“Soft bread because he’s hungry. Isn’t that what you mean?” cried Norman.
“Soff damper. Big white Mary gib damper. Marmi gib Shanter tickpence bring bull-cow fellow all along.”
“That I will,” cried the captain. “Tut, tut! How I am obliged to eat my words. You’re a good fellow, Shanter,” he cried, clapping the black on the shoulder. “Go and have some damper.—Give him some meat too.”
However badly Shanter expressed himself, he pretty well comprehended all that was said; and at the captain’s words he began to rub his front, leaped off the heifer, and followed the boys to the fire, round which the party gathered as soon as they found there was no danger, and where Aunt Georgie, in her satisfaction, cut the fellow so big a portion of bread and bacon, that his eyes glistened and his teeth gleamed, as he ran away with it amongst the bushes to lie down and eat.
Half an hour later they found him fast asleep, and the first thing the boys saw the next morning, after a delightful night’s rest, was the shining black face of Shanter where he was squatting down on his heels, watching them and waiting for them to wake.
Norman lay for some minutes, still half asleep, gazing at the black face, which seemed to be somehow connected with his dreams and with the soft sweet piping of the magpie crows, which were apparently practising their scales prior to joining in the morning outburst of song, while the great kingfishers—the laughing jackasses of the colonists—sat here and there uttering their discordant sounds, like coarse, harsh laughter, at the efforts of the crows.