we shall have railways in good time, there is nothing of the sort yet, and the roads are chiefly in their natural state. I would therefore suggest that you should travel in a roomy horse-waggon, comfortably fitted up, taking a tent with you in which to sleep at night. I have procured a driver well acquainted with the country, who knows all the camps and stopping-places, and may be depended upon to take you safely to your journey’s end.’
‘No railways, no coaches,’ said Mr. Effingham; ‘yours is rather a primitive country, Harley, it must be confessed; but you know what is best for us all, and the weather is so mild that none of us can suffer from the bivouac.’
‘I should not have hazarded it if there had been any risk to health,’ said the old gentleman, bowing courteously. ‘There are coaches, however, and you might reach your destination in four days, after hurried travelling. But the tariff is expensive for so large a party; you would be crowded, or meet unsuitable fellow-travellers, while you could take but little of your luggage with you.’
‘I vote for the overland journey,’ said Rosamond. ‘I am sure it will be quite refreshingly eastern. I suppose Andrew and Jeanie and poor dear Daisy and the dogs and everything can go.’
‘Everything and everybody you please but the heavy luggage. Your servants will be able to sleep under a part of the waggon-tilt, which will be comfortable enough at night. The cow will give you milk for your tea. Even the greyhounds may catch you a wallaby or two, which will come in for soup.’
‘There could not be a better scheme,’ said Wilfred exultingly. ‘My dear sir, you are a second father to us. How long do you think it will take us to get to Warbrok altogether?’
‘You will have to make up your minds to ten or twelve days’ travelling, I am afraid – say, twenty miles a day. I really believe you will not find it tedious, but, as with your water journey, get quite to like it. Besides, there is one grand advantage, as far as the young ladies are concerned.’
‘What is that?’ said Annabel, with added interest, but somewhat doleful countenance. ‘Is there any advantage in travelling like gipsies?’
‘It is this, then, my dear girls,’ said the old man, bending upon them his clear, kindly beaming eyes, ‘that you will make acquaintance with the rougher habitudes (and yet not unduly so) of country life in Australia by this primitive forest journeying. When you arrive at your destination you will therefore be proportionately satisfied with your new residence, because it will represent a settled home. Your daily journey will by that time have become a task, so that you will hail the prospect of repose with thankfulness.’
‘Is that all?’ asked Annabel with a disappointed air. ‘Then we are to undergo something dreadful, in order that something only disagreeable may not look so bad after it. Is all Australian life like that? But I daresay I shall die young, and so it won’t matter much. Is the lunch nearly ready? I declare I am famishing.’
Every one laughed at this characteristic sequence to Annabel’s prophecy, and the matter of the march having been settled, their friend promised to send up the waggon-driver next morning, in order that the proper fittings and the lamps – indispensable articles – and luggage might be arranged and packed. A tent also was purchased, and bedding, cooking utensils, provisions, etc., secured.
‘You will find Dick Evans an original character,’ said the parson, ‘but I do not know any man in the district so well suited for this particular service. He has been twenty years in Australia, and knows everything, both good and evil, that can be known of the country and people. He is an old soldier, and in the 50th Regiment saw plenty of service. He has his faults, but they don’t appear on the surface, and I know him well enough to guarantee that you will be wholly ignorant of them. His manners – with a dash of soldier servant – are not to be surpassed.’
At an hour next morning so soon after dawn that Andrew Cargill, the most incorruptible of early birds, was nearly caught napping, Mr. Dick Evans arrived with two horses and his waggon. The rest of the team, not being wanted, he had left in their paddock at Homebush. He immediately placed the waggon in the most convenient position for general reference, took out his horses, which he accommodated with nose-bags, and with an air of almost suspicious deference inquired of Andrew what he could commence to do in the way of packing.
The two men, as if foreseeing that possible encounters might henceforth take place between them, looked keenly at each other. Richard Evans had the erect bearing of which the recipient of early drill can rarely divest himself. His wiry figure but slightly above the middle height, his clean-shaved, ruddy cheek, his keen grey eye, hardly denoted the fifty years and more which he carried so lightly.
A faultless constitution, an open-air occupation with habits of great bodily activity, had borne him scatheless through a life of hardship and risk.
This personage commenced with a request to be shown the whole of the articles intended to be taken, gently but firmly withstanding any opinion of Andrew’s to the contrary, and replying to his protests with the mild superiority of the attendant in a lunatic asylum. After the whole of the light luggage had been displayed, he addressed himself to the task of loading and securing it with so much economy of space and advantage of position, that Andrew readily yielded to him the right to such leadership in future.
‘Nae doot,’ he said, ‘the auld graceless sworder that he is, has had muckle experience in guiding his team through thae pathless wildernesses, and it behoves a wise man to “jouk and let the jaw gae by.” But wae’s me, it’s dwelling i’ the tents o’ Kedar!’
Dick Evans, who was a man of few words and strong in the heat of argument, was by no means given to mixing up discussion with work. He therefore kept on steadily with his packing until evening, only requiring from Andrew such help and information as were indispensable.
‘There,’ said he, as he removed the low-crowned straw hat from his heated brow, and prepared to fill his pipe, ‘I think that will about do. The ladies can sit there in the middle, where I’ve put the tent loose, and use it as a sofy, if they’ve a mind to. I can pitch it in five minutes at night, and they can sleep in it as snug as if they had a cottage with them. You and your wife can have the body of the waggon to yourselves at night, and I’ll sleep under the shafts. The captain and the young gentlemen can have all the room between the wheels, and nobody can want more than that. I suppose your missis can do what cooking’s wanted?’
‘Nae doot,’ Andrew replied with dignity, ‘Mistress Cargill wad provide a few bits o’ plain victual. A wheen parritch, a thocht brose, wad serve a’ hands better than flesh meat, and tea or coffee, or siccan trash.’
‘Porridge won’t do for me,’ said the veteran firmly, ‘not if I know it. Oatmeal’s right enough for you Scotchmen, and not bad stuff either, in your own country, but beef and mutton’s our tack in Australia.’
‘And will ye find a flesher in this “bush,” as they ca’ it, that we’ve to push through?’ demanded Andrew. ‘Wad it no be mair wiselike to keep to victual that we can carry in our sacks?’
‘Get plenty of beef and mutton and everything else on the road,’ said Mr. Evans, lighting his pipe and declining further argument. ‘Don’t you forget to bring a frying-pan. I’ll take the horses back to the paddock now and be here by daylight, so as we can make a good start.’
It had been arranged by Mr. Sternworth that the boys, as he called them, should set forth in the morning with Evans and the waggon, as also Andrew and Jeanie, taking with them the cow, the dogs, and the smaller matters which the family had brought. No necessity for Captain Effingham and the ladies to leave Sydney until the second day. He would drive them in a hired carriage as far as the first camp, which Evans had described to him.
They
