Pelican Pool: A Novel

by Sydney Loch

But Mrs. Elliott had her way, though, like a wise woman, she raised no flag of victory. Breakfast over, Power found the way to the yards, caught a horse, saddled it, took a waterbag, some midday tucker and a whip, and rode away at a foot pace across the plain. He spent all day in far places, leaving the homestead when the sun was low, and finding himself several miles away from home when the sun again was climbing down the sky. He never pushed his horse beyond walking pace, but neither did he rest it; and many miles were put behind before the day was done. He passed from point to point, wherever there was water or a clustering of timber, wherever there was chance of coming up with a mob of cattle. He knew that wide country as another man knows the floor of his office, and when he wished kept course as the arrow flies. Once or twice he drew taut the rein, and stared at faint prints upon the ground; and such halt might bring change of direction. He spent the middle of the day on his back in a fair clump of timber, but saddled up again while the sun was far up in the sky.

He judged it to be five o'clock at last, and he was still an hour's ride from home. He was heated to his bones by the long journey in the sun, the coat of his horse was curled with sweat; he was jaded, fagged and thirsty.

He took his hat from his head, and pushed it between the surcingle and the saddle. The sun was losing strength at last; a breeze was finding the way from the South. His shadow and his horse's shadow were growing longer; the crickets were tuning their orchestra against the evening, but in spite of their shrill cries, the plain, which had been hushed all day, had grown more hushed.

He looked again at the sun, which was a bare half-hour from its going down. The red glare dazzled him, and when he dropped his eyes, the white stones on the ground changed to blue. He looked up to get the light from his eyes, and found he was passing under the crag of one of those sudden hills which climb high out of the plain all over that country. It stood above him, lofty, sheer and lonely, grass-covered for a hundred feet of the journey, thence forward to the summit, piled with immense bare boulders, carrying a few shrunken trees.

Looking up, a freak of mind urged him to stand on the highest point there. He slacked rein and got to the ground. A bush stood convenient to hand to secure the horse. He took off the saddle, and rubbed away the saddle mark. Then he turned for the ascent.

The hill lifted up abruptly from the plain, several hundred feet towards the sky. There was no gentle slope of beginning, and Power began a heavy clamber over giant boulders, shabbily clad with coarse clumps of grass. Immense fat spiders watched him from the middle of giant webs strung from rock to rock, lizards and insects hurried in and out of crevices, and shrill voices of crickets met him from above, and came after him from below. The southern breeze was bolder as the journey advanced. Half way up the steep, where the grassed boulders ended and the bare rock began, he stood still for new breath. Already he had gained a strange world, high out of the plain, and the horse was far and puny, among the tumbled rocks, which broke like surf at the foot of the hill.

The summit was high above him yet. He began the journey again, using his hands as well as feet for the last pinch. He was on top at last—a broad, flat space, where a little grass and a few bushes grew, with a patch or two of fine sand among the tumble of rocks. On three sides the hill fell down in steep faces, up one of which he had climbed; but to the South it dropped sheer in a hundred foot precipice to grassed rocks piled up to meet it. Because the sheerness of the fall fascinated, and because that way the breeze blew steadily into his face, Power sat down on the edge of the cliff, with the sun sinking on his right hand.

He who was so used to great distances was filled with wonder and delight. He stared from his high seat. He looked upon an ocean torn up in storm; but it was larger than the seas of his travels. The waves of this ocean were hills cast up from the lap of the plain, as the sea wave is scooped high up by the rage of winds. The resemblance was exact. The country swept up and down for miles and tens of miles, everywhere heaping up its waves and striking them immovable as they leant to their fall. The mellow light of evening turned the bare pasture into ocean green. Only was lacking the grind and swish of waters in rage. It was ocean conceived by giant mind and struck still by giant hand.

Presently, as the first wonder passed away, Power took the details into his eye. It was not all green country on closer look. There were patches of grey and patches of slate where the long sunbeams fell on tall rock faces. There were veins of shining white quartz pushing from the ground, hinting at unknown copper, which one day would be torn from its hiding place. There were red patches of bare earth, which the green seas were seeking to devour. There were greens and greener greens, but, look ever so long, the effect of ocean remained.

It was far down there to the foot of the precipice and to the top of the rocks; and there were other rocky places infinitely farther down, as though making part of another world. Dwarf trees sucked a living from them, and the sunbeams stole the roughness from their face. They would be warm to the touch. At the mouth of every cleft and cave sat a wallaby with pricked ears and black face, performing toilet before moving abroad for the night. Sometimes the little beast sat on a point of rock, holding paws neatly before him, squinting at the sun and turning suddenly to nip his back. Not one took notice of the strange man who watched from so far above.