Puss! Puss!
Poor Puss! Poor Puss!"
The sound roused a dove in the branches above us, and as she stirred in
her sleep and cooed softly, Mac murmured drowsily: "Move-over-dear,
Move-over dear"; and the dove, taking up the refrain, crooned it again
and again to its mate.
The words of the songs were not Mac's. They belong to the lore of the
bushmen; but he sang or crooned them with such perfect mimicry of tone or
cadence, that never again was it possible to hear these songs of the
Never-Never without associating the words with the songs.
The night was full of sounds, and one by one Mac caught them up, and the
bush appeared to echo him; and leaning half drowsily, against the
pack-saddles and swags, we listened until we slipped into one of those
quiet reveries that come so naturally to bush-folk. Shut in on all sides
by bush and tall timber, with the rushing river as sentinel, we seemed in
a world all our own - a tiny human world, with a camp fire for its hub;
and as we dreamed on, half conscious of the moonlight and shoutings, the
deep inner beauty of the night stole upon us. A mystical, elusive beauty.
difficult to define, that lay underneath and around, and within the
moonlight - a beauty of deep nestling shadows, crooning whispers, and soft
rustling movement.
For a while we dreamed on, and then the Maluka broke the silence. "The
wizard of the Never-Never has not forgotten how to weave his spells while
I've been south," he said. "It won't be long before he has the missus in
his toils. The false veneer of civilisation is peeling off at a great
rate."
I roused as from a trance; and Mac threw a sharp, searching glance at me,
as I sat curled up against a swag. "You're right," he laughed; "there's
not a trace of the towney left." And rising to "see about fixing up
camp," he added: "You'd better look out, missus! Once caught, you'll
never get free again. We're all tethered goats here. Every time we make
up our minds to clear out, something pulls us back with a jerk."
"Tethered goats!" Mac called us, and the world must apply the simile as
it thinks fit. The wizard of the Never-Never weaves his spells, until
hardships, and dangers, and privations, seem all that make life worth
living; and then holds us "tethered goats"; and every time the town calls
us with promises of gaiety, and comfort, and security, "something pulls
us back with a jerk" to our beloved bush.
There was no sign of rain; and as bushmen only pitch tent when a deluge
is expected, our camp was very simple: just camp sleeping mosquito-nets,
with calico tops and cheese net for curtains - hanging by cords between
stout stakes driven into the ground. "Mosquito pegs," the bushmen call
these stakes.
Jackeroo, the unpoetical, was even then sound asleep in his net; and in
ten minutes everything was "fixed up." In another ten minutes we had
also "turned in," and soon after I was sound asleep, rolled up in a
"bluey," and had to be wakened at dawn.
"The river's still rising," Mac announced by way of good-morning. "We'll
have to bustle up and get across, or the water'll be over the wire, and
then we'll be done for."
Bustle as we would, however "getting across" was a tedious business. It
took nearly an hour's hustling and urging and galloping before the horses
could be persuaded to attempt the swim, and then only after old Roper had
been partly dragged and partly hauled through the back-wash by the
amphibious Jackeroo.
Another half-hour slipped by in sending the horses' hobbles across on the
pulley that ran on the wire, and in the hobbling out of the horses.
Then, with Jackeroo on one side of the river, and the Maluka and Mac on
the other, swags, saddles, packbags, and camp baggage went over one by
one; and it was well past mid-day before all was finished.
Then my turn came. A surcingle - one of the long thick straps that keep
all firm on a pack-horse - was buckled through the pulley, and the Maluka
crossed first, just to test its safety. It was safe enough; but as he
was dragged through the water most of the way, the pleasantness of
"getting across" on the wire proved a myth.
Mac shortened the strap, and then sat me in it, like a child in a swing.
"Your lighter weight will run clear of the water," he said, with his
usual optimism. "It's only a matter of holding on and keeping cool"; and
as the Maluka began to haul he added final instructions. "Hang on like
grim death, and keep cool, whatever happens," he said.
I promised to obey, and all went well until I reached mid-stream. Then,
the wire beginning to sag threateningly towards the water, Mac flung his
whole weight on to his end of it, and, to his horror, I shot up into the
air like a sky-rocket.
"Hang on! Keep cool!" Mac yelled, in a frenzy of apprehension, as he
swung on his end of the wire. 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.
