The blacks assailed no
more; instead, the birds sang in the sun, and he asked himself, 'Is it
all a dream?'
'Why,' declared one of his men, helping him towards the camp, 'should you
worry yourself over having shot that black fellow? If you hadn't, where
should we all have been? and anyhow there are plenty more like him in the
country.' This comforter was himself to need comfort, by and by, on a
less sombre subject. He dashed in upon Sir George, crying, 'Sir, I have
seen the Old Gentleman,' and with his frame shaking as if he had. It was
the Australian bat on midnight circuit, a strange serenade to the
European. Another of nature's creatures was to figure amid circumstances
which did hold cause for terror.
'It's curious,' Sir George mused, 'how we remember trifles of the long
ago with preciseness, when often bigger events are blurred. I recollect,
very well, a slight incident of the scene on the island of Dorre, off the
north-west coast of Australia, when a storm caught us. In turn, I caught
an old cormorant by the neck, and the bird was all we had for breakfast
next morning. A most sedate character he was, trying hard to maintain a
dignified attitude in face of a very tempest of wind. He wished to fly,
but could not, the violence of the gale pinning him to the ground.
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