Page:Triangles of life, and other stories.djvu/21

Rh scrub, then a silence (he heard that too), as if the man or animal had stopped, or was moving quietly. Then he fancied a shadow was bending over Bogan, but before he was sure there was a yell, and sounds like the sudden getting up of a dray horse that has been stumbled over in his sleep by a blundering old working bullock, and badly frightened. The shadows blended and went down; then one rose, and then the other, and there was bad language, then presently one shadow settled down again, and the language grumbled out on the night breeze. Bob was just going across with Billy to see, when he met Jack Moonlight, who seemed to have a "hiccup," or a catch, in his stomach.

"What's up?" asked Bob, with the adjectives necessary in new acquaintanceships.

"Oh, it's only Bogan," said Moonlight; "I dunno what the hell he wanted to play up like that for. I was coming from the fires, and I only bent over him and rubbed his head with my pipe bowl, to see if he was awake, and I told him to keep an eye out for God Forgive Billy."

Billy had a strong objection, connected with the earth's 'lectricity, to sleeping on his usual bed of boughs and blanket on the ground, and he had a horror of the tent. He said he'd got too much 'lectricity coming round the world, and that was what was the matter with him. He said he should never have come halfway round the world, which was correct, and having come so far he should have gone the other half and finished it—which was sane enough. So Bob made Bill's bed on the rough sapling bench or table, under