But Our Hopes Died Hard,
And We Sneaked About The Gorgeous Lagoons, Revolvers In Hand, For A Good
Hour, "Larning A Thing Or Two About The Lagoons" From Dan As We Sneaked.
The Red Lily lagoons lie away from the Roper, on either side of it,
wide-spreading and shallow - great
Sheets of water with tall reeds and
rushes about them, and glorious in flowering time with their immense
cup-shaped crimson blossoms clustering on long stalks above great
floating leaves - leaves nearly approaching three feet in diameter I
think; and everywhere about the leaves hover birds and along the margins
of the lagoons stalk countless waders, cranes, jabiroos, and oftentimes
douce native companions.
Being so shallow and wide-spreading, the lagoons would dry up early in
the "dry" were it not that the blacks are able to refill them at will
from the river; for here the Roper indulges in a third "duck-under," so
curious that with a few logs and sheets of bark the blacks can block the
way of its waters and overflow them into the lagoons thereby ensuring a
plentiful larder to hosts of wild fowl and, incidentally, to themselves.
As the mystery of this "duck-under" lies under water, it can only be
described from hearsay. Here, so the blacks say, a solid wall of rock
runs out into the river, incomplete, though, and complicated, rising and
terminating before mid-stream into a large island, which, dividing the
stream unequally, sends the main body of water swirling away along its
northern borders, while the lesser current glides quietly around the
southern side, slipping partly over the submerged wall, and partly
through a great side-long cleft on its face - gliding so quietly that the
cleft can be easily blocked and the wall heightened when the waters are
needed for the lagoons. 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. Like
clouds of drifting fog they swept by, and in such myriads that, even
after the Maluka began to time them, full fifteen minutes passed before
they began to straggle out, and twenty before the last few stragglers
were gone. Then, as we turned up stream to look after them, we found
that there the dense cloud was rising and fanning out over the tree tops.
The evening drink accomplished, it was time to think of food.
Dan welcomed the spectacle as an "impromptu bit of education. Learnt
something meself, even," he said with lordly superiority. "Been out-bush
forty years and never struck that before "; and later, as we returned to
camp, he declared it "just knocked spots off De Rougemont."
But it had taken so long to persuade the horses that a drink could
proceed out of a mixing dish, that it was time to turn in by then; and
Dan proceeded to clear a space for a sleeping ground with a tomahawk.
"Seems no end to education once you start," he chuckled, hacking at a
stubborn tussock. "Reckon no other woman ever learned to make a bed with
a tomahawk." Then Sambo created a diversion by asking for the loan of a
revolver before taking a message to the blacks' camp.
"Big mob bad fellow black fellow sit down longa island," he explained;
and Dan, whimsical under all circumstances, "noticed the surprise party
wasn't exactly going off without a hitch." "Couldn't have fixed up better
for them if they've got a surprise party of their own up their sleeves,"
he added ruefully, looking round at the dense wall of grass about us; and
as he and the Maluka swung the two nets not six feet apart, we were all
of one mind that "getting murdered was an experience we could do nicely
without." Then Sambo returning and swinging his net in the narrow space
between the two others, set Dan chuckling again. "Doesn't mean to make a
target of himself," he said; but his chuckle died out when Sambo,
preparing to curl up in the safest place in the camp, explained his
presumption tersely by announcing that "Monkey sit down longa camp."
Monkey was a law unto himself, and a very unpleasant law, being a reputed
murderer several times over, and when he and his followers were about,
white men saw to their rifles; and as we turned in we also agreed "that
this wasn't exactly the kind of nigger hunt we had set out for." "It
makes a difference when the other chap's doing the hunting, Sool'em, old
girl," Dan added, cautioning her to keep her "weather eye open," as he
saw to his rifle and laid it, muzzle outwards, in his net.
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