"
A cheerful nightcap; but such was our faith in Sool'em and Brown as
danger signals, that the camp was asleep in a few minutes. Perhaps also
because nigger alarms were by no means the exception: the bush-folk would
get little sleep if they lay awake whenever they were camped near
doubtful company. We sleep wherever we are, for it is easy to grow
accustomed even to nigger alarms, and beside, the bush-folk know that
when a man has clean hands and heart he has little to fear from even his
"bad fellow black fellows." But the Red Lilies were beyond our
boundaries, and Monkey was a notorious exception, and shrill cries
approaching the camp at dawn brought us all to our elbows, to find only
the flying foxes returning to the pine forest, fanning inwards this time.
After giving the horses another drink, and breakfasting on damper and
"Lot's wife," we moved on again, past the glory of the lagoons, to further
brumby encounters, carrying a water-bag on a pack-horse by way of
precaution against further "drouths." But such was the influence of
"Lot's wife" that long before mid-day the bag was empty, and Dan was
recommending bloater-paste as a "grand thing for breakfast during the Wet
seeing it keeps you dry all day long.
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