The Farther Up The
Sapling You Climb, The Nearer You Get To The Ground."
Then he favoured us with one of his word-pictures:
"There was the sapling
bending like a weeping willow," he said, "and there was the stag
underneath it, looking up at me and asking if he could do anything for
me, taking a poke at me boot now and then, just to show nothing would be
no bother, and there was me, hanging on to the sapling, and leaning
lovingly over him, telling him not to go hanging round, tiring himself
out on my account; and there was the other chaps - all light
weights - laughing fit to split, safe in their saplings. 'Twasn't as
funny as it looked, though," he assured us, finding us unsympathetic,
"and nobody was exactly sorry when one of the lads on duty came along to
hear the fun, and stock-whipped the old poker back to the mob."
The Maluka and the Dandy soon proved it was nothing to be "treed."
"Happens every time a beast's hauled out of a bog, from all accounts,
that being the only thanks you get for hauling 'em out of the mess." Then
Dan varied the recital with an account of a chap getting skied once who
forgot to choose a tree before beginning the hauling business, and
immediately after froze us into horror again with the details of two
chaps "lying against an old rotten log with a mob of a thousand going
over 'em "; and we were not surprised to hear that when they felt well
enough to sit up they hadn't enough arithmetic left between 'em to count
their bruises.
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