with a will.

`Bring your saddles along with you,' father said, `and come after me.
I'll show you a good camping place. You deserve a treat
after last night's work.'

We turned back towards the rocky wall, near to where we had come in,
and there, behind a bush and a big piece of sandstone that had fallen down,
was the entrance to a cave. The walls of it were quite clean
and white-looking, the floor was smooth, and the roof was pretty high,
well blackened with smoke, too, from the fires which had been lighted in it
for many a year gone by.

A kind of natural cellar had been made by scooping out the soft sandstone
behind a ledge. From this father took a bag of flour and corn-meal.
We very soon made some cakes in the pan, that tasted well, I can tell you.
Tea and sugar too, and quart pots, some bacon in a flour-bag;
and that rasher fried in the pan was the sweetest meat I ever ate
in all my born days.

Then father brought out a keg and poured some rum into a pint pot.
He took a pretty stiff pull, and then handed it to us. `A little of it
won't hurt you, boys,' he said, `after a night's work.'

I took some -- not much; we hadn't learned to drink then --
to keep down the fear of something hanging over us. A dreadful fear it is.
It makes a coward of every man who doesn't lead a square life,
let him be as game as he may.

Jim wouldn't touch it. `No,' he said, when I laughed at him,