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.
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