camp," he added: "You'd better look out, missus! Once caught, you'll
never get free again. We're all tethered goats here. Every time we make
up our minds to clear out, something pulls us back with a jerk."

"Tethered goats!" Mac called us, and the world must apply the simile as
it thinks fit. The wizard of the Never-Never weaves his spells, until
hardships, and dangers, and privations, seem all that make life worth
living; and then holds us "tethered goats"; and every time the town calls
us with promises of gaiety, and comfort, and security, "something pulls
us back with a jerk" to our beloved bush.

There was no sign of rain; and as bushmen only pitch tent when a deluge
is expected, our camp was very simple: just camp sleeping mosquito-nets,
with calico tops and cheese net for curtains--hanging by cords between
stout stakes driven into the ground. "Mosquito pegs," the bushmen call
these stakes.

Jackeroo, the unpoetical, was even then sound asleep in his net; and in
ten minutes everything was "fixed up." In another ten minutes we had
also "turned in," and soon after I was sound asleep, rolled up in a
"bluey," and had to be wakened at dawn.

"The river's still rising," Mac announced by way of good-morning. "We'll
have to bustle up and get across, or the water'll be over the wire, and
then we'll be done for."

Bustle as we would, however "getting across" was a tedious business. It
took nearly an hour's hustling and urging and galloping before the horses
could be persuaded to attempt the swim, and then only after old Roper had
been partly dragged and partly hauled through the back-wash by the