Both Mat and Tim had often hunted these animals before, and knew how to seek them, and when found, how to cut them out; but they at once accepted Dromoora’s invitation, as he was such a good fellow.
Having arrived at the range, Mat soon picked out a tree where the recently ascending marks, cut by the claws of the little beast through the white bark, showed that it had gone up the preceding night, whilst there were no tracks to denote its having come down again. So Mat cut little steps up the tree, sufficiently large to afford a hold for the big toe, ascending by this means till he reached the branches, when he found the hole, and after chopping for a considerable time, dragged out the little animal and knocked it on the head.
When they had collected some dozens of ’possums amongst them, Mat explained to the jin, whose name was “Terebare,” that he wanted to make fire, whereupon, with a good-tempered smile, which displayed her beautiful row of white teeth, she disappeared into a neighbouring scrub, and brought back a bit of very rotten dry wood, the size of an ordinary walking-stick: this was a branch of the black fig-tree. She then split it down the middle, and placed it on the ground, flat side uppermost, holding it down with her well-shaped little feet. Dromoora meantime had cut a sound piece, round and straight about a foot long. Placing this round piece straight up on end, the girl rolled it with her hands round and round on the split wood under her feet, pressing it with some force into it, until after the lapse of a minute or two, she had bored a hole nearly through the latter, then cutting a notch on the under side of this, the fine dust fell through on to some fine dry grass which she had already placed there. She then resumed the rolling motion until sparks appeared, when, picking up the dry grass and blowing into it, it flamed up.
“That’s a secret worth knowing,” said Mat, as he saw the small fire kindled; “fancy, if we’d been able to do that when we were wrecked. I expect it isn’t as easy as it looks.” And Mat went to work to make fire himself. He slaved and he rolled until the perspiration ran off him, being much laughed at by Dromoora and his wife in consequence, who told him he must stay there until he succeeded. After repeated failures he at length saw his heap of grass begin to smoke and Tim kneeling down and blowing into this, the flame of victory flashed up. They then shouldered their game, and returned in good spirits to camp.
Heavy rains setting in soon after this, Dromoora’s tribe shifted camp to higher ground some miles away.
There was another reason for this movement on the part of the natives, the fact that their old district was getting short of roots and game. Of salt-water fish there was plenty, though some distance off.
The blacks made many more excursions to the coast, on rare occasions accompanied by our twins, always returning with fish and odds and ends in the shape of nails and other portions of metal.
After one of these trips Dromoora brought his white friends something which he had carefully wrapped up in ’possum skin, telling them as he unfolded the precious flotsam, that he had found it floating near the shore, and that he thought it must something to do with the gun, or “Teegoora,” as the weapon was known in the tribe.
When the parcel was unfolded Mat saw that it was a pencil—an immense “find,” as he could now jot down notes, and keep a rough journal on the margin of his books, which he had long since dried and put carefully away.
Thus time passed on.