“Three o'clock. What a deuce of a row those duck and plover kicked up when you fired! We ought to get a shot or two at them when daylight comes.”
“Harry,” a big, bearded fellow of six feet, nodded as he lit his pipe.
“Yes, we ought to get all we want up along the blind creeks, and we'll have to shift camp soon. It's going to rain before daybreak, and we might as well stay here over to-morrow and give the horses a spell.”
“It's clouding over a bit, but I don't think it means rain.”
“I do. Listen,” and he held up his hand towards the river.
His companion listened, and a low and curious sound—like rain and yet not like rain—a gentle and incessant pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, then a break for a few seconds, then again, sometimes sounding loud and near, at others faintly and far away.
“Sounds like a thousand people knockin' their finger nails on tables. Why, it must be rainin' somewhere close to on the river.”
“No, it's the pattering of mullet, heading up the river—thousands, tens of thousands, aye hundreds of thousands. It is a sure sign of heavy rain. We'll see them presently when they come abreast of us. That queer lip, lap, lip, lap you hear is made by their tails. They sail along with heads well up out of the water—the blacks tell me that they smell the coming rain—then swim on an even keel for perhaps twenty yards or so, and the upper lobe of their tails keeps a constant flapping on the water. You know how clearly you can hear the flip of a single fish's tail in a pond on a quiet night? Well, to-night you'll hear the sound of fifty thousand. Once, when I was prospecting in the Shoalhaven River district I camped with some net fishermen near the Heads. It was a calm, quiet night like this, and something awakened me. It sounded like heavy rain falling on big leaves. 'Is it raining, mate?' I said to one of the fishermen. 'No,' he replied, 'but there's a heavy thunderstorm gathering; and that noise you hear is mullet coming up from the Heads, three miles away.' That was the first time I ever saw fish packed so closely together—it was a wonderful sight, and when they began to pass us they stretched in a solid line almost across the river and the noise they made was deafening. But we must hurry up, lad, shift our traps a bit back into the scrub and up with the tent. Then we'll come back and have a look at the fish, and get some for breakfast.”
The two hardy prospectors (for such they were) were old and experienced bushmen, and soon had their tent up, and their saddles, blankets and guns and provisions under its shelter, just as the first low muttering of thunder hushed the squealing opossums overhead into silence. But, as it died away, the noise of the myriad mullet sounded nearer and nearer as they swam steadily onward up the river.
Ten minutes passed, and then a heavy thunder-clap shook the mighty trees and echoed and re-echoed among the spurs and gullies of the coastal range twenty miles away; another and another, and from the now leaden sky the rain fell in torrents and continued to pour unceasingly for an hour. Inside the tent the men sat and smoked and waited. Then the downfall ceased with a “snap,” the sky cleared as if by magic, revealing the stars now paling before the coming dawn, and the cries of birds resounded through the dripping bush.