“He believes in the great doctrine of cheap and t’other thing,” answered Waldron. “I never could have imagined that sugar of such exceeding blackness was manufactured as we always had there. I used to tell him that some planter distantly related must have worked up his spare niggers in it. He was always giving me lessons in economy. One night he said solemnly, as we were smoking, ‘Look here, Waldron, you’ll never make no money if you use matches to light your pipe when there’s a fire right before you;’ whereupon he placed a coal on the bowl of his and puffed away like a man who had saved a sovereign. Fancy saving the fractional part of a farthing, and then paying a shilling for a glass of bad grog.”
“It sounds absurd,” agreed Jack, “but with colonists of his stamp the grog is exceptional, while the penny wisdom is invariable. And I must say in justice that the Blockhams of our acquaintance generally die rich, having burrowed their way to wealth, mole-blind to the pleasures of the intellect, the claims of sympathy, and the duties of society.”
“Well, we’ll go in for the severest screwing,” said Guy, “when we get hold of this new run, with which we shall make a colossal fortune and a European reputation. I should like to crow over my old governor, bless his old soul!—he always delicately hinted that I should never do any good out here, or anywhere else. Wanted me to take a farm. A farm! Fancy three hundred acres in Oxfordshire, with a score or two of bullocks, and twice as many black-faced Down sheep. Regular cockatooing. I didn’t see it then. Now I’d almost as soon ‘keep a pike.’”
“You’re an adventurous, crusading kind of fellow, I know, Master Guy,” said Jack, reflectively, “and I’m very glad to find another knight-errant. But I’m not sure, all the same, whether both of us might not have gone into the Master of Athelstane business advantageously, and grown heavier and fussier every year, while we looked after our own green fields and these same despised short-horned beeves. However, it’s Kismet, I suppose, that such land and sea rovers should exist, and either plant their standards or fill the breach for other more cautious combatants to walk over. Now, every man to his blanket. Good-night.”
The scrub was passed at length, and, as Jack had prophesied, they descried open country so superior to the character of the district generally as to warrant the expectation of still more splendid discoveries.
The watercourses were larger and the occasional lagoons deeper, and beyond all question permanent. The plains were immense, and though not richly grassed were covered with the best kinds of salsolaceous herbage, known to bushmen as affording better and healthier food for stock than the more enticing-looking green sward.
However, with the insatiable greed of their kind, they were not disposed to content themselves with anything short of the magnificent and exalted standard which they had set up for themselves. So onward and onward still they pressed, though from time to time the existence of “Indian sign” began to be pressed upon their attention by the watchful, uneasy Doorival.
“My word, plenty wild black fellow sit down here,” he exclaimed one day. “Big one tribe—plenty fighting men—you see um track.” Here he pointed to some perfectly invisible imprint upon the hard dry soil. “We better push on, these fellows sneak ’long a camp some night.”
“Then they’ll get pepper,” answered Guy, with his customary contempt of danger. “I could knock over as many of your countrymen, Doorival, with this Terry-rifle as would keep them corroboreeing for a month. All the same, I’d rather they didn’t tackle us just yet.”
“I think we must take rather longer stages,” proposed Jack, “and get out of this hostile country. We haven’t seen the track of cattle or sheep for nearly a week. I suspect we are beyond the furthest-out people.”