“'Tis the gift of second sight you have,” said Jim admiringly. “A few hundred years ago you'd have got yourself ducked as a witch or something.”
“Oh, Wally and Brownie were always twin souls; no wonder each knows what the other is thinking of,” Norah said, laughing. “It all sounds exactly true, at any rate. Boys, what a pity you can't land in uniform—wouldn't they all love to see you!”
“Can't do it,” Jim said. “Too long since we were shot out of the army; any enterprising provost-marshal could make himself obnoxious about it.”
“I know—but I'm sorry,” answered Norah. “Brownie won't be satisfied unless she sees you in all your war paint.”
“We'll put it on some night for dinner,” Jim promised. He peered suddenly into the darkness. “There's a moving light—it's the pilot steamer coming out for us.”
They watched the light pass slowly from the dim region that meant the Heads, until, as the pilot boat swung out through the Rip to where the Nauru lay, her other lights grew clear, and presently her whole outline loomed indistinctly, suddenly close to them. She lay to across a little heaving strip of sea, and presently the pilot was being pulled across to them by a couple of men and was coming nimbly up the Nauru's ladder, hand over hand. He nodded cheerily at his welcome—a fusillade of greetings from every “digger” who could find a place at the railings, and a larger number who could not, but contented themselves with shouting sweet nothings from behind their comrades. A lean youngster near Jim Linton looked down enviously at the retreating boat.
“If I could only slide down into her, an' nick off to the old Alvina over there, I'd be home before breakfast,” he said. “Me people live at Queenscliff—don't it seem a fair cow to have to go past 'em, right up to Melbourne?”
The pilot's head appeared above on the bridge, beside the captain's, and presently the Nauru gathered way, and, slowly turning, forged through the tossing waters of the Rip. Before her the twin lights of the Heads opened out; soon she was gliding between them, and under the silent guns of the Queenscliff forts, and past the twinkling house lights of the little seaside town. There were long coo-ees from the diggers, with shrill, piercing whistles of greeting for Victoria; from ashore came faint answering echoes. But the four people from Billabong stood silently, glad of each other's nearness, but with no words, and in David Linton's heart and Norah's was a great surge of thankfulness that, out of many perils, they were bringing their boys safely home.
The Nauru turned across Port Phillip Bay, and presently they felt the engines cease, and there came the rattle of the chain as the anchor shot into the sea.
“As the captain thought,” said Jim. “He fancied they'd anchor us off Portsea for the night and bring us up to Port Melbourne in the morning, after we'd been inspected. Wouldn't it be the limit if some one developed measles now, and they quarantined us!”