“Could you get them off?” Wally asked.
“Oh, most of them. Where the flood wasn’t very deep we just drove the big cart in and loaded them into it. It was too deep in a lot of places, and we had to get the old flat-bottomed boat from the lagoon near the house and go paddling over the paddocks. That was all right, but the stupid brutes wouldn’t let themselves be saved, if they could help it; whether it was cart or boat they disliked it equally, and we had to swim after half of them—they simply hurled themselves into the water rather than be rescued. And when it comes to life-saving in pretty turbulent flood-water, you can’t find anything much more unpleasantly awkward than a big woolly Shropshire, very indignant at not being allowed to drown.”
“Jolly sort of job,” commented Wally. “Water cold?”
Jim gave a shiver of remembrance.
“Well, it was chiefly snow-water,” he answered “I don’t want to strike anything much colder. We were in and out of it all day for three days and the wonder was that some of us didn’t die—poor old Murty finished up with a shocking bad cold. My share was earache, and that was bad enough. But we had a job the week after that was nearly as exciting.”
“What was that?”
“Well, the flood-water went back, leaving a line of débris right across the paddock—a solid belt of rubbish about six feet wide, made of reeds, and sticks and leaves, and all the small stuff the water could gather up as it came over the grass. Dry reeds were the basis of it—there must have been tons of them. Then we had a few days of early spring weather—you know those queer little bursts of almost hot days we get sometimes. I was standing still on this layer of rubbish one morning, looking at a bullock across the paddock when I felt something on my leg—looked down, and it was a tiger-snake!”
“Whew-w!” whistled Wally.
“Only a little chap—but any tiger-snake is big enough to be nasty,” Jim said. “It seemed puzzled by my leather gaiter; I kicked it off and picked up a stick to kill it. And I nearly picked up another snake!”
“Some people are never satisfied,” Wally said, severely. “Were you trying to qualify for a snake-charmer?”