Our turnout was rather a curious one. The season was dry, and, feed being scarce, Treloar had concluded that, at such a time, a bullock would be better able to eke out a living than a horse. Therefore, a working bullock drew our tilted cart about the country.
‘You see, my boy,’ said Treloar, when deciding on the purchase, ‘an ox is a beggar that always seems to have something to chew. Turn a horse out where there’s no grass, and he’ll probably go to the deuce before morning. But your ox, now, after a good look around, seeing he’s [73] ]struck a barren patch, ’ll draw on his reserves, bring up something from somewhere, and start chewing away like one o’clock. That comforts his owner. I vote for the ox. He may be slow, but he generally appears to have enough in his stomach to keep his jaws going; and, in a dry time, that is a distinct advantage.’
So Eclipse was bought, I merely stipulating that Treloar should always drive.
I have an idea, that, after a while, as the old ‘worker’ sauntered along, regarding the perspiring Harry, and his exhortations and exclamations, often in Hindustani, with a mild stare of surprise, as he slowly stooped for a dry tussock, or reached aloft for an overhanging branch, the latter somewhat repented him of his experiment. But he never said so. And, to do him justice, Eclipse was not a bad ‘ox’; and, when he could get nothing better, justified Harry’s expectations by seeming able to chew stones. But his motto was decidedly festina lente.
Yamnibar, ‘Old Yamnibar,’ at last. Behind us, on the far inland river, we had left a busy scene of activity. Hurrying crowds of men, the whirr of a thousand windlasses, the swish of countless cradles, and the ceaseless pounding by night and by day of the battery stamps. And now what a contrast!
A wide, trackless valley, covered with grave-like mounds, on which grass grew rankly; with ruined buildings and rotting machinery, and, here and there, pools of stagnant water, whilst the only thing save the sweep of the wind that reached our ears was a distant rhythmical moaning, coming very sadly in that desolate place—the [74] ]sounding of the sea on the rock-bound coast not far away.
The only signs of life, as Eclipse, pausing now and again, and taking a ruminative survey of the valley, drew us by degrees down the sloping hills, were the buglings of a squad of native companions flying heavily towards the setting sun.
‘What a dismal hole!’ I muttered, as the ‘ox,’ spying some green rushes, bolted at top speed—about a mile an hour—towards them.
‘Let’s try and find a golden one,’ laughed my mercurial friend. ‘Here we have a whole gold-field to ourselves. Just think of it! “Lords of the fowl and the brute”—Eclipse and Kálee and the bralgas. Take the old chap out of the gharri, and we’ll pitch our camp.’
I ought to have spoken of Kálee long ago. Indeed, when one comes to think of it, I ought to have called this story after her. But man is an ungrateful animal—worse than most dogs. Not that the great deerhound with the faithful eyes, who might have stepped out of one of Landseer’s pictures, was forgotten—far from it. But for her we should possibly now, both of us, be bundles of dry bones, with all sorts of underground small deer making merry amongst them.