Clear, beautiful,
limpid, wide-spreading, irregular pools, set in an undulating field of
emerald-green mossy surf, shaded with graceful foliage and gleaming in
the sunlight with exquisite opal tints - a giant necklace of opals, set in
links of emerald green, and thrown down at hazard to fall in loops and
curves within a forest grove.
It is in appearance only the pools are isolated; for although many feet
apart in some instances, they are linked together throughout by a shallow
underground river, that runs over a rocky bed; while the turf, that looks
so solid in many places, is barely a two-foot crust arched over five or
six feet of space and water - a deathtrap for heavy cattle; but a place of
interest to white folk.
The Maluka and I wandered aimlessly in and out among the pools for a
while, and, then coming out unexpectedly from a piece of bush, found
ourselves face to face with a sight that froze all movement out of us for
a moment - the living, moving head of a horse, standing upright from the
turf on a few inches of neck: a grey, uncanny, bodyless head, nickering
piteously at us as it stood on the turf at our feet. I have never seen a
ghost, but I know exactly how I will feel if ever I do.
For a moment we stood spellbound with horror, and the next, realising
what had happened, were kneeling down beside the piteous head. The thin
crust of earth had given way beneath the animal's hindquarters as it
grazed over the turf, and before it could recover itself it had slipped
bodily through the hole thus formed, and was standing on the rocky bed of
the underground river, with its head only in the upper air.
The poor brute was perishing for want of food and water. All around the
hole, as far as the head could reach, the turf was eaten, bare, and
although it was standing in a couple of feet of water it could not get at
it. While the Maluka went for help I brought handfuls of grass, and his
hat full of water, again and again, and was haunted for days with the
remembrance of those pleading eyes and piteous, nickering lips.
The whole camp, black and white, came to the rescue but it was an awful
work getting the exhausted creature out of its death-trap. The hole had
to be cut back to a solid ridge of rocky soil, saplings cut to form a
solid slope from the bed of the river to the ground above, and the poor
brute roped and literally hauled up the slope by sheer force and strength
of numbers. After an hour's digging, dragging, and rope-pulling, the
horse was standing on solid turf, a new pool had been added to the
Springs, and none of us had much hankering for riding over springy
country.
The hour's work among the pools awakened the latent geologist in all of
us, excepting Dan, and set us rooting at the bottom of one of the pools
for a piece of the terraced limestone.
It was difficult to dislodge, and our efforts reminded Dan of a night
spent in the camp of a geologist - a man with many letters after his name.
"Had the chaps heaving rocks round for him half his time," he said.
"Couldn't see much sense in it meself." Dan spoke of the geologist as
"one of them old Alphabets." "Never met a chap with so many letters in
his brand," he explained. "He was one of them taxydermy blokes, you
know, that's always messing round with stones and things."
Out of the water, the opal tints died out of the limestone, and the
geologist in us went to sleep again when we found that all we had for our
trouble was a piece of dirty-looking rock. Like Dan, we saw little sense
in "heaving rocks round," and went back to the camp and the business of
packing up for the homestead.
About next midday we rode into the homestead thoroughfare, where Cheon
and Tiddle'ums welcomed us with enthusiasm, but Cheon's enthusiasm turned
to indignation when he found we were only in for a day or two.
"What's 'er matter?" he ejaculated. "Missus no more stockrider"; but a
letter waiting for us at the homestead made "bush" more than ever
imperative: a letter, from the foreman of the telegraphic repairing line
party, asking for a mob of killers, and fixing a date for its delivery to
one "Happy Dick."
"Spoke just in the nick of time," Dan said; but as we discussed plans
Cheon hinted darkly that the Maluka was not a fit and proper person to be
entrusted with the care of a woman, and suggested that he should
undertake to treat the missus as she should be treated, while the Maluka
attended to the cattle.
Fate, however, interfered to keep the missus at the homestead, to
persuade Cheon that, after all, the Maluka was a fit and proper person to
have the care of a woman, and to find a very present use for the house;
an influenza sore-throat breaking out in the camp, the missus developed
it, and Dan went out alone to find the Quiet Stockman and the "killers"
for Happy Dick.
CHAPTER XV
Before a week was out the Maluka and Cheon had won each other's undying
regard because of their treatment of the missus.
With the nearest doctor three hundred miles away in Darwin, and held
there by hospital routine, the Maluka decided on bed and feeding-up as
the safest course, and Cheon came out in a new character.
As medical adviser and reader-aloud to the patient, the Maluka was
supposed to have his hands full, and Cheon, usurping the position of
sick-nurse, sent everything, excepting the nursing, to the wall.
Rice-water, chicken-jelly, barley-water, egg-flips, beef-tea junket, and
every invalid food he had ever heard of, were prepared, and, with the
Maluka to back him up, forced on the missus; and when food was not being
administered, the pillow was being shaken or the bedclothes straightened.
(The mattress being still on the ends of cows' tails, a folded rug served
in its place). There was very little wrong with the patient, but the
wonder was she did not become really ill through over-eating and want of
rest.
