zen rivers to swim, like the head-waters of the M'Alister, in
Gippsland, as nearly drowned the pair of us. There I sat in my saddle
like a man in a dream, lettin' my horse follow Jim's up hill and down
dale, and half the time lettin' go his head and givin' him his own road.
Everything, too, I seemed to notice and to be pleased with somehow.
Sometimes it was a rock wallaby out on the feed that we'd come close
on before we saw one another, and it would jump away almost under the
horse's neck, taking two or three awful long springs and lighting square
and level among the rocks after a drop-leap of a dozen feet, like a cat
jumping out of a window. But the cat's got four legs to balance on and
the kangaroo only two. How they manage it and measure the distance
so well, God only knows. Then an old 'possum would sing out, or a
black-furred flying squirrel--pongos, the blacks call 'em--would come
sailing down from the top of an ironbark tree, with all his stern sails
spread, as the sailors say, and into the branches of another, looking
as big as an eagle-hawk. And then we'd come round the corner of a little
creek flat and be into the middle of a mob of wild horses that had come
down from the mountain to feed at night. How they'd scurry off through
the scrub and up the range, where it was like the side of a house, and
that full of slate-bars all upon edge that you could smell the hoofs of
the brumbies as the sharp stones rasped and tore and struck sparks out
of them like you do the parings in a blacksmith's shop.

Then, just as I thought daybreak was near, a great mopoke flits close
over our heads without any rustling or noise, like the ghost of a
bird, and begins to hoot in a big, bare, hollow tree just ahead of us.
Hoo-hoo! hoo-hoo! The last time I heard it, it made me shiver a bit. Now
I didn't care. I was a desperate man that had done bad things, and was
likely to do worse. But I was free of the forest again, and had a good
horse under me; so I laughed at the bird and rode on.

Chapter 21

Daylight broke when we were close up to the Black Range, safe enough,
a little off the line but nothing to signify. Then we hit off the track
that led over the Gap and down into a little flat on a creek that ran
the same way as ours did.

Jim had managed for father and Warrigal to meet us somewhere near here
with fresh horses. There was an old shepherd's hut that stood by itself
almost covered with marsh-mallows and nettles. As