The night was full of sounds, and one by one Mac caught them up, and the bush appeared to echo him; and leaning half drowsily, against the pack-saddles and swags, we listened until we slipped into one of those quiet reveries that come so naturally to bush-folk.  Shut in on all sides by bush and tall timber, with the rushing river as sentinel, we seemed in a world all our own—­a tiny human world, with a camp fire for its hub; and as we dreamed on, half conscious of the moonlight and shoutings, the deep inner beauty of the night stole upon us.  A mystical, elusive beauty. difficult to define, that lay underneath and around, and within the moonlight—­a beauty of deep nestling shadows, crooning whispers, and soft rustling movement.

For a while we dreamed on, and then the Maluka broke the silence.  “The wizard of the Never-Never has not forgotten how to weave his spells while I’ve been south,” he said.  “It won’t be long before he has the missus in his toils.  The false veneer of civilisation is peeling off at a great rate.”

I roused as from a trance; and Mac threw a sharp, searching glance at me, as I sat curled up against a swag.  “You’re right,” he laughed; “there’s not a trace of the towney left.”  And rising to “see about fixing up camp,” he added:  “You’d better look out, missus!  Once caught, you’ll never get free again.  We’re all tethered goats here.  Every time we make up our minds to clear out, something pulls us back with a jerk.”

“Tethered goats!” Mac called us, and the world must apply the simile as it thinks fit.  The wizard of the Never-Never weaves his spells, until hardships, and dangers, and privations, seem all that make life worth living; and then holds us “tethered goats”; and every time the town calls us with promises of gaiety, and comfort, and security, “something pulls us back with a jerk” to our beloved bush.

There was no sign of rain; and as bushmen only pitch tent when a deluge is expected, our camp was very simple:  just camp sleeping mosquito-nets, with calico tops and cheese net for curtains—­hanging by cords between stout stakes driven into the ground.  “Mosquito pegs,” the bushmen call these stakes.

Jackeroo, the unpoetical, was even then sound asleep in his net; and in ten minutes everything was “fixed up.”  In another ten minutes we had also “turned in,” and soon after I was sound asleep, rolled up in a “bluey,” and had to be wakened at dawn.

“The river’s still rising,” Mac announced by way of good-morning.  “We’ll have to bustle up and get across, or the water’ll be over the wire, and then we’ll be done for.”

Bustle as we would, however “getting across” was a tedious business.  It took nearly an hour’s hustling and urging and galloping before the horses could be persuaded to attempt the swim, and then only after old Roper had been partly dragged and partly hauled through the back-wash by the amphibious Jackeroo.

Another half-hour slipped by in sending the horses’ hobbles across on the pulley that ran on the wire, and in the hobbling out of the horses.  Then, with Jackeroo on one side of the river, and the Maluka and Mac on the other, swags, saddles, packbags, and camp baggage went over one by one; and it was well past mid-day before all was finished.