“Always supposing we’re aren’t all dead before then,” said Louis.

The first job was to boil water and wash the plates on which she amused herself by tracing the remains of quite half a dozen different meals.  She felt sickened by the sight of the dead sheep; Louis seemed unmoved as he ran an anatomical eye over it and hacked off slices with a blunt knife.  He became very wise on the subject of flapjacks and felt that Marcella was not quite playing up to him when she preferred to make omelets.  The meal was quite a success in spite of the fact that, when it was ready Louis had difficulty in beating up the host and the other guests, and there was nowhere to keep warm the mutton which congealed and stuck hard on the plates.  But no one troubled about such a detail.  They ate with enjoyment and drank vast quantities of tea with much sugar and no milk.

They had an unbearably stuffy night in the breathless railway carriage; once Marcella went out on the platform and sat down for awhile listening to the echo-like barking of dingoes out on the ranges.  In less than five minutes she was back again, her feet and hands prickling and sore with the bites of ants and sandflies.  She was not at all sorry when dawn came at half-past three.  She was disappointed in the creek; it had sounded luxuriously moist from the note of pride in the stationmaster’s voice when he mentioned it.  It turned out to be a suncracked water-course with a little muddy water lying in hollows, and one or two deeper holes from which the manganese miners got their water.  She had been hoping for a swim:  she had to be content with dipping a handkerchief in one of the hollows and wiping her face with it, since all the rest was needed for drinking.

“Next time yous come along we’ll have had a drop o’ rain, an’ then you can drownd yourselfs if you want to,” said the stationmaster.

They started out at four o’clock with the information that Gaynor’s Station was a collection of weather-board huts, a homestead put together by five lads from England who were trying to make a fortune each.  They had not yet made a living between them.  Loose End was owned by an elderly squatter with many children.  Five big gums, which could be seen for miles, stood sentinel over the homestead on a rising knoll of ground.

“But if yous ain’t lucky, don’t hit up Loose End.  Old Twist has lots o’ luck, but it’s mostly bad luck.  A kid every year, an’ eether a bush fire or a flood or something to make up for it.  His eldest is going on for ten, I think—­an’ how’s he to pay for labour to clear his land?”

Neither of them knew, but they decided to make for Loose End and see what was going on under the five gums.