“I consider it wonderful, boys, that they have escaped,” said the captain; “but we have been tempting fate. We must fence in a good space for the cattle, a sort of home close, where we know that they will be safe, before the enemy comes and drives them off some night while we are asleep.”
This enclosure was then made, the posts and rails on one side coming close up to the space intended for a garden; and a further intention was to board it closely for a defence on that side when time allowed.
Every day saw something done, and in their busy life and immunity from danger all thought of peril began to die out. They even began to imagine that the weather was always going to be fine, so glorious it remained all through their building work. But they were soon undeceived as to that, a wet season coming on, and the boys getting some few examples of rain which made Sam German declare that it came down in bucketfuls; while Rifle was ready to assert, one afternoon when he was caught, that he almost swam home through it, after a visit to the lower part of the captain’s land, to see that the sheep were all driven on to high ground, up to which they had laboured with their fleeces holding water in a perfect load.
And hence it was that, to the astonishment of all, they found that a whole year had passed away, and the captain said, with a perplexed look, that they seemed hardly to have done anything.
But all the same, there was the Dingo Station, as he had dubbed it, on account of the wild dogs which prowled about, with a substantial little farmhouse, some small out-buildings, paddocks enclosed with rails, and their farming stock looking healthy and strong. Sam German, too, had contrived to get something going in the way of a garden, and plans innumerable were being made for the future in the way of beautifying the place, though nature had done much for them before they came.
As for the elders, they did not look a day older, and all were in robust health. The change was in the boys:
Norman and Rifle had grown brown and sturdy to a wonderful degree, while Tim had shot up to such an extent that his cousins laughingly declared that he ought to wear a leaden hat to keep him down.
“It almost seems,” said Uncle Jack one day, “that keeping a tame black is sufficient to drive all the others away.”
“Don’t seem to me that Shanter is very tame, uncle,” cried Norman, merrily; “why, he is always wanting to go off into the scrub, and coaxes us to go with him.”
“I say, father,” cried Rifle, “when are we to go off on an expedition and have some hunting and fishing? I thought when we came out here that we were going to have adventures every day, and we haven’t seen a black since that first night.”