The 36 miles from the Wycliffe to the Bonney Creek is nearly all bad country for cycling over. I was riding at the moment of first sighting the Creek, and a little while afterwards was able to discern the well away out from the farther bank. To the left of the crossing and not far from it, a small column of smoke was rising; and by the fire—two standing, the others sitting or lying down—were half-a-dozen bandicoot-hunters.
I had reached the Creek's bank before observing the blackfellows, and had been on the point of dismounting; but their unexpected presence (I had noticed no fresh tracks), induced me to keep going, and I spurred Diamond cruelly on to make him cross the pebbly bed, past which there promised to be a stretch of good hard level road on which I could—well, manœuvre, should the occasion for doing so arise; although it would have taken much forcible persuasion to induce me leave the water once I reached it.
But Diamond was very weakly and out of condition that afternoon and stuck its rider up right in the middle of the gravelly passage. I came off with a right-pedal dismount and faced over the skeleton barricade only just in time to see the backs of two fast-running niggers before they disappeared into the scrub.
I pushed Diamond up the Bonney's bank and over to the well.
One hesitates to perpetrate an obvious joke about this Bonney water. But I had eaten nothing, with the exception of the "gooseberries" already mentioned, since leaving Barrow's Creek, so now made the quart-pot full of thick soup, and devoured it, before carting in a stock of firewood, for we must camp this night at Bonney Well, notwithstanding its rather evil reputation.
Firewood was scarce, and the coming night gave promise of being chilly; but, a sufficient stock collected, I strolled down to the blackfellows' camping ground. They had left no weapons, but had generously allowed to remain for my inspection (or it was hospitably intended?), one iguana (on the still smouldering embers, and over-done now), six inches intact, and several small pieces of frizzled snake, and one half-picked bone—which last may have been part of a picaninny's arm, so evil did it smell. The flies had taken possession of everything eatable, and there appeared no good and sufficient reason for disturbing them.
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"Better not light a fire," I had been warned, wherever unfriendly blacks are said to visit, especially when camping alone. But when the chilly early morning comes and the marrow in one's bones gets frozen, a fellow having insufficient covering is certain to start a thawing blaze, and take his chances with the waddying niggers. Last night had been warm, but this was a season of sharp changes—with the day time only there invariably came great heat.
As I lay stretched on my sheet of waterproof, I ruminated on many things—on the many narrow escapes from dire disaster of this and other days. How often had I straightened out those pedal cross-bars, which luckily ever seemed to receive, give to, and so dull the hidden timber's sharp upsetting blow! Fortunate to be sure was I in having chosen this priceless treasure of a bicycle frame. Again and again my eyes opened wide in astonishment, when, after some unavoidable stump's onslaught, a tumble, or other mishap, its every part was found to be perfect.
So with my head shoved into the widest part of a pair of pyjama mosquito-curtains, I made certain that my revolver was close at hand, and, being hungry enough to make me feel miserable, was yet quite happy and contented in the knowledge that I was to some extent experiencing the reality of those indefinite possibilities of which I had been forewarned.