or weak ones who come into his life; although he’ll strive to the utmost to keep the Unknown Woman out of his environments particularly when those environments are a hundred miles from anywhere.”
The opposition looked incredulous. “Hunger and death!” it said. “Fiddlesticks!” It would just serve them right if she went; and the men folk pointed out that this was, now, hardly flattering to the missus.
The Măluka passed the interruption by without comment. “The Unknown Woman is brimful of possibilities to a bushman,” he went on; “for although she may be all womanly strength and tenderness, she may also be anything, from a weak timid fool to a self-righteous shrew, bristling with virtue and indignation. Still,” he added earnestly, as the opposition began to murmur, “when a woman does come into our lives, whatever type she may be, she lacks nothing in the way of chivalry, and it rests with herself whether she remains an outsider or becomes just One of Us. Just One of Us,” he repeated, unconsciously pleading hard for the bushman and his greatest need—“not a goddess on a pedestal, but just a comrade to share our joys and sorrows with.”
The opposition wavered. “If it wasn’t for those telegrams,” it said. But Darwin, seeing the telegrams in a new light, took up the cudgels for the bushmen.
“Poor beggars,” it said, “you can’t blame them. When you come to think of it, the Unknown Woman is brimful of possibilities.” Even then, at the Katherine, the possibilities of the Unknown Woman were being tersely summed up by the Wag.
“You’ll sometimes get ten different sorts rolled into one,” he said finally, after a long dissertation. “But, generally speaking, there’s just three sorts of ’em. There’s Snorters—the goers, you know—the sort that go rampaging round, looking for insults, and naturally finding them; and then there’s fools; and they’re mostly screeching when they’re not smirking—the uncertain-coy-and-hard-to-please variety, you know,” he chuckled, “and then,” he added seriously, “there’s the right sort, the sort you tell things to. They’re A1 all through the piece.”
The Sanguine Scot was confident, though, that they were all alike, and none of ’em were wanted; but one of the Company suggested “If she was little, she’d do. The little ’uns are all right,” he said.
But public opinion deciding that “the sort that go messing round where they know they’re not wanted are always big and muscular and snorters,” the Sanguine Scot was encouraged in his determination to “block her somehow.”
“I’ll block her yet; see if I don’t,” he said confidently. “After all these years on their own, the boys don’t want a woman messing round the place.” And when he set out for the railway along the north track, to face the “escorting trick,” he repeated his assurances. “I’ll block her, chaps, never fear,” he said; and glowering at a “quiet” horse that had been sent by the lady at the Telegraph, added savagely, “and I’ll begin by losing that brute first turn out.”
Chapter 2
From sun-up to sun-down on Tuesday, the train glided quietly forward on its way towards the Never-Never; and from sun-up to sun-down the Măluka and I experienced the kindly consideration that it always shows to travellers: it boiled a billy for us at its furnace; loitered through the pleasantest valleys; smiled indulgently, and slackened speed whenever we made merry with blacks, by pelting them with chunks of water-melon; and generally waited on us hand and foot, the Man-in-Charge pointing out the beauty spots and places of interest, and making tea for us at frequent intervals.
It was a delightful train—just a simple-hearted, chivalrous, weather-beaten old bush-whacker, at the service of the entire Territory. “There’s nothing the least bit officious or standoffish about it,” I was saying, when the Man-in-Charge came in with the first billy of tea.
“Of course not!” he said, unhooking cups from various crooked-up fingers. “It’s a Territorian, you see.”
“And had all the false veneer of civilisation peeled off long ago,” the Măluka said, adding, with a sly look at my discarded gloves and gossamer, “It’s wonderful how quietly the Territory does its work.”
The Man-in-Charge smiled openly as he poured out the tea, proving thereby his kinship with all other Territorians; and as the train came to a standstill, swung off and slipped some letters into a box nailed to an old tree-trunk.
At the far end of the train, away from the engine, the passengers’ car had been placed, and as in front of it a long, long line of low-stacked sinuous trucks slipped along in the rear of the engine, all was open view before us; and all day long, as the engine trudged onwards—hands in pockets, so to speak, and whistling merrily as it trudged—I stood beside the Măluka on the little platform in front of the passengers’ car, drinking in my first deep, intoxicating draught of the glories of the tropical bush.
There were no fences to shut us in; and as the train zig-zagged through jungle and forest and river-valley—stopping now and then to drink deeply at magnificent rivers ablaze with water-lilies—it almost seemed as though it were some kindly Mammoth creature, wandering at will through the bush.
Here and there, kangaroos and other wild creatures of the bush hopped out of our way, and sitting up, looked curiously after us; again and again little groups of blacks hailed us, and scrambled after water-melon and tobacco, with shouts of delight, and, invariably, on nearing the tiny settlements along the railway, we drove before us white fleeing flocks of goats.
At every settlement we stopped and passed the time of day and, giving out mail-bags, moved on again into the forest. Now and again, stockmen rode out of the timber and received mail-bags, and once a great burly bushman, a staunch old friend of the Măluka’s, boarded the train, and greeted him with a hearty hand-shake.
“Hullo! old chap!” he called in welcome, as he mounted the steps of the little platform, “I’ve come to inspect your latest investment”; but catching sight of the “latest investment” he broke into a deafening roar.
“Good Lord!” he shouted, looking down upon me from his great height, “is that all there is of her? They’re expecting one of the prize-fighting variety down there,” and he jerked his head towards the Never-Never. Then he congratulated the Măluka on the size of his missus.
“Gimme the little ’uns,” he said, nearly wringing my hand off in his approval. “You can’t beat ’em for pluck. My missus is one of ’em, and she went bush with me when I’d nothing but a skeeto net and a quart-pot to share with her.” Then, slapping the Măluka vigorously on the back, he told him he’d got some sense left. “You can’t beat the little ’uns,” he declared. “They’re just the very thing.”
The Măluka agreed with him, and after some comical quizzing, they decided, to their own complete satisfaction, that although the bushman’s “missus” was the “littlest of all little ’uns, straight up and down,” the Măluka’s “knocked spots off her sideways.”
But although the Territory train does not need to bend its neck to the galling yoke of a minute time-table, yet, like all bush-whackers, it prefers to strike its supper camp before night-fall, and after allowing us a good ten minutes’ chat, it blew a deferential “Ahem” from its engine, as a hint that it would like to be “getting along.” The bushman took the hint, and after a hearty “Good luck, missus!” and a “chin, chin, old man,” left us, with assurances that “her
