The Squatter's Dream

Preparations were made. A feminine supernumerary was secured from the woolshed camp. Fortunately the cook was undeniable, and he needed but a word to “impress himself” and execute marvels. The cottage was entirely given up to the ladies, and the bachelors’ quarters made ready for occupation by Stangrove, M‘Nab, and himself. So might they retire, and smoke and talk sheep ad libitum. The small flower-garden round the cottage, or rather at the side, as its verandah almost overhung the river, was made neat. Even M‘Nab, though grumbling somewhat at a feminine invasion “just before shearing,” looked out his best suit of clothes, and prepared to abide the onset. Had there ever been a lady at Gondaree before? Jack began to consider. It was exceedingly doubtful.

At the appointed day, just before sundown, Stangrove’s buggy rattled up behind, as usual, a very fast pair of horses. He was a great man for pace, and, having lots of horses to pick out of, generally had something only slightly inferior to public performers. Indeed, his friends used to complain that he never could be got to stay a night with any one on the road – being always bent upon some impossible distance in the day, and insisting upon going twenty or thirty miles farther, in order to accomplish it. However that might be, no man drove better horses.

“Here we are at last, Redgrave,” said he, as Jack rushed out to satisfy himself that Maud was actually in the flesh at his gates. “We should have been here before, but the ladies, of course, kept me waiting. However, I think we’ve done it under seven hours – that’s not so bad.”

“Bad! I should think not – splendid going!” said Jack. “I must get you to sell me a pair of buggy horses; mine are slow enough for a poison cart. Mrs. Stangrove, how good of you to cheer up a lonely bachelor! Miss Stangrove, I throw myself and household on your mercy. Will you, ladies, deign to walk in? you will find an attendant, and take possession of my house and all that is in it. Stangrove, we must take out the nags ourselves; no spare hands on a fenced-in run, you perceive.”

“All right, Redgrave, that’s the style I like. Mind you keep it up.”

The stable was well found, though the groom was absent. Abundance of hay had been supplied, and the buggy was placed under cover. The friends were soon sauntering down by the river, and of course talking sheep, in the interval before dinner.

“Saw a lot of your weaners as we came along,” said Stangrove. “How well they look. Much larger than mine, and the wool very clean. It certainly makes a man think. How many are there in that paddock?”

“Nine thousand,” answered Jack, carelessly. “They have been there since they were weaned.”

“And how often are they counted?”

“Once a month, regularly.”

“What percentage of loss?”

“Next to none at all; the fact is we have no dogs, and the season has been so far, glorious.”

“Well, I have five shepherds for the same number,” said Stangrove; “have had one or two ‘smashes,’ endless riding, bother, and trouble. It seems very nice to turn them loose and never have any work or expense with them – the most troublesome of one’s whole flock – till shearing. However, as I said before, my mind is made up for the next couple of years – after that, I won’t say – ”

“I think I hear the dinner-bell,” said Jack; “the ladies will be wondering what has become of us.”

M‘Nab having arrived about this time, looking highly presentable, the masculine contingent entered the cottage, and dinner was announced.

“Your housekeeping does not need to fear criticism,” said Mrs. Stangrove, as she tasted the clear soup. This was a spécialité of Monsieur Jean Dubois, an artist who, but for having contracted the colonial preference for cognac, our vin ordinaire, would have graced still a metropolitan establishment.

“We women are always complimented upon our domestic efficiency, home comforts, and so on,” said Maud. “It appears to me that bachelors always live more comfortably than the married people of our acquaintance.”

“I don’t think that is always the case,” pleaded Mrs. Stangrove. “But in many instances I have noted that you gentlemen, who are living by yourselves, always seem to get the best servants.”

“‘Kinder they than Missises are,’ Thackeray says, you know; but it must be quite an accidental circumstance. In by far the greater number of instances a lone bachelor is oppressed, neglected, and perhaps robbed.”

“I am not so sure of that,” persisted Maud. “You exaggerate your chances of misfortune. I know when I am travelling with Mark we generally find ourselves much better put up, as he calls it, at a bachelor residence than at a regular family establishment. Don’t we, Mark?”

“Well, I can’t altogether deny it,” deposed Stangrove, thus adjured. “It may not last, and the bachelor may be living on his capital of comfort. But I must say that, unless I know a man’s wife is one of the right sort, I prefer the unmarried host. You fling yourself into the best chair in the room as soon as you have made yourself decent. You are safe to be asked to take a glass of grog without any unnecessary waste of time. And you are absolutely certain that no possible cloud can cast a shade over the evening’s abandon. Whereas, in the case of the ‘double event,’ the odds are greater that it won’t come off so successfully.”

“What are you saying about married people, Mark? You’re surely in a wicked sarcastic humour. Don’t believe him Mr. Redgrave.”

“My dear! you are the exceptional helpmate, as I am always ready to testify. But there may be cases, you know, when the husband has just stated that he’ll be hanged if he will have his mother-in-law for another six months, just yet; or the cook, not being able to ‘hit it’ with the mistress’s slightly explosive temper, has left at a moment’s notice, and there is nothing but half-cold mutton and quite hot soda-bread to be procured; the grog, too, has run out, which is never the case in a bachelor’s establishment – and so – and so. Unless the lady of the house is partial to strangers (like you, my dear), give me Tom, or Dick, and Liberty Hall.”

“So I say too,” added Maud. “Of course being a single young person, I feel flattered by the respectful admiration I meet with at such houses. It’s not proper, I suppose. I ought to feel more pleased to be under the wing of a staid, overworked, slightly soured mother of a family, who keeps me waiting for tea till all the children are put to bed, and gives me something to stitch at during the evening; but I don’t – and so there’s no use saying I do.”

“I’m afraid your tastes border on the Bohemian, Miss Stangrove,” said Jack. “I’m rather a Philistine myself, I own, in the matter of young ladies.”

“Thinking, no doubt, as is the manner of men, that stupidity contains a great element of safety for women. I could prove to you that you are utterly wrong; but you might think me more a person of independent ideas – that is, more unladylike than ever. So I abstain. How nicely your verandah looks over the river. It is quite a balcony. Isn’t it very unpleasantly near in flood-time?”

“The oldest inhabitant has never seen water cover this point,” said Jack. “I ascertained that very carefully before I built here. If you look over to those low green marshy flats on the other side, you will see that miles of water must spread out for every additional inch the river rises.”

“Yes, Steamboat Point is all right,” said Mark. “I’ve heard the blacks admit that. I’ve seen a big flood or two here too; but the water runs back into the creeks and anabranches in a wonderful way. Gets behind you and cuts you off before you can help yourself, sometimes, in the night. If I were you I would have every weaner out of those river paddocks before spring.”

“We could have them out soon enough if there was any danger,” here interposed M‘Nab.

“You would find it hard, take my word for it,” said Stangrove, “if the river came down a banker.”

“I could whip a bridge over any back creek here in half an hour,” said M‘Nab, decisively, “that would cross every sheep we have there in two hours.”

“There’s a Napoleonic ring about that, Mr. M‘Nab,” said Maud; “but the Duke would have had all his forces – I mean his sheep – withdrawn from the position of danger in good time. One or two of Buonaparte’s bridges broke down with him, you remember.”

“It doesn’t look much like a flood at present,” said Jack; “though this is no warranty in Australia, which is a land specially dedicated to the unforeseen. Let us hope that there will be nothing so sensational at or before shearing this year.”

“Not even bushrangers,” said Maud. “What does this mean?” handing over to her brother the Warroo Watch-tower and Down-river Advertiser, in which figured the following paragraph: “We regret sincerely to be compelled to state that the rumours as to a party of desperadoes having taken to the bush are not without foundation. Last week two drays were robbed near Mud Springs by a party of five men, well armed and mounted. The day before yesterday the mailman and several travellers on the Oxley road were stopped and robbed by the same gang. They are said to be led by the notorious Redcap, and to have stated that they were coming into the Warroo frontage to give the squatters a turn.”

Mrs. Stangrove turned pale, Maud laughed, while Mark devoted himself very properly to calm the apprehensions of his wife.

“Maud,” he said, “this is no laughing matter. It is the beginning of a period, whether long or short, of great trouble and anxiety, it may be danger, I am not an alarmist; but I wish we were well out of this matter.”

“It seems very ridiculous,” said Jack; “every man’s hand will be against them, and they must be run or shot down, ultimately.”

“Nothing more certain,” admitted Stangrove; “but these fellows generally ‘turn out’ from the merest folly or recklessness, and become gradually hardened to bloodshed. They are like raw troops, mere rustics at first. But they soon learn the part of ‘first robber,’ and generally lose some of their own blood, or spill that of better men, before they get taken.”

“We have a dray just loading up from town. There is time – yes, just time,” said M‘Nab, consulting his pocket-book, “to write by mail. We can order revolvers, and a repeating rifle or two, and have them up in five weeks. Can we get anything for you?”

“Certainly, and much obliged,” said Stangrove; “if they know that we are well armed, they will be all the more chary of coming to close quarters. You may order for me a brace of repeating rifles and three revolvers.”

“With some of the neighbours we might turn out a respectable force, and hunt the fellows down,” said Jack, who felt ready for anything in the immediate proximity of Maud, and only wished the gang would attack Gondaree then and there.

There was no such luck, however. The ordinary station life was unruffled. The ladies rode and drove about with cheerful energy. Maud admired the paddocks and the unshepherded sheep immensely, and vainly tried to extort her brother’s consent to begin the reformed system as soon as they returned to Juandah.

Mark had said that he would defer the enterprise for two years, and he was a man who, slow in forming resolves, always adhered to them.

CHAPTER XII

 
“So farre, so fast the eygre drave,
The heart had hardly time to beat,
Before a shallow seething wave
Sobbed in the grasses at our feet;
The feet had hardly time to flee
Before it brake against the knee,
And all the world was in the sea.” —Jean Ingelow.
 

The days passed pleasantly in excursions to Bimbalong, to the back paddocks, and in rides and drives along the perfect natural roads peculiar to the locality. In the long excursions, the twilight was upon them more than once before they reached home. Jack did not altogether neglect his opportunities. When he rode close to Maud’s bridle-rein, as they flitted along in the mild half-light between the shadowy pines, or the avenues of oak and myall, words would become gradually lower in tone, more accented with feeling, than the ordinary daylight converse.

“And so you think,” said Jack, on one of these pleasant twilight confidentials – Stangrove, who was driving, being rather anxious to get home before the light got any worse – “that I am not playing too hazardous a game in spending freely now, with the expectation of being so largely recouped within a year or two.”

“It is exactly what I should do if I were a man,” said the girl, frankly. “How men can consent to bury themselves alive in this wearisome, never-ending, bush sepulchre I cannot think. I should perish if I were compelled to lead such a life without possibility of change. When we think of the glorious old world, the dreamland of one’s spirit, the theatre of art, luxury, war, antiquity, which leisure would enable one to visit – how can one be contented?”

“I never thought I should feel contented on the Warroo,” said her companion; “yet now, really, I don’t find it so awfully dull, you know.”

“Not just at present,” answered Maud, archly. “Well, I am candid enough to own that, our families having joined forces since your visit, things are a shade more bearable. But fancy growing gray in this life and these surroundings. Twenty years after! Fancy us all at that date, here!”

“I can’t fancy it. What should we be like, Miss Stangrove?”

“I can tell you,” pursued the excited girl. “Mark much the same, gray and more silent – strongly of opinion that the Government of the day were in league with free selectors, and generally robbers and murderers. His opinions are pretty strong now. Then, of course, they would have ripened into prejudices. My sister-in-law, frail, worn out by servants and household cares; just a little querulous, and more indisposed to read.”

“And yourself?” asked Jack.

“Oh! I should have been quietly buried under a couba tree before that impossible period. Or, if I unhappily survived, would have become eccentric. I should be spoken of generally as a ‘little strong-minded,’ slight dash of temper, and so on; very fond of riding, and, they say, can count sheep and act as boundary-rider when her brother is short of hands. How do you like the picture?”

“You have not paid me the compliment of including me on the canvas.”

“I don’t possibly imagine you within thousands of miles of Gondaree or Juandah at such a time. You will be dreaming among the ‘Stones of Venice,’ lounging away the winter in Rome, or settled in a hunting neighbourhood in a pleasant English county, making up your mind, very gradually, to return to Australia, and to devote the rest of your days to model farming and national regeneration.”

“There is only one thing absolutely necessary to render my existence happy under the conditions which you have so accurately sketched,” – here he leaned forward, and placing his hand upon her horse’s mane, saw a softened gleam in her marvellous eyes – as of the heart’s farewell to unacknowledged hope – “and that is – ”

“We are really riding shamefully slow,” said she suddenly, as she drew her rein, and the free horse tossed his head and went off at speed. “Mark must have nearly reached home, and Jane, as usual, will be fancying all kinds of impossible accidents – that dear old Mameluke has tumbled down, positively tumbled down and broken my arm in three places. I tell her she’ll suspect me of taking a ‘bait’ next. How still the plain looks, and how exactly the same – north and south, east and west! But even in this light you can distinguish the heavy, dark, winding line of the river timber.”

In due time the guests departed, and Mr. Redgrave was left to the consideration of the loneliness of his condition, a view of life which had not presented itself strongly before his introduction to Miss Stangrove. He had been contented to enjoy the society of wife, widow, and maid in the most artless, instinctive fashion, without any fixed plan of personal advantage. Not that this unsatisfactory general approbation had escaped criticism by those who felt themselves to be sufficiently interested to speak. He had been called selfish, conceited, fastidious, fast, uninteresting, and mysterious. Many adjectives had in private been hurled at his devoted head. But he “had a light heart, and so bore up.” Besides, he had a reserve of popularity to fall back upon. There were many people who would not suffer Jack Redgrave to be run down unreasonably. So up to this time he had eluded appropriation and defied disapproval.

Now matters were changed. The slow, resistless Nemesis was upon him. In his ears sounded the prelude to that melody – heard but once in this mortal life – in tones at first low and soft, then rich and dread with melody from the immortal lyre. At that summons all men arise and follow. Follow, be it angel or fiend. Follow, be the path over vernal meads, through forest gloom, or the drear shades of the nether hell.

No woman, Jack soliloquised, had ever before commended herself to his tastes, his senses, his reason, and his fancy. She was in his eyes lovely in form and face; original, cultured, tender, and true. He would make her his wife if his utmost efforts might compass such triumph, such wild exaggeration of happiness. She might not care particularly about him. She might merely have whiled away a dull week. Now, many a time had he done likewise, with apparent interest and inward tedium. Were it so, he felt as if he could bestow a legend on Steamboat Point by casting himself into the rapid but not particularly deep waters which flowed beneath. At any rate he would try. He would make the great hazard. He would know his fate after shearing. Meanwhile, there was nearly enough to do until that solemn Hegira to put the thought of Maud Stangrove out of his head.

Having made up his mind, Mr. Redgrave dismissed the fair Maud with philosophical completeness. Master Jack was extremely averse to holding his judgment in suspense, that process involving abrasion of his peculiarly delicate mental cuticle. He was prone, therefore, to a speedy settlement of all cases of conscience. Judgment being delivered, he bore or performed sentence unflinchingly. Yet his friends asserted that during any stay of proceedings he could amuse himself as unreservedly, as free from boding gloom, or “the sad companion, ghastly pale, and darksome as a widow’s veil,” as any sportive lambkin on his way to mint sauce and deglutition. Thus, having settled that the subjugation of Miss Stangrove could not be undertaken until after shearing, he went heart and soul into the arrangements for that annual agony, to the total exclusion of all less material considerations.

To a healthy man, in the full possession of all mental and bodily faculties, perhaps a state of perfect employment is the one most nearly approaching to that of perfect happiness. It is rarely conceded at the time; but more often than we wot of do men recall, when in the lap of ease, that season of comparative toil and strife, with a sigh for the “grand old days of pleasure and pain.” Each nerve and muscle is at stretch. The struggle is close and hard; but there is the glorious sensation of “the strong man rejoicing in his strength.” The very fatigue is natural and wholesome. The recovery is sure and complete; and, if only a reasonable meed of success crown those unsparing efforts, the heart swells with the proud joy of him round whose brow is twined the envied crown in the arena. Let who will choose the dulled sensation with which, in after life, the successful merchant notes his dividends, or the politician accepts the long-promised leadership.

Mr. Redgrave, then, having girded himself for the fight, in company with M‘Nab, drank delight of battle with his peers, that is, with the shearers, washers, and knockabout men, who struck repeatedly, and gave as much trouble as their ingenuity could manage to supply during the first week of shearing.

Suddenly – as is the custom of all Australian weather-wonders – clouds charged with heavy driving showers came hurtling across the fair blue sky. This abnormal state of matters on the Warroo was succeeded by a steady, settled rainfall, pouring down heavily, and yet more heavily on several successive days, as if heaven’s windows were once more opened, and the dry land was again to be circumscribed. Without loss of time, down came the river, “tossing his tawny mane,” foam-flecked, and bearing on his broad brown bosom all sorts of goods and chattels not intended for water carriage. The anabranch surrounding a large portion of the river paddock, wherein were the weaners, was simultaneously filled by the turbid torrent, which dashed into its deep but ordinarily dry bed from the brimming river. At the present level no danger was to be apprehended for the unconscious weaners; but M‘Nab was unwilling to trust to the probabilities, and decided upon getting them out. A bridge was extemporised, of a sort laid away in the well-stored chambers of his practical brain, and thrown across the narrowest part.

With a heavy expenditure of patience, and the efficient leadership of certain pet sheep, which M‘Nab had reared and trained for shearing needs, the whole lot were mustered and safely crossed over the newly-born water-course.

“I am not sure now,” said M‘Nab, “that we have not had all our trouble for nothing. I believe the river will be low again in a week.”

“All the same,” affirmed Jack, “it’s well to be on the safe side, especially of a back creek in flood-time. Nobody knows what these confounded rivers are capable of doing when no one wants them.”

“Well, they can have the No. 2 paddock, and the dry ewes can have No. 3. I wanted No. 2 for the shorn sheep, though. It’s just a nuisance the water coming down now.”

The mild excitement of the spate, as Mr. M‘Nab called it, died away. The sun came out; the waters returned to nearly their former limits, and a wide, half-dried surface of mud, alone denoted where the deep and turbid waters had rolled over the broad channel of the anabranch.

The wool-shed and wash-pen had been correctly placed upon the borders of a creek so conveniently humble as never to attain to any measure of danger or discomfort in the highest flood. So, directly the rain ceased, the great yearly campaign went on rapidly and smoothly.

Weeks passed; the season was advancing; the sun became hotter; there was not a day of broken weather; everything was in capital gear, and worked with even suspicious smoothness.

“We are getting on like a house afire,” said M‘Nab; “that is,” as he suddenly bethought himself of the awkwardness of the allusion, “much faster than I expected. We have a good lot of men. There is no dust. The wash-pen is just grand. I never saw wool cleaner and better got up, though I say so.”

“Our luck has turned,” said Jack; “no more accidents; though it’s strange that, when all is unnaturally successful, something is sure to happen. If the engine was to smash, a valve or some small trouble to happen, I should feel that the ring of Polycrates had been thrown into the Warroo, and not returned by an officious codfish.”

“I don’t know about Polly Whatsyname’s ring,” said Mr. M‘Nab, whose education had not included the classics; “but things couldn’t be better. I shall put those weaners back into the river paddock again. The grass is all going to waste.”

“Just as you like,” said Jack, who had forgotten his caution now that the emergency was over. “I suppose we shall have the dust blowing in about a fortnight.”

“By then we shall be done shearing. I don’t care what comes after,” answered the manager. “And now I must go back to the shed.”

“Thank God, it’s Saturday night!” said Jack, as they sat down to their dinner at the fashionable hour of nine p.m. “I enjoy a good bout of work; it’s exciting, and pulls one together. But one wants a little sleep sometimes; likewise something to eat.”

“This has been a middling hard week,” graciously admitted M‘Nab, who rarely would concede that any amount of labour constituted a really laborious term. “One more week, and every dray will be loaded up, and the wool off our hands.”

“Do you think the weather will hold good? It had rather a lowering, hazy look to-day.”

“That means that it’s raining somewhere else,” said M‘Nab, uninterestedly. “It’s very often our share of it on the Warroo here.”

“Don’t know – somehow I have had a queer feeling all day that I can’t account for. Hard work generally goes to raise my spirits in view of the splendid appreciation of food and sleep that follows. But I have felt what the teller of tales calls a ‘presentiment’ – a foreshadowing of evil – if such a thing can be.”

“Take a glass of grog extra to-night, sir; you’ve caught cold at the wash-pen, or the influenza the men had before shearing has fastened on you. Some of them got a great shaking with it, and lay about like a lot of old women.”

“I suspect the vagabonds considered it a favourable time to be ill,” laughed Jack, “as they were not paying for their rations, and thought we might put them on at a little gentle work. However, we won’t pursue the subject.”

No one can have an adequate comprehension of the value of the Sabbath as a day of pure rest who has not worked at high pressure, with brain or hand, the week-time through. Well and wisely was the Lord’s Day ordained – well and wisely is it maintained – for the needful recovery of the wasted powers of the wondrous, miraculous machine called Man. In this age, above all others, it is vitally necessary that a weekly truce should be proclaimed, when the life-long conflict may cease and the fever-throbs of the “malady of thought” may be stilled.

But for this anodyne, how many a brow, hot with the electric currents that flash ceaselessly through the brain, would pass swiftly from pain to madness! How many a stalwart frame, the unguarded, yet precious, capital of the son of labour, would stagger and fall by the wayside of a life which was one endless, monotonous martyrdom of unrelieved toil! But the eve, the blessed herald of the coming holy day, arrives; the worn craftsman rests, enjoys, and sinks into a dreamless sleep. The modern Alchemist, he who painfully coins his brain into gold, relinquishing crucible and furnace, walks forth into the pure air of heaven, and thanks the Great Ruler for the respite – the sweet moments of a charmed, untroubled day.

John Redgrave, as he awoke at dawn, and turned over for an hour or two of rare repose, had some such glimmerings of thankfulness. He had nothing to do or to think about until late in the afternoon, when the sheep for Monday’s shearing would have to be packed into the shed, and the next contingent due for the somewhat trying lavation by spout placed near their tubbing apparatus. All the morning – what an amazing quantity of time! – absolutely free. A leisurely calm breakfast, with the glorious “nothing to do” for ever so long afterwards. It was the reign of Buddha, the classic Elysium. He would sit on high like broad-fronted Jove, and meditate, and read and write, and be supremely happy.

From the tenor of Mr. Redgrave’s thoughts, it will not escape the acute reader that he had forgotten his presentiment. But scarcely had he concluded his solitary, luxuriously-lingering meal – (M‘Nab of course was miles away on some indispensable work, which he kept for Sundays and holidays) – than the Eidolon stole forth from the curtains of his soul, and confronted him with disembodied but ghastly presentment. Down went the register of Jack’s animal spirits – down – down. The very face of heaven darkened – the sky became overcast. The breeze became chill and moaned eerily, without any assignable reason – for what were clouds in Riverina but the heralds of prosperity, or its synonym, the Rain-King, but the lord and gold-giver of all the sun-scorched land?

Thus he reasoned. But his logic was powerless to dislodge the demon. The necessary evening work was formally proceeded with; but the sun set upon few more depressed and utterly wretched mortals than John Redgrave, as he moodily smoked for an hour, and retired early to an uneasy couch. More than once he half rose through the night, and listened, as a strange sound mingled with the blast which roared and raved, and shook the cottage roof in the frenzied gusts of the changeful spring. But an hour before dawn he sprang suddenly up and shouted to M‘Nab, who slept in an adjoining room.

“Get up, man, and listen. I thought I could not be mistaken. The river has got us this time.”

“I hear,” said M‘Nab, standing at the window, with all his senses about him. “It can’t be the river; and yet, what else can it be?”

“I know,” cried Jack; “it’s the water pouring into the back creek when it leaves the river. There must be an awful flood coming down, or it could never make all that row. The last time it filled up as smoothly as a backwater lagoon. Listen again!”

The two men stood, half-clad as they were, in the darkness, ever deepest before dawn, while louder, and more distinctly, they heard the fall, the roar, the rush of the wild waters of an angry flood down a deep and empty channel. A very deep excavation had been scooped of old by the Warroo at the commencement of the anabranch, which, leaving the river at an angle, followed its course for miles, sometimes at a considerable distance, before it re-entered it.

“My conscience!” said M‘Nab, “I never heard the like of that before – in these parts, that is. I would give a year’s wage I hadn’t crossed those weaners back. I only did it a day or two since. May the devil – but swearing never so much as lifted a pound of any man’s burden yet. We’ll not be swung clear of this grip of his claws by calling on him.”

With this anti-Manichæan assertion, M‘Nab went forth, and stumbled about the paddock till he managed to get his own and Jack’s horse into the yard. These he saddled and had ready by the first streak of dawn. Then they mounted and rode towards the back of the river paddock.

“I was afraid of this,” said Jack, gloomily, as their horses’ feet plashed in the edge of a broad, dull-coloured sheet of water, long before they reached the ridge whence they usually descried the back-creek channel. “The waters are out such a distance that we shall not be able to get near the banks of this infernal anabranch, much less throw a bridge over any part of it. There is a mile of water on it now, from end to end. The sheep must take their chance, and that only chance is that the river may not rise as high as Stangrove says he has known it.”