Sharply out of the silence came a ringing report.  Jim was jerked to a sitting posture, listening with all his ears.  The report was repeated several times, a fusillade of shots, followed by faint echoes of a voice raised in anger.  There was an interval of quiet, and when the sound broke in again Done sighed contentedly, and relapsed into his former position.  He recognised the crack of a cattle-whip.  In a minute or two he heard the voice of the bullocky admonishing Bally and Spot with a burst of alliterative invective, and presently the leaders came labouring out of the darkness, the great red bullocks, with bowed heads, moving slowly and with that suggestion of impassive invincibility that goes always with a big team of good working bullocks in action.

‘Hello, mate!’ cried someone beyond in the shadows.

‘Hello, there!’

‘Plenty o’ water ‘bout?’

‘A creek down to the left.’

’Right-o!  We’ll camp here, Stony.  Woa, Strawberry!  Woa, there, Spot!  Bally!  Blackboy!’

The cattle came to a standstill, and while the others busied themselves unyoking the team, one man went off through the trees, and presently returned, carrying a billy he had just filled.  He kicked the fire together, threw on a few pieces of wood, and began to prepare a meal, paying no attention to Jim, who lay watching him.  It was not customary to say ‘By your leave!’ in little matters of this kind.  On the track every man’s company was supposed to be welcome.  Following a habit of observation, Jim examined the man without curiosity.  He was thin, sandy-haired, and wiry, about forty-five, with restless hands, and a cowed, half-sullen expression—­a drinker of strong drinks of the kind manufactured at the shanties, corrosive liquids that ate the souls out of men in quick order.

Having disposed of the bullocks, the tinkling of whose bells was a foreign note in the night, two others came to the fire, carrying the tucker-box.  They were brothers, long, bearded, brown-faced Australians of the runs, going up to the rush with stores for Coolan and Smith, or Aberdeen, the universal providers of the Roaring Fifties.

‘Hurry up that blasted quart-pot, Stony!’ ejaculated the elder of the two.  ‘I feel as if I’d done a three days’ perish-me!’

The men ate hungrily, sitting about in the light of the fire, drinking the hot tea from pannikins and from the billy lid, and as they ate they talked.  Done was beginning to find himself at home in the society of men.  The humanities were finding place in his soul.  Everything about these people interested him—­their work, their pleasures, their ideas.  They were so closely in touch with vital things, so tolerant.  They cherished no political, social, and religious convictions to the exclusion of their fellow-men.

Burton returned, swinging four featherless birds.  The invasion of their camp did not surprise him.  He greeted the strangers cheerfully, and held the birds up for Jim’s inspection.