Somewhere near the end of the book the compiler seemed to recollect there was a little continent called Europe, and he struck in a bald map of it, with the British Islands lurking indistinctly to the west. Asia and Africa too he seemed to include incidentally, but Australia had been quite beneath his notice, and only occurred as an almost unmarked island in the last map of all, Oceana.
The little girls were not much wiser after a study of this remarkable work: so they plunged into Travels in Foreign Countries in the thirstiest way, quite heedless that the edition was one of the early fifties, and had been prized by their father chiefly for that fact. Strange things they learned from it; the natives were chocolate-coloured and fought with boomerangs; bushrangers troubled the country greatly; these were white outlaws, they found, who hid in the bush and then made raids on the stations.
“You’d hardly think they’d be civilized enough there for railways, would you?” Phyl remarked by the way. Gold mines it seemed were very plentiful; the children paused to dilate on how pleasant a thing it would be, when money was running short, to go outside the thatched hut (they had agreed they would build this themselves, with perhaps a little aid from [104] ]some friendly native), and dig with a “tomahawk” for a few minutes till a nugget or two was unearthed.
Sheep, too, seemed numerous—also snakes and strange-looking birds called emus; an unearthly-looking thing with an unearthly name—Ornithorhynchus paradoxus, or the duck-billed platypus; a strange unfinished-looking beast with two long legs at the back, the rudiments of two other legs at the front, and half-way down its great length a pouch containing a wee edition of itself nibbling a bit of grass—“kangaroo or wallaby” said the note underneath,—“a harmless animal for all its looks; indeed, it is frequently kept by squatters’ children for a pet just as English children keep cats.”
“How would you like that for a pet, instead of Old Pussy Long Tail, Weenie?” said Phyl, displaying it.
But Weenie was so wofully tired and excited and unhinged that she burst into frightened tears, and declared her intention of hiding in the cellar instead of going on the ship.
The distraction brought Phyl back to England and remembrance again. She put a hasty hand out for the watch, and her horrified eyes found the hands at a quarter to eleven.
“It was only half-past nine when I looked last,” she gasped, “and it was only about ten minutes ago.”
“P—waps the hour-hand has slipped down,” suggested Dolly anxiously.
[105]
]Phyl leaned over the table and blew the light out hastily.