It Was Then Two O'clock, And Our Last Drink Had Been At Breakfast - Soon
After Sun-Up; And For Another
Hour we pegged wearily on, with that seven
hours' drouth done horses, the beating sun of a Territory October
overhead,
Brown stretched across the Maluka's knees on the verge of
apoplexy, and Sool'em panting wearily on. With the breaking of her leg
little Tiddle'ums had ended her bush days, but as she lost in bush craft
she gained in excellency as a fence personifier.
By three o'clock we struck water in the Punch Bowl - a deep, volcanic
hole, bottomless, the blacks say, but apparently fed beneath by the
river; but long before then Dan's chuckle had died out, and soliloquies
had ceased to amuse him.
At the first sight of the water we revived, and as Brown and Sool'em lay
down and revelled on its margin, Dan "took a pull as an introduction,"
and then, after unpacking the team and getting the fire going for the
billy, he opened out the tucker-bags, having decided on a "fizz" as a
"good quencher."
"Nothing like a fizz when you've got a drouth on," he said, mixing soda
and cream-of-tartar into a cup of water, and drinking deeply. As he
drank, the "fizz" spattered its foam all over his face and beard, and
after putting down the empty cup with a satisfied sigh, he joined us as
we sat on the pebbly incline, waiting for the billy to boil, and with the
tucker-bags dumped down around and about us.
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