“I have left my Susan and I have lost her—left the only friend I had or ever shall have in this hard world.” This was his constant thought, as doggedly but hopelessly he struggled against the pestilence. Single-handed and leaden-hearted he had to catch a sheep, to fling her down, to hold her down, to rub the ointment into her, and to catch another that had been rubbed yesterday and take her to the pool and fling her in and keep her in till every part of her skin was soaked.
Four hours of this drudgery had George gone through single-handed and leaden-hearted, when as he knelt over a kicking, struggling sheep, he became conscious of something gliding between him and the sun; he looked up and there was Jacky grinning.
George uttered an exclamation: “What, come back! Well, now that is very good of you I call. How do you do?” and he gave him a great shake of the hand.
“Jacky very well, Jacky not at all uncomfortable after him hunt a little.”
“Then I am very glad you have had a day's sport, leastways a night's, I call it, since it has made you comfortable, Jacky.”
“Oh! yes, very comfortable now,” and his white teeth and bright eye proclaimed the relief and satisfaction his little trip had afforded his nature.
“There, Jacky, if the ointment is worth the trouble it gives me rubbing of it in, that sheep won't ever catch the scab, I do think. Well, Jacky, seems to me I ought to ask your pardon—I did you wrong. I never expected you would leave the kangaroos and opossums for me once you were off. But I suppose fact is you haven't quite forgotten Twofold Bay.”
“Two fool bay!” inquired Jacky, puzzled.
“Where I first fell in with you. You made one in a hunt that day, only instead of hunting you was hunted and pretty close, too, and if I hadn't been a good cricketer and learned to fling true—Why, I do declare I think he has forgotten the whole thing, shark and all!”
At the word shark a gleam of intelligence came to the black's eye; it was succeeded by a look of wonder. “Shark come to eat me—you throw stone—so we eat him. I see him now a little—a very little—dat a long way off—a very long way off. Jacky can hardly see him when he try a good deal. White fellow see a long way off behind him back—dat is very curious.”