'Ba'al* mine think it, Ma.s.sa. No rain plenty long time.'

[*ba'al--the Aboriginal negative.]

McKeith sighed. The dark shadow of coming drought is a fearsome spectre on the Never-Never Land.

CHAPTER 7

A COO-EE sounded long, clear, vibrant. Moongarr Bill and Wombo, who had gone on ahead, were fixing camp. Lady Bridget's musical voice caught up the note. She answered it with another COO-EE, to Cudgee's delight.

'My word! Ba'al newchum, that feller white Mary,' said he.

They had rounded a knoll ab.u.t.ting on the green line of ti-trees and swamp oak. It was a barren hump; upon its crest, and alone in barbaric majesty, stood a row of gra.s.s trees silhouetted against the sunset sky.

Weird sentinels of the bridal camp they seemed--tall, thick black trunks like palm-stems, from each of which spread an enormous tuft of gigantic gra.s.s blades green and upright in the middle, grey and jaggled and drooping where they hung over at the bottom. Out of each green heart sprang a great black spear many feet in height.

The stony knoll dropped sheer like a wall. On the other side of it was a s.p.a.ce the size of an amphitheatre, a large part of it spread with soft green gra.s.s, like a carpet, and the rest of the floor scattered with low shrubs and big tussocks. Amongst them was a herb giving out a fragrance, when the feet crushed it, like that of wild thyme. The whole air seemed filled with a blend of aromatic perfumes.

Here was a roofless room, open on one side where a break in the ti-trees showed the sandy bed of the creek, which, at first, to Lady Bridget's fancy, had the appearance of a broad shallow stream. On this side, low rocks with ferns growing in their crannies, edged the stream.

On the opposite sh.o.r.e, one giant eucalyptus stood by itself and cast its shadow across. Beyond, lay the gum-peopled immensity of the bush.

The stony walls of the knoll, curving inward and sheltering a thick growth of ferns and scrubby vegetation, closed in the bridal chamber.

Creepers festooned the rocky ledges and crevices. Here and there, a young sapling slanted forward to greet the morning sun when it should rise behind the hummock.

Moongarr Bill had undone the pack-bags and was building a fire between two large stones. The flames leaped up, the dead twigs crackled. Long years after, Lady Bridget could recall vividly the smell of the dry burning gum leaves--her first experience of a bush campfire.

Close to the fire, under the flank of the rocky knoll the tent was pitched, a roll of blankets and oilskin thrown just within it.

Presently, from the hummock above came the sound of Cudgee's axe. He had felled the youngest of the gra.s.s-trees, and was now chopping off its green tuft. Soon he appeared, carrying a huge bunch of the coa.r.s.e blades of foliage, which he brought to the tent. With an odd mixture of emotions, Lady Bridget watched her husband take the gra.s.s tops from the black boy and spread them carefully on the floor of the tent, heaping up and smoothing the ma.s.s into a bed, upon which he laid the oilskin and then one of the blankets--they were new white blankets, fresh from the store. After that, he set the cushions from the buggy, covering them with the rug, at the head of the couch, making a bolster, and, over that, the one she had had at her back.

'No down pillows or linen sheets allowed in a bush camp-out, my lady Biddy,' he said with a laugh, a half timorous glance at his wife, but her answering smile rea.s.sured him.

'You'll never sleep on a sweeter bed,' he said, sniffing the resinous fragrance of the gra.s.s-tree tops. He would not let her help him with the upper blankets when she wished to lend a hand.

'No, this camp is my own show. Go and look at the scenery until I've got our wigwam in order.'

And she submissively obeyed.

Against the other side of the rock wall, the black boys had built a second fire. The horses were hobbled and grazing along the green border of the creek. The buggy propped up, was covered with a tarpaulin. The pack-bags had disgorged their contents. A miscellaneous heap of camp properties lay on the ground. And now, Cudgee's axe was at work again, stripping a section of bark from a gum tree, for what purpose Lady Bridget did not divine.

She walked down to the creek and stood among the rocks at its edge. She had expected a rippling stream, and, to her disappointment, saw only a broad strip of dry sand, along which Moongarr Bill was mooching, a spade in his hand.

'What are we going to do for water?' she exclaimed.

'Dig for it, my ladyship,' answered Moongarr Bill. 'That's one of the upside-down things in 'Stralia. Here's two of them--mighty queer, come to think of it--the rivers that run underground and the cherries that grow with their stones outside.'

Lady Bridget observed that she was already acquainted with that oft-quoted botanical phenomenon. In her rides around Leichardt's Town she had been shown and had tasted the disagreeable little orange berry which has a hard green k.n.o.b at the end of it and is, for some ironical reason, called a cherry. She also told Moongarr Bill that in England she had seen a dowser searching for hidden springs by means of a forked hazel twig carried in front of him which pointed downwards where there was water and asked why Australians didn't adopt a similar method. At which Moongarr Bill laughed derisively, and said he did not hold with any such hanky-panky.

'Bad luck, Biddy,' McKeith said behind her. 'If there had been the proper amount of rain in these last three or four months, we'd have had the one thing that's wanting now to make this the ideal camp I've had on the top of my fancy--a running creek of pure water. But never mind--the water's there, though you can't see it.... That's got it, Bill!'

For already the sand was darkening and moisture was oozing in the hole Moongarr Bill had been digging, and which he widened gradually into a respectable pool of water. When it had settled down, all the billies were filled and the horses driven to it, whinnying for a drink.

Lady Bridget watched the evening meal being prepared between the two fires--only watched, for she was sternly forbidden to set hand to it.

'No canned goods, nor cooked food,' McKeith said, were allowed at this lay-out. Moongarr Bill was first-cla.s.s at frying steak. He himself was going to boil the quart-pot tea and would give Biddy a demonstration in johnny-cakes, made bush fashion at their own camp fire. The sheet of bark had been cut into sections--one sub-divided into small squares to serve as plates. The inside looked clean as paint, and smelled of Mother Nature's still-room. Colin mixed the flour and water upon the larger sheet and worked up a stiff dough. He kneaded it, slapped it between his broad palms, cut it and baked the cakes in the ashes; then, b.u.t.ter being the only luxury permitted, he split them and b.u.t.tered them; and Lady Bridget found in due time that not even the lightest Scotch scones taste better than bush johnny-cakes.

Quart pot tea, likewise--made also in true bush fashion. First the boiling of the billy--Colin's own particular billy, battered and blackened from much usage--half the battle, he explained, in brewing bush tea. Then, regulation handfuls of tea and brown store sugar thrown in at the precise boiling moment. Now the stirring of the frothing liquid with a fresh gum-twig. Then the blending and the cooling of it--pouring the beverage from one quart pot into another, and finally into the pannikins ready for the drinking.

Proudly, round the rock-flank of the hummock, Moongarr Bill brought fried steak and potatoes steaming in a clean tin dish and done to a turn, then went to cook more for himself at his own camp. They ate off the bark plates. Salt, sugar and mustard came out of small ration bags.

McKeith produced black-handled knives and forks--the last a concession.

And good to taste were the fizzling johnny-cakes and the strong, sweet, milkless tea.

Such was Lady Bridget's real marriage feast.

They were hungry, yet they dallied over the repast. It was the most delicious food she had ever tasted, Bridget said. They made little jokes. He was entranced by her happiness. Joyously she compared this banquet with others she had eaten in great houses and European restaurants, which were the last word in luxury. Oh! how she loved the dramatic contrast of it. Nature was supreme, glorious.... Oh no, no!

never could she hanker after that which she had left behind--for ever.

Because, if ever she were to go back again to the old life, she would be an ugly dried-up old woman for whom the smart world would have no further use....

Then suddenly she became quiet, and busied herself in the tent, while McKeith took out his pipe and smoked in ruminative bliss. When she came back she had no more talk of contrasts or of her old life, no more fantastic outbursts. Indeed, there seemed to have come over her a mood of sweet sobriety, of blushing, womanly shyness.

'Mayn't I be your squaw and help you to wash up?' she said, when he collected the tin pots and pannikins and proceeded to get the camp shipshape. No, she was not to stir a finger towards the dirty work. It was HIS job to-night. Another camping-out time she might play the squaw if she liked. She was not on in this act.

He amused her greatly by his tidy bush methods. The billies were refilled, the ration-bags laid ready for the morning.

Now darkness had fallen. He put more logs on the fire, and the flames blazed up. Then he made up a little pile of johnny-cakes that he had not b.u.t.tered, and covered it with the bark plates. 'We shall have to make an early start, and there'll be no time to bake fresh ones--and no more use for these things,' he said. The square of bark on which he had mixed the dough was in his hands and he was about the fling it among the bushes, but she stopped him.

'No--don't throw it away.... I--I want it for a keepsake, Colin.'

He stared at her in surprise. The red flames threw a strange glow on her face, and made her eyes look very bright.

'My dearest! A sheet of bark!' Then a great light broke on him. The strip of bark dropped from his hands. His arms went out and enfolded the small woman, lifting her almost from the ground as he crushed her against his breast and kissed her lips with the first pa.s.sionate lover's kisses he had ever given her.... 'Oh, my dear--my sweetheart!'

He gave a big, tremulous laugh.... 'There was never any woman in the world like you.... To think of your caring about just a sheet of bark!'

'You made me my first johnny-cakes upon it.... And to-night is the beginning of our married life--and oh, Colin, it is the first time I have felt really married to you, and I want a bit of the bush to remember it by.'

He kissed her again.... The miracle was accomplished. He seemed to have no words in which to say all that filled his heart.

The night sounds of the bush stirred the vast silence. For the first time, Lady Bridget heard the wail of the curlew--a long note, weirdly melancholy. It startled her out of her husband's arms. There were uncanny swishings of wings in the great gum tree on the other side of the creek. And now the clanking of the horses' hobbles which had been dilatory, intermittent, became sharply recurrent. A shout from Moongarr Bill cut short the monotonous corroboree tune which the two black boys had been singing at their camp some little distance away.

'My word, I believe YARRAMAN* break him hobble!'

[*Yarraman--horse.]

At which the boys scampered off through the gra.s.s, and presently came the cracking of a stock whip among the trees.

'It's all right, Moongarr Bill's after them,' said McKeith, as his bride released herself from his arms. 'But if you don't mind darling.

I'd better just see if anything has started the beasts.'