“Only the fellow who helped to load,” said the doctor.
Nic looked hard, for he had not recognised the man.
“He has got rid of his shirt and trousers, Nic, for the march home. These blacks are eager to get clothes, but it always seems a misery to them to wear anything but a bit of cloth.”
“But is it never cold here?”
“Very, sometimes—frosty; but they make a bit of a shelter and a tiny fire, and linger over it till the hot sun comes out, and then forget the cold. The old people here never even built a hut, Nic—only a shelter—a rough bit of fence.”
In the middle of the day, when the sun came down with tremendous power, a halt was called beneath the shade of a gigantic gum tree, and Nic for the first time realised why this name was applied to the one great family of trees peculiar to the land, for drops of gum which had oozed out were gleaming red like carbuncles in the hot sunshine.
The doctor sprang from his horse, but Nic sat quite still.
“Dawn with you, my boy,” cried his father; but, instead of obeying, Nic screwed up his face into a peculiar shape.
“I don’t feel as if I could, father.”
“Oh! Stiff. Down with you, boy. You must work that off.”