good tucker-tracks, and discuss the strike, and curse the squatter
(which is all they have got to curse), and growl about Union leaders,
and tell lies against each other sociably. There are tally lies; and
lies about getting tucker by trickery; and long-tramp-with-heavy-swag-
and-no-water lies; and lies about getting the best of squatters and
bosses-over-the-board; and droving, fighting, racing, gambling and
drinking lies. Lies _ad libitum_; and every true Australian
bushman must try his best to tell a bigger out-back lie than the last
bush-liar.

Pat is not quite easy in his mind. He found an old pair of pants in
the scrub this morning, and cannot decide whether they are better than
his own, or, rather, whether his own are worse--if that's possible.
He does not want to increase the weight of his swag unnecessarily by
taking both pairs. He reckons that the pants were thrown away when
the shed cut out last, but then they might have been lying out exposed
to the weather for a longer period. It is rather an important
question, for it is very annoying, after you've mended and patched an
old pair of pants, to find, when a day or two further on the track,
that they are more rotten than the pair you left behind.

There is some growling about the water here, and one of the men makes
a billy of tea. The water is better cooked. Pint-pots and sugar-bags
are groped out and brought to the kitchen hut, and each man fills his
pannikin; the Irishman keeps a thumb on the edge of his, so as to know
when the pot is full, for it is very dark, and there is no more
firewood. You soon know this way, especially if you are in the habit
of pressing lighted tobacco down into your pipe with the top of your
thumb. The old slush-lamps are all burnt out.