We of the Never-Never Part 2

Although it was only sixty-five miles to the Katherine it took us exactly three days to travel the distance. Mac called it a "tip-top record for the Wet," and the Maluka agreed with him; for in the Territory it is not the number of miles that counts, but what is met with in those miles.

During the first afternoon we met so many amiable-looking watercourses, that the Sanguine Scot grew more and hopeful about crossing the Fergusson that night. "We'll just do it if we push on," he said, after a critical look at the Cullen, then little more than a sweet, shady stream. "Our luck's dead in. She's only just moving. Yesterday's rain hasn't come down the valleys yet."

We pushed on in the moonlight; but when we reached the Fergusson, two hours later, we found our luck was "dead out," for "she" was up and running a banker.

Mac's hopes sank below zero. "Now we've done it," he said ruefully, looking down at the swirling torrent, "It's a case of 'wait-a-while'

after all."

But the Maluka's hopes always died hard. "There's still the Government yacht," he said, going to a huge iron punt that lay far above high-water mark. Mac called it a forlorn hope, and it looked it, as it lay deeply sunk in the muddy bank.

It was an immense affair, weighing over half a ton, and provided by a thoughtful Government for the transit of travellers "stuck up" by the river when in flood. An army of roughriders might have launched it, but as bushmen generally travel in single file, it lay a silent reproach to the wisdom of Governments.

Some jester had chalked on its sides "H.M.S. Immovable"; and after tugging valiantly at it for nearly half an hour, the Maluka and Mac and Jackeroo proved the truth of the bushman's irony.

There was no choice but a camp on the wrong side of the river, and after "dratting things" in general, and the Cullen in particular, Mac bowed to the inevitable and began to unpack the team, stacking packbags and saddles up on the rocks off the wet gra.s.s.

By the time the billy was boiling he was trying hard to be cheerful, but without much success. "Oh, well," he said, as we settled down round the fire, "this is the Land of Plenty of Time, that's one comfort. Another whole week starts next Sunday"; then relapsing altogether he added gloomily; "We'll be spending it here, too, by the look of things."

"Unless the missus feels equal to the horse's-tail trick" the Maluka suggested.

The missus felt equal to anything BUT the tail trick and said so; and conversation flagged for a while as each tried to hit upon some way out of the difficulty.

Suddenly Mac gave his thigh a prodigious slap. "I've struck it!" he shouted, and pointing to a thick wire rope just visible in the moonlight as it stretched across the river from flood bank to flood bank, added hesitatingly: "We send mail-bags--and--valuables over on that when the river's up."

It was impossible to mistake his meaning, or the Maluka's exclamation of relief, or that neither man doubted for moment that the woman was willing to be flung across deep, swirling river on a swaying wire; and as many a man has appeared brave because he has lacked the courage to own to his cowardice, so I said airily that "anything better than going back," and found the men exchanging glances.

"No one's going back," the Maluka said quietly: and then I learned that the Wet does not "do things by half." Once they began to move the flood waters must have come down the valleys in tidal waves, the Maluka explained. "The Cullen we've just left will probably be a roaring torrent by now."

"We're stuck between two rivers: that's what's happened," Mac added savagely. "Might have guessed that miserable little Cullen was up to her old sneaking ways." And to explain Mac's former "dratting," the Maluka said: "It's a way the rivers have up here. They entice travellers over with smiles and promises, and before they can get back, call down the flood waters and shut them in."

"I'm glad I thought of the wire," Mac added cheerfully, and slipped into reminiscences of the Wet, drawing the Maluka also into experiences. And as they drifted from one experience to another, forced camps for days on stony outcrops in the midst of seas of water were touched on lightly as hardly worth mentioning; while "eating yourself out of tucker, and getting down to water-rats and bandicoots," compared favourably with a day or two spent in trees or on stockyard fences. As for crossing a river on a stout wire rope! After the first few reminiscences, and an incident or two in connection with "doing the horse's-tail trick," that appeared an exceedingly safe and pleasant way of overcoming the difficulty, and it became very evident why women do not travel "during the Wet."

It was a singularly beautiful night, s.h.i.+mmering with warm tropical moonlight, and hoa.r.s.e with the shouting of frogs and the roar of the river--a night that demanded attention; and, gradually losing interest in hair-breadth escapes from drowning, Mac joined in the song of the frogs.

"Quar-r-rt pot! Quar-r-rt pot!" he sang in hoa.r.s.e, strident minims, mimicking to perfection the shouts of the leaders, leaning with them on the "quar-r-rt" in harsh gutturals, and spitting out the "pot" in short, deep staccatos. Quicker and quicker the song ran, as the full chorus of frogs joined in. From minims to crotchets, and from crotchets to quavers it flowed, and Mac, running with it, gurgled with a new refrain at the quavers. "More-water, more-water, hot-water, hot-water," he sang rapidly in tireless reiteration, until he seemed the leader and the frogs the followers, singing the words he put into their mouths. Lower and lower the chorus sank, but just before it died away, an old bull-frog started every one afresh with a slow, booming "quar-r-rt pot!" and Mac stopped for breath. "Now you know the song of the frogs," he laughed. "We'll teach you all the songs of the Never-Never in time; listen!" and listening, it was hard to believe that this was our one-time telegraphing bush-whacker. Dropping his voice to a soft, sobbing moan, as a pheasant called from the shadows, he lamented with it for "Puss! Puss! 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 a.s.sociating 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 hards.h.i.+ps, 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.

"I'm glad I didn't," he shouted back gallantly, with a sweeping flourish of his hat; "it might have blocked you coming." The bushman was learning a new accomplishment.

As his clothes were to come across on the wire, I was given a hint to "make myself scarce"; so retired over the bank, and helped Jackeroo with the dinner camp--an arrangement that exactly suited his ideas of the eternal fitness of things.

During the morning he had expressed great disapproval that a woman should be idle, while men dragged heavy weights about. "White fellow, big-fellow-fool all right," he said contemptuously, when Mac explained that it was generally so in the white man's country. A Briton of the Billingsgate type would have appealed to Jackeroo as a man of sound common sense.

By the time the men-folk appeared, he had decided that with a little management I would be quite an ornament to society. "Missus bin help ME all right," he told the Sanguine Scot, with comical self-satisfaction.

Mac roared with delight, and the pa.s.sage of the Fergusson having swept away the last lingering torch of restraint he called to the Maluka; "Jackeroo reckons he's tamed the shrew for us." Mac had been a reader of Shakespeare in his time.

All afternoon we were supposed to be "making a dash" for the Edith, a river twelve miles farther on; but there was nothing very das.h.i.+ng about our pace. The air was stiflingly, swelteringly hot, and the flies maddening in their persistence. The horses developed puffs, and when we were not being half-drowned in torrents of rain we were being parboiled in steamy atmosphere. The track was as tracks usually are "during the Wet," and for four hours we laboured on, slipping and slithering over the greasy track, varying the monotony now and then with a floundering scramble through a boggy creek crossing. Our appearance was about as das.h.i.+ng as our pace; and draggled, wet through, and perspiring, and out of conceit with primitive travelling--having spent the afternoon combining a minimum rate of travelling with a maximum of discomfort--we arrived at the Edith an hour after sundown to find her a wide eddying stream.

"Won't be more than a ducking," Mac said cheerfully. "Couldn't be much wetter than we are," and the Maluka taking the reins from my hands, we rode into the stream Mac keeping behind, "to pick her up in case she floats off," he said, thinking he was putting courage into me.

It wasn't as bad as it looked; and after a little stumbling and plunging and drifting the horses were clambering out up the opposite bank, and by next sundown--after scrambling through a few more rivers--we found ourselves looking down at the flooded Katherine, flowing below in the valley of a rocky gorge.

Sixty-five miles in three days, against sixty miles an hour of the express trains of the world. "Speed's the thing," cries the world, and speeds on, gaining little but speed; and we bush-folk travel our sixty miles and gain all that is worth gaining--excepting speed.

"Hand-over-hand this time!" Mac said, looking up at the telegraph wire that stretched far overhead. "There's no pulley here. Hand-over-hand, or the horse's-tail trick."

But Mine Host of the "Pub" had seen us, and running down the opposite side of the gorge, launched a boat at the river's brink; then pulling up-stream for a hundred yards or so in the backwash, faced about, and raced down and across the swift-flowing current with long, sweeping strokes; and as we rode down the steep winding track to meet him, Mac became jocular, and reminding us that the gauntlet of the Katherine had yet to be run, also reminded us that the sympathies of the Katherine were with the stockmen; adding with a chuckle, as Mine Host bore down upon us.

"You don't even represent business here; no woman ever does."

Then the boat grounded, and Mine Host sprang ash.o.r.e--another burly six-foot bushman--and greeted us with a flas.h.i.+ng smile and a laughing "There's not much of her left." And then, stepping with quiet unconcern into over two feet of water, pushed the boat against a jutting ledge for my convenience. "Wet feet don't count," he laughed with another of his flas.h.i.+ng smiles, when remonstrated with, and Mac chuckled in an aside, "Didn't I tell you a woman doesn't represent business here?"