But there was to be no unseemly rage this time.  In dignified silence Cheon received the marrow—­a sinuous yellow insult, and as the homestead waited he raised it above his head, and stalking majestically from us towards the finished part of the fence, flung it from him in contemptuous scorn, adding a satisfied snort as the marrow, striking the base of a fence post, burst asunder, and the next moment, after a flashing swoop, he was grovelling under the wires, making frantic efforts to reach a baby bottle of whisky that had rolled from within the marrow away beyond the fence.  “Cognac!” he gasped, as he struggled, and then, as shouts greeted his speedy success, he sat up, adding comically:  “My word!  Me close up smash him Cognac.”  At the thought came his inevitable laughter, and as he leant against the fence post, surrounded by the shattered marrow, he sat hopelessly gurgling, and choking, and shaking, and hugging his bottle, the very picture of a dissolute old Bacchanalian. (Cheon would have excelled as a rapid change artist).  And as Cheon gurgled, and spluttered, and shook, the homestead rocked with yells of delight, while Brown of the Bulls rolled and writhed in a canvas lounge, gasping between his shouts:  “Oh, chase him away, somebody; cover him up.  Where did you catch him?”

Finally Cheon scrambled to his feet, and, perspiring and exhausted, presented the bottle to the Maluka.  “My word, me cross fellow!” he said weakly, and then, bubbling over again at the recollection, he chuckled:  “Close up smash him Cognac all right.”  And at the sound of the chuckle Brown of the Bulls broke out afresh: 

“Chase him away!” he yelled.  “You’ll kill me between you!  I never struck such a place!  Is it a circus or a Wild West Show?”

Gravely the Maluka accepted the bottle, and with the same mock gravity answered Brown of the Bulls.  “It is neither, my man,” he said; “neither a circus, nor a Wild West Show.  This is the land the poets sing about, the land where dull despair is king.”

Brown of the Bulls naturally wished “some of the poets were about now,” and Dan, having joined the house party, found a fitting opportunity to air one of his pet grievances.

“I’ve never done wishing some of them town chaps that write bush yarns ’ud come along and learn a thing or two,” he said.  “Most of ’em seem to think that when we’re not on the drink we’re whipping the cat or committing suicide.”  Rarely had Dan any excuse to offer for those “town chaps,” who, without troubling to learn “a thing or two,” first, depict the bush as a pandemonium of drunken orgies, painted women, low revenge, remorse, and suicide; but being in a more magnanimous mood than usual, as the men-folk flocked towards the Quarters he waited behind to add, unconscious of any irony:  “Of course, seeing it’s what they’re used to in town, you can’t expect ’em to know any better.”