“I’ll block her yet; see if I don’t,” he said confidently. “After all these years on their own, the boys don’t want a woman messing round the place.” And when he set out for the railway along the north track, to face the “escorting trick,” he repeated his assurances. “I’ll block her, chaps, never fear,” he said; and glowering at a “quiet” horse that had been sent by the lady at the Telegraph, added savagely, “and I’ll begin by losing that brute first turn out.”
Chapter 2
From sun-up to sun-down on Tuesday, the train glided quietly forward on its way towards the Never-Never; and from sun-up to sun-down the Măluka and I experienced the kindly consideration that it always shows to travellers: it boiled a billy for us at its furnace; loitered through the pleasantest valleys; smiled indulgently, and slackened speed whenever we made merry with blacks, by pelting them with chunks of water-melon; and generally waited on us hand and foot, the Man-in-Charge pointing out the beauty spots and places of interest, and making tea for us at frequent intervals.
It was a delightful train—just a simple-hearted, chivalrous, weather-beaten old bush-whacker, at the service of the entire Territory. “There’s nothing the least bit officious or standoffish about it,” I was saying, when the Man-in-Charge came in with the first billy of tea.
“Of course not!” he said, unhooking cups from various crooked-up fingers. “It’s a Territorian, you see.”
“And had all the false veneer of civilisation peeled off long ago,” the Măluka said, adding, with a sly look at my discarded gloves and gossamer, “It’s wonderful how quietly the Territory does its work.”
The Man-in-Charge smiled openly as he poured out the tea, proving thereby his kinship with all other Territorians; and as the train came to a standstill, swung off and slipped some letters into a box nailed to an old tree-trunk.
At the far end of the train, away from the engine, the passengers’ car had been placed, and as in front of it a long, long line of low-stacked sinuous trucks slipped along in the rear of the engine, all was open view before us; and all day long, as the engine trudged onwards—hands in pockets, so to speak, and whistling merrily as it trudged—I stood beside the Măluka on the little platform in front of the passengers’ car, drinking in my first deep, intoxicating draught of the glories of the tropical bush.
There were no fences to shut us in; and as the train zig-zagged through jungle and forest and river-valley—stopping now and then to drink deeply at magnificent rivers ablaze with water-lilies—it almost seemed as though it were some kindly Mammoth creature, wandering at will through the bush.
Here and there, kangaroos and other wild creatures of the bush hopped out of our way, and sitting up, looked curiously after us; again and again little groups of blacks hailed us, and scrambled after water-melon and tobacco, with shouts of delight, and, invariably, on nearing the tiny settlements along the railway, we drove before us white fleeing flocks of goats.