Black-Fellow Gossip Also Reports That The Island
Can Be Reached By A Series Of Subterranean Caves That Open Into Daylight
Away At The Cave Creek, Miles Away.
Getting nothing better than one miserable shag by our revolvers, we faced
damper and "Lot's wife" about sundown, returning to camp through a dense
Leichardt pine forest, where we found myriads of bat-like creatures,
inches long, perhaps a foot, hanging head downwards from almost every
branch of every tree.
"Flying foxes," Dan called them, and Sambo helped
himself to a few, finding "Lot's wife" unsatisfying; but the white folk
"drew the line at varmints."
"Had bandicoot once for me Christmas dinner," Dan informed us, making
extra tea "on account of 'Lot's wife'" taking a bit of "washing down."
Then, supper over, the problem of watering the horses had to be solved.
The margins of the lagoons were too boggy for safety, and as the horses,
fearing alligators apparently, refused the river, we had a great business
persuading them to drink out of the camp mixing dish.
The sun was down before we began; and long before we were through with
the tussle, peculiar shrilling cries caught our attention, and, turning
to face down stream, we saw a dense cloud approaching - skimming along
and above the river: a shrilling, moving cloud, keeping all the while to
the river, but reaching right across it, and away beyond the tree tops.
Swiftly it came to us and sped on, never ceasing its peculiar cry; and as
it swept on, and we found it was made up of innumerable flying creatures,
we remembered Dan's "flying foxes." In unbroken continuity the cloud
swept out of the pine forest, along the river, and past us, resembling an
elongated kaleidoscope, all dark colours in appearance; for as they swept
by the shimmering creatures constantly changed places - gliding downwards
as they flew, before dipping for a drink to rise again with swift,
glancing movement, shrilling that peculiar cry all the while.
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