And said, ‘Now, girls, come fire away.’
They drank till they could drink no more,
And then they both fell on the floor.
Cried Dick, as he surveyed them o’er,
‘You wouldn’t do for Australia.’”
Chorus.
Several other songs followed, and during the interval Claude makes the acquaintance of the young sub-inspector of police. He appears to be a particularly obliging kind of individual, although a little “stand-offish” till Angland explains his present position, when, as the doctor and Mr. Winze had both predicted, the words “Royal and Imperial” once more assisted him in his project. How to get the young officer to speak about his awful profession was the next question. Would he be chary about giving any information about it? But before Claude had time to puzzle himself much about arranging a plan of campaign, he was saved the trouble of sapping up carefully to the subject by the sub-inspector himself; for in response to a call for a song, he obliged the company with a “little thing of his own,” illustrative of the prowess of his Corps during a night attack by natives upon a squatter’s head-station. This, as it is a lively bit of poetry, we give in full; it was sung to the air of that best of Whyte-Melville’s hunting songs, “A day’s ride,” having been written in the same metre with that object in view.
“A NIGHT’S RIDE.
“When the evening sun is dying,
And the night winds o’er us sighing,