It was at this telegraph station that I received a message from a fabulously wealthy company of cycle-part makers. My journey, as I have said, was practically at an end. Those "perils" that were so great that failure was, I was told, certain, had been surmounted. Yet, only now, seated at a hotel, I read a curt and, as it seemed to me, impertinent and "catchy" telegram, endeavoring, as I took it, to ferret out of me—unwealthy me—a most valuable advertisement gratis. Up to this moment, when success had been practically achieved, nothing had been heard from that quarter. I regarded it as mean, and answered accordingly.
The company took further action then; but, in view of later developments, it would be meanness on my part now to speak further of a matter which would not deserve mention at all but that it has been made to some extent public property. Only this further: my answer to the telegram has never yet been published!
Without any promise of recompense I gladly did all I could for another firm whose manager had treated me civilly, and who did not wait until danger had been passed before identifying itself with the fortunes of the trip.
* * * *
At the Katherine, where only one night was spent, I refitted myself with wearables from the stock of the widely known hotel and storekeeper; had a swim in the river; then tied boots and other things on Diamond, shouldered the lot and walked across.
The country is flat for ten or twelve miles. Travelling only middling—rather soft. But before the morning was far gone, rough hills were entered and they continued most of the way to Pine Creek (68 miles).
* * * *
It was hazardous to hurry the bicycle over those rocky hills, but Diamond stood the rough experience more than manfully, and jumped the miniature precipices encountered on the down-hill sides without ever loosening a spoke.
At one time, in the very early part of the journey, I favored the notion of entering Palmerston, with the bicycle in a fearfully battered condition—a revolving bundle of splints and copper wires. But how could I? And I found myself proudly exhibiting it everywhere, and finally in a Palmerston shop window as being "better than new."