when Sambo, preparing to curl up in the safest place in the camp, explained his presumption tersely by announcing that ”Monkey sit down longa camp.”
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