“What would be the use of moaning and sighing, I should like to know?” asked Harry. “I always like to make the best of things. The flood won’t last for ever. It is sure to go down in two or three days or a week at the most, and in the meantime we must make ourselves comfortable where we are.”
“Comfortable, indeed! up a fig-tree with nothing to eat,” groaned Hector.
“Well, well, old fellow, things are not so bad as that. Here’s a bit of damper to stay your appetite until we can catch a ’possum or a laughing jackass for dinner;” and Harry produced one of the dampers which he had stowed away in his pocket.
This somewhat consoled Hector, who had hitherto declared that he could never touch such doughy stuff, although he ate his share eagerly, as did Reggy his.
“It may be a satisfaction for you to know that I have got some more,” said Harry; “but it won’t do to eat them all up at once; we must put ourselves on an allowance, or we may have to starve at last. Now let us see how things are getting along.”
Harry looked out from the leafy covert in which the three lads had ensconced themselves high up among the forks of the huge tree. The flood was still surging on, setting towards the south-east, and spreading farther and farther over the country. He was grieved to see a number of bullocks floating by, showing that the flood must be sweeping over some of the pastures, and have carried them off before they could be driven on to the higher ground. They were in all probability his father’s. Their loss must inevitably be very heavy. Their house and the greater part of their furniture was gone. How many heads of cattle he could not calculate. Other settlers farther down must have suffered in the same degree, perhaps in a still greater.
“We ought to be thankful that the lives of all the family have been saved, and three drays full of property. If father hadn’t been wide awake, they would have been lost too,” said Harry. At last he caught sight of some pigs feeding on the shore. “Well, those fellows have saved themselves, at all events, and I see some hens, too, in those trees; well, matters might be worse, we must acknowledge that.”
Reggy agreed with him, but nothing would comfort Hector; his only remark was that—“It is a horrible, detestable country; if I can once get out of it I won’t come back in a hurry.”
“Three little blackbirds sat in a tree—Singing, heigh-ho, heigh-ho, fiddle-de-dee,” sang Harry. “Now I vote we make a nest for ourselves; as to the water sinking low enough to allow our getting on shore to-night, that’s out of the question. Come, Reggy, help me up with the ladder, we must not let that go; we may find it useful in getting down some day or other, and the rope will help to make our nest.”
They hauled up the ladder and placed it horizontally across the boughs.