Nobody else had heard anything to show it, but the sergeant steered the boat alongside the roof, and then they all heard thumps against it, and muffled shouts of “Holy murther! Hooroo! Bad luck to ye!” They pulled the sheets of sodden bark off, and pulled out an old Irish shepherd, who had been bumping up against the rafters, astride upon a box, with a rum-bottle in his fist, like the publican’s Bacchus on his barrel.
The water shoaled as the boat neared the top of Macpherson’s Hill. On the sloppy ground a score or two of men, women, and children had congregated and had managed to light a fire. They had two or three pannikins and some bottles and quart pots amongst them, and were drinking and handing one another tea and grog in a strange, stupefiedly tranquil fashion. There were snakes on the little island also, but they were too scared to bite; and drenched native cats, and quail, and bush-rats, and swamp-parrots, and bandicoots, and diamond-sparrows, and lizards, and spiders, and scorpions, and green and yellow frogs, and centipedes, and praying Mantises, were muddled up in a very miserable “happy family.”
As soon as the people on the little island saw that the boat grounded within a couple of yards of its brink, they woke up from their trance, and rushed into the water, clamorously demanding that either themselves, or somebody they cared for more than they did for themselves, should be carried off first. The sergeant had to make his men back water, and threaten to carry nobody, before he could quiet the poor bewildered creatures, made drunk by sudden hope. Then they, together with the Irish shepherd, were carried over by instalments to a point of undrowned land nearer than what remained above water of Jerry’s Town (Harry and Donald meanwhile staying on the island, and tucking into the tea and stale damper given them, for they were as hungry and thirsty as hunters). Then the boat at last came back, and carried them to Jerry’s Town, with the man and woman, and two scared shivering little children that had been taken off the shea-oak.
The rain did not cease until the following Thursday, and although, when it did cease, the flood went down almost as rapidly as it had risen, a fearful amount of damage had been done on and about Jerry’s Flats. Several lives had been lost. Scores of acres had been washed away bodily, or smothered in white sand. Houses, huts, sheds, fences, had utterly vanished. The flooded buildings that had stood out the flood looked like sewers when the waters went down. A good many of the “cockatoo settlers” were temporarily ruined, and had to petition the Government, through the hon. member for the Kakadua, for seed-corn; living, and re-making some kind of a home meanwhile, on the alms they got from the relief committees. But on the other hand, some of the river-side farms were made richer than ever by the shiploads of fat soil that had been left on them, and it was like magic to see how rapidly the bush, that had been as dry as a calcined bone a few days before, became green again when the sun shone out once more.
“A nice climate yours is, isn’t it?” I said to Harry, when we were talking over our flood adventures.
“Look at the country now,” he retorted, triumphantly. “You couldn’t beat that in slow old England, where it’s always dribbling. It does rain here when it does rain, and then it’s over.”
“Hech, lad! we should be nane the waur o’ a little mair equal division,” commentated the more cautiously patriotic Donald, who talked mongrel Scotch when he became philosophical. “It wasna sae gey fine when we grippit the lum out yonder.”
VIII.
A BUSH GRAVE.
One day Harry and Donald had been sent a good way from home to drive in a small mob of cattle, to swell the large one which Mr. Lawson was mustering at Wonga-Wonga for another overland trip to Port Phillip. The shortest cut to where they expected to find the cattle was over a high ridge—so high that on the crest there were very few trees, and those very little ones, sheltering in hollows like sentries in their boxes. In winter snow lies on the ridge, but it was not winter then, and the boys and their horses both thought the air deliciously cool, and the short grass and tiny Alpine herbs deliciously green, when they had scrambled up the rugged mountain-track, and stood panting on the top. A great ocean of dark wood, with here and there a shoal-like patch of flat or clearing, spread on all sides beneath them. Of course, the cattle were not to be driven home that way, but to be headed round a spur of the ridge that ran into the plain at its foot seven or eight miles off. An easy gully there ran through the range of hills. As the boys went down the ridge, however, they saw a mob of cattle, wild cattle, some turned, and some born so. The “Rooshians” stood stock-still for a minute, looking at the intruders with red angry eyes, as if they meditated a charge; but the boys cracked their stockwhips, and then off went the Rooshians, shaking the ground as they thundered along. The boys saw a little mob of wild horses, too—descended from stray tame ones, like the American mustangs. Only one of these, a mare, seemed ever to have been even nominally tame. There was just a trace of a brand on her off flank; but the rest apparently had never had their skins scarred by a branding-iron, or their hoofs singed or cramped with a shoe. There were three or four mares in the mob, and a stallion, and a score or so of foals of different sizes. They were all as plump as plums, and yet they galloped off like the wind, with their long tails sweeping the ground, and their great curly manes tossing like waves about their necks and eyes.
A little farther down the boys came to a hollow full of kangaroo-grass, and a mob of mouse-coloured, deer-eyed kangaroo were camped in it. Some were nibbling the spiky brown grass, with their fore feet folded under them like hill sheep. Some were patting one another, and tumbling one another over like kittens. Others were watching in a ring two “old men” that were fighting. One of the boxers was a nearly grey “old man,” with a regular Roman nose; the other was darker and younger, but nearly as tall, and so he did not intend to let old Roman-nose cock over him any more. The old does were looking on as if they hoped their contemporary would win, but the darkie seemed the favourite of the young “flying does.” The two bucks stood up to each other, and hit out at each other, and tried to get each other’s head “into chancery” in prize-ring style; but sometimes they jabbered at each other, just like two Whitechapel vixens, and they gave nasty kicks at each other’s bellies, too, with their sharp-clawed hind feet. They were so taken up with their fight that they let the boys watch it for nearly five minutes. When they found out, however, that they were being watched, they parted sulkily, and hopped off to “have it out” somewhere else, as fighting schoolboys slope when they see a master coming, or fighting street-boys when they see a policeman. After them hopped the rest of the mob, and Harry and Donald gave chase to one of the does. She had come back to pick up her “Joey.” The little fellow jumped into her pouch head foremost like a harlequin, and then up came his bright eyes and cocked ears above the edge of the pocket, and away Mrs. Kangaroo went with her baby. She tried hard to carry him off safe, but the boys had got an advantage over her at starting, and threatened to head her off from the rest of the mob. Into her apron-pocket went Mrs. Kangaroo’s fore paw, and out came poor little Master Kangaroo. The mother was safe then, but it would have been easy to capture the fat, half-stunned baby. The boys, however, did not wish to encumber themselves with a pet, and, besides, they could not help pitying both the baby and his mamma. So they turned their horses’ heads, and presently, when they looked back, they saw the doe watching them, and then bounding to pick up once more the Joey she had “dinged.”