“What’s that, mate?” asked Swampy.
“Why! I could have sworn I got the flour out in the dish and mixed it before I went for the water,” said the cook, staring at the dish again. “It’s rum what tricks your memory plays on you sometimes.”
“Yes,” said Swampy, showing interest, while the cook got some more flour out into the dish from a bag in the back of the tent. “It is strange. I’ve done the same, thing meself. I suppose it’s the heat that makes us all a bit off at times.”
“Do you cook, then?” asked the surveyors’ cook.
“Well, yes. I’ve done a good bit of it in me time; but it’s about played out. I’m after stragglers now.” (Stragglers are stray sheep missed in the general muster and found about the out paddocks and shorn after the general shearing.)
They had a yarn and Swampy “bit the cook’s ear” for a “bit o’ meat an’ tea an’ sugar,” not forgetting “a handful of flour if yer can spare it.”
“Sorry,” said the cook, “but I can only let you have about a pint. We’re very short ourselves.”
“Oh, that’s all right!” said Swampy, as he put the stuff into his spare bags. “Thank you! Good day!”
“Good day,” said the cook. The cook went on with his work and Swampy departed, catching up the bag of flour from behind the tree as he passed it, and keeping the clump of timber well between him and the surveyors’ camp, lest the cook should glance round, and, noticing the increased bulk of his load, get some new ideas concerning mental aberration.
Nearly every bushman has at least one superstition, or notion, that lasts his time—as nearly every bushman has at least one dictionary word which lasts him all his life. Brummy had a gloomy notion—Lord knows how he got it!—that he should ’a’ gone on the boards if his people hadn’t been so ignorant. He reckoned that he had the face and cut of an actor, could mimic any man’s voice, and had wonderful control over his features. They came to a notoriously “hungry” station, where there was a Scottish manager and storekeeper. Brummy went up to “government house” in his own proper person, had a talk with the storekeeper, spoke of a sick mate, and got some flour and meat. They camped down the creek, and next morning Brummy started to shave himself.