He then told George he had often been at Sydney, and could “speak the white man’s language a good deal,” and must on no account be confounded with common black fellows.  He illustrated his civilization by eating the shark as it cooked; that is to say, as soon as the surface was brown he gnawed it off, and put the rest down to brown again, and so ate a series of laminae instead of a steak; that it would be cooked to the center if he let it alone was a fact this gentleman had never discovered; probably had never had the patience to discover.

George, finding the shark’s flesh detestable, declined it, and watched the other.  Presently he vented his reflections.  “Well you are a cool one! half an hour ago I didn’t expect to see you eating him—­quite the contrary.”  Jacky grinned good-humoredly in reply.

When George returned to the farmer, the latter, who had begun to fear the loss of a customer, came at once to terms with him.  The next day he started for home with three hundred sheep.  Jacky announced that he should accompany him, and help him a good deal.  George’s consent was not given, simply because it was not asked.  However, having saved the man’s life, he was not sorry to see a little more of him.

It is usual in works of this kind to give minute descriptions of people’s dress.  I fear I have often violated this rule.  However I will not in this case.

Jacky’s dress consisted of, in front, a sort of purse made of rat-skin; behind, a bran new tomahawk and two spears.

George fancied this costume might be improved upon; he therefore bought from the farmer a second-hand coat and trousers and his new friend donned them with grinning satisfaction.  The farmer’s wife pitied George living by himself out there, and she gave him several little luxuries; a bacon-ham, some tea, and some orange-marmalade, and a little lump-sugar and some potatoes.

He gave the potatoes to Jacky to carry.  They weighed but a few pounds.  George himself carried about a quarter of a hundredweight.  For all that the potatoes worried Jacky more than George’s burden him.  At last he loitered behind so long that George sat down and lighted his pipe.  Presently up comes Niger with the sleeves of his coat hanging on each side of his neck and the potatoes in them.  My lord had taken his tomahawk and chopped off the sleeves at the arm-pit; then he had sewed up their bottoms and made bags of them, uniting them at the other end by a string which rested on the back of his neck like a milkmaid’s balance.  Being asked what he had done with the rest of the coat, he told George he had thrown it away because it was a good deal hot.

“But it won’t be hot at night, and then you will wish you hadn’t been such a fool,” said George, irate.

No, he couldn’t make Jacky see this; being hot at the time Jacky could not feel the cold to come.  Jacky became a hanger-on of George, and if he did little he cost little; and if a beast strayed he was invaluable, he could follow the creature for miles by a chain of physical evidence no single link of which a civilized man would have seen.