Anne Bowman - The Kangaroo Hunters; Or, Adventures in the Bush

"You are right, my dear friend," replied he; "observe how happily they are now engaged. Arthur has looked over the dried plants, and he is now dissecting rabbits with my brother. Hugh and your ingenious Jack are at work with my carpenters, making models of broad-wheeled travelling-wagons and canoes for the rivers. Even the mischievous urchin O'Brien is out of danger when he is engaged with my grooms and herdsmen, in attendance on my valuable horses and cattle. What can these ardent boys find to interest and amuse them in the arid and enfeebling plains of India?"

Margaret knew that if her father heard these arguments, they would certainly agitate him, and might even shake his determination to proceed in the undertaking, which she and Arthur were of opinion he was bound to complete. She therefore begged Deverell to use no further persuasions; but she promised him, that if the Indian mission was beyond the physical or mental strength of her father, she would try to induce him to return to Melbourne, and from thence they would endeavor to make their way to the station of Mr. Deverell, who had promised to leave directions for their progress with his banker at Melbourne, which he proposed to make his mart for business.

It was truly the fact, that in pleasant employment no one found the long voyage tedious. Jack was especially charmed with his increase of knowledge. "You see, sir," said he to Arthur, "I was qualified to make a four-post bedstead, or a chest of drawers, as well as the best of these chaps; but they tell me them sort of things isn't much needed in them forrin parts. But what they've brought along with them is quite another thing: frames for wooden houses, ready to nail up in no time; mills and threshing machines; great, broad-felloed wagons for their rough roads, and boats of all makes. Just look, Mr. Arthur, I've made bits of models of all them things, you see. We can't say but they may turn up useful some day."

Even Ruth the unlucky lost her cognomen, and became popular among the emigrant women; for when kept quietly at regular employment, she could be steady and useful; it was only when she was hurried, or thrown upon her own responsibility, that she lost her head, and blundered into mischief. She nursed the babes tenderly and carefully, helped the poor women to wash their clothes, and for the first time in her life began to believe she might be of some use in the world. Gerald, who always insisted on it that Ruth was not half so bad as she was represented, assured Jenny that all the girl's errors arose from improper management. "You do not appreciate her talents justly, nurse," said he. "She is quite a genius, and ought to have been Irish, only she was born in England. You have wronged poor Ruth; you see she has never drowned a babby yet."

"Well, Master O'Brien, wait a bit, we're not through our voyage yet," said Jenny, oracularly.

"The Ides of March are not gone, she would say," said Hugh.

"I didn't mean to say no such thing, Master Hugh," replied she; "you're so sharp with one. I'm not so daft, but I know March is gone, and May-day ought to be at hand; not that we can see any signs of it, neither leaves nor flowers here, and I cannot see days get any longer. How is it, Master Arthur? Is it because we're atop of the water?"

Arthur endeavored to make Jenny comprehend the natural consequences of their position, now within the tropics, and daily drawing nearer to the equator; but he only succeeded in agitating the mind of the old woman, without enlightening her.

"God help us!" she exclaimed. "Nigher and nigher to the sun! It's downright temptation and wickedness, my dears; and my thought is, one ought to stay where it has pleased Him to plant us. And think ye, Master Arthur, we shall all turn black, like them niggers we saw in London streets."

"No; certainly not, nurse," answered Arthur. "It requires hundreds of years, under a tropical sun, to change the color of Europeans. Besides, the negroes, although we are all children of Adam, are of a distinct race from us. We are certainly not, like the thick-lipped negroes, the descendants of Ham."

"Likely he had been the plainest of Noah's family," said Jenny, "for beauty runs in the blood, that I'll stand to," continued the attached nurse, looking round with complacency on her handsome young nurslings.

To the young voyagers there was an indescribable charm in the novelties which the sea and the air offered to them in the tropical region they had now entered. Now for the first time they beheld the flying-fish rise sparkling from the waves, to descend as quickly; escaping for a short time from its enemies in the waves to expose itself to the voracious tribes of the air, who are ready to dart upon it. And sometimes the elegant little Stormy Petrel, with its slender long legs, seemed to walk the waters, like the fervent St. Peter, from whom it derives its name.

"But is not this bird believed to be the harbinger of storms?" asked Margaret of her father, as he watched with delight the graceful creature he had so often desired to behold.

"Such is the belief of the sailors," answered he, "who have added the ill-omened epithet to its name. It is true that the approach, or the presence, of a gale, has no terror to this intrepid bird, the smallest of the web-footed tribe. It ascends the mountainous wave, and skims along the deep hollows, treading the water, supported by its expanded wings, in search of the food which the troubled sea casts on the surface:

as a poet who is a true lover of nature has written. Yet it is not always the harbinger or the companion of the storm, for even in the calmest weather it follows a vessel, to feed on the offal thrown overboard, as fearless and familiar in the presence of man as the pert sparrow of London."

"Here, papa!" cried Hugh, "here is a new creature to add to your collection. I know him at once, – the huge Albatross."

With the admiration of a naturalist, Mr. Mayburn looked on the gigantic bird, continuing its solemn majestic flight untiringly for hours after the ship, its keen eye ever on the watch for any floating substance which was thrown from the vessel, and then swooping heavily down to snatch the prize voraciously, and circling round the ship, again to resume its place at the wake.

"I see now," said he, "why Coleridge wrote, —

But the poet mistook the habits of the bird entirely when he added, that 'on mast or shroud it perched.' The difficulty of expanding its wing of five joints, so immensely long, would impede its rising from the mast of a ship; it scrambles along the waves before it can rise above them; and it has been well said, 'The albatross is the mere creature of the wind, and has no more power over itself than a paper kite or an air balloon. It is all wing, and has no muscle to raise itself with, and must wait for a wind before it can get under sail.'"

The family were assembled on deck in the close of the evening, after the fervid heat of an equatorial sun, and they beheld with enjoyment the wonders of the deep; but the old nurse seemed disturbed and awe-struck.

"Every thing seems turned topsy-turvy here," said she. "Days far hotter nor ever I mind them, and May-day not come; fishes with wings, flying as if they were birds, and birds walking atop of the water, as if it were dry land. It's unnatural, Miss Marget, and no good can come on it, I say."

"Ah! if you were but going with us, Mrs. Wilson," said Charles Deverell; "then I would engage you should see wonders. You should see beasts hopping about like birds, and wearing pockets to carry their young ones in; black swans and white eagles; cuckoos that cry in the night, and owls that scream by day; pretty little birds that cannot sing, and bees that never sting. There the trees shed their bark instead of their leaves, and the cherries grow with the stone outside."