Jackeroo became convulsed with laughter, but
the Maluka pulled hard, and I was soon on the right side of the river,
declaring that I preferred experiences when they were over. Later Mac
accounted for his terror with another unconscious flash of humour. "You
never can count on a woman keeping cool when the unexpected happens," he
said.
We offered to haul him over. "It's only a matter of holding on and
keeping cool," we said; but he preferred to swim.
"It's a pity you didn't think of telegraphing this performance," I
shouted across the floods; but, in his relief, Mac was equal to the
occasion.
"I'm glad I didn't," he shouted back gallantly, with a sweeping flourish
of his hat; "it might have blocked you coming." The bushman was learning
a new accomplishment.
As his clothes were to come across on the wire, I was given a hint to
"make myself scarce"; so retired over the bank, and helped Jackeroo with
the dinner camp - an arrangement that exactly suited his ideas of the
eternal fitness of things.
During the morning he had expressed great disapproval that a woman should
be idle, while men dragged heavy weights about. "White fellow,
big-fellow-fool all right," he said contemptuously, when Mac explained
that it was generally so in the white man's country. A Briton of the
Billingsgate type would have appealed to Jackeroo as a man of sound
common sense.
By the time the men-folk appeared, he had decided that with a little
management I would be quite an ornament to society. "Missus bin help ME
all right," he told the Sanguine Scot, with comical self-satisfaction.
Mac roared with delight, and the passage of the Fergusson having swept
away the last lingering torch of restraint he called to the Maluka;
"Jackeroo reckons he's tamed the shrew for us." Mac had been a reader of
Shakespeare in his time.
All afternoon we were supposed to be "making a dash" for the Edith, a
river twelve miles farther on; but there was nothing very dashing about
our pace. The air was stiflingly, swelteringly hot, and the flies
maddening in their persistence. The horses developed puffs, and when we
were not being half-drowned in torrents of rain we were being parboiled
in steamy atmosphere. The track was as tracks usually are "during the
Wet," and for four hours we laboured on, slipping and slithering over the
greasy track, varying the monotony now and then with a floundering
scramble through a boggy creek crossing. Our appearance was about as
dashing as our pace; and draggled, wet through, and perspiring, and out
of conceit with primitive travelling - having spent the afternoon
combining a minimum rate of travelling with a maximum of discomfort - we
arrived at the Edith an hour after sundown to find her a wide eddying
stream.
"Won't be more than a ducking," Mac said cheerfully.
