"Down to the bottom, son. She was tryin' to get into the Lakes' entrance in a heavy gale, with a bad cross-sea running. It's not an easy entrance—very narrow, and a nasty bar. The current took her a bit out of her track, an' she got on to a rock, an' went down. It happened mighty quick. There was lots of people in Gippsland as was sorry for the ol' Despatch. She wasn't a beauty, but she'd tramped up and down from Melbourne many a year, and we'd got a liking for her."
He pointed ahead with his pipe-stem.
"We're getting into the lake."
The high banks had changed to flats, across which they could see a broad sheet of water. The land between narrowed to a point; and presently they came out upon the placid waters of a wide lake rippling gently in the evening sunlight. In the reeds near the point great black swans were swimming. They rose as the steamer churned past them and sailed away into the western sky, the clang of their leader's note coming more and more faintly as they became dots on the blue.
"Some people as calls themselves sportsmen shoot those birds," said their new acquaintance scornfully. "Sportsmen, indeed! I'd as soon go out and shoot canaries, they're that tame. And they're no sort of use when they are shot; you'd have to be mighty hungry before you'd eat one.
"'Some people as calls themselves sportsmen shoot those birds.'"
"Are they tough?" Aileen inquired.
"Tough—and fishy. The blacks eat 'em, but they aren't white men's food. It's a shame to kill them. But lots of these bright young chaps that come from Melbourne on a holiday reckon that anything with fur or feathers on is made for them to blaze at. I'd teach 'em a thing or two, if I had me way." The china-blue eyes were suddenly fierce. "Y'see, there's lots of things in the Bush that we get fond of, and it makes us a bit savage to have chaps like them rampaging round! I found one of 'em once trying his hardest to shoot bell-birds!"
"Is that very wicked?" Garth asked innocently.