But
revolvers are hardly the thing for duck shooting, and the soft-nosed
bullets of the Maluka's rifle reducing an unfortunate duck to a tangled
mass of blood and feathers we were obliged to accept, willy-nilly, the
prospect of damper and "Lot's wife" for supper. But our hopes died hard,
and we sneaked about the gorgeous lagoons, revolvers in hand, for a good
hour, "larning a thing or two about the lagoons" from Dan as we sneaked.
The Red Lily lagoons lie away from the Roper, on either side of it,
wide-spreading and shallow--great sheets of water with tall reeds and
rushes about them, and glorious in flowering time with their immense
cup-shaped crimson blossoms clustering on long stalks above great
floating leaves--leaves nearly approaching three feet in diameter I
think; and everywhere about the leaves hover birds and along the margins
of the lagoons stalk countless waders, cranes, jabiroos, and oftentimes
douce native companions.
Being so shallow and wide-spreading, the lagoons would dry up early in
the "dry" were it not that the blacks are able to refill them at will
from the river; for here the Roper indulges in a third "duck-under," so
curious that with a few logs and sheets of bark the blacks can block the
way of its waters and overflow them into the lagoons thereby ensuring a
plentiful larder to hosts of wild fowl and, incidentally, to themselves.
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