"They won't come near you, Mr. Brown," said Craig. "They keep as far away from Englishmen as possible."
"Not always," said Bill. "Maybe ye wouldn't believe it, but I was bitten and well-nigh dead, and it was a tiger as done it. And if I ain't English, then there ain't an Englishman 'twist 'ere and Melbourne. See that, miss?" He held up a hand in the firelight as he spoke.
"Why," said Etheldene, "you don't mean to say the snake bit off half your little finger?"
"Not much I don't; but he bit me on the finger, miss. I was a swagsman then, and was gathering wood, as we were to-night, when I got nipped, and my chum tightened a morsel of string round it to keep the poison away from the heart, then he laid the finger on a stone and chopped it off with his spade. Fact what I'm telling you. But the poison got in the blood somehow all the same. They half carried me to Irish Charlie's hotel. Lucky, that wasn't far off. Then they stuck the whiskey into me."
"Did the whiskey kill the poison?" said Archie.
"Whiskey kill the poison! Why, young sir, Charlie's whiskey would have killed a kangaroo! But nothing warmed me that night; my blood felt frozen. Well, sleep came at last, and, oh, the dreams! 'Twere worse ten thousand times than being wi' Daniel in the den o' lions. Next day nobody hardly knew me; I was blue and wrinkled. I had aged ten years in a single night."
"I say," said Harry, "suppose we change the subject."
"And I say," said Craig, "suppose we make the beds."
He got up as he spoke, and began to busy himself in preparations for Etheldene's couch. It was easily and simply arranged, but the arrangement nevertheless showed considerable forethought.
He disappeared for a few minutes, and returned laden with all the necessary paraphernalia. A seven-foot pole was fastened to a tree; the other end supported by a forked stick, which he sharpened and drove into the ground. Some grass was spread beneath the pole, a blanket thrown carefully over it, the upturned saddle put down for a pillow, and a tent formed by throwing over the pole a loose piece of canvas that he had taken from his saddle-bow, weighted down by some stones, and the whole was complete.