All afternoon we were supposed to be “making a dash” for the Edith, a river twelve miles farther on; but there was nothing very dashing about our pace.  The air was stiflingly, swelteringly hot, and the flies maddening in their persistence.  The horses developed puffs, and when we were not being half-drowned in torrents of rain we were being parboiled in steamy atmosphere.  The track was as tracks usually are “during the Wet,” and for four hours we laboured on, slipping and slithering over the greasy track, varying the monotony now and then with a floundering scramble through a boggy creek crossing.  Our appearance was about as dashing as our pace; and draggled, wet through, and perspiring, and out of conceit with primitive travelling—­having spent the afternoon combining a minimum rate of travelling with a maximum of discomfort—­we arrived at the Edith an hour after sundown to find her a wide eddying stream.

“Won’t be more than a ducking,” Mac said cheerfully.  “Couldn’t be much wetter than we are,” and the Maluka taking the reins from my hands, we rode into the stream Mac keeping behind, “to pick her up in case she floats off,” he said, thinking he was putting courage into me.

It wasn’t as bad as it looked; and after a little stumbling and plunging and drifting the horses were clambering out up the opposite bank, and by next sundown—­after scrambling through a few more rivers—­we found ourselves looking down at the flooded Katherine, flowing below in the valley of a rocky gorge.

Sixty-five miles in three days, against sixty miles an hour of the express trains of the world.  “Speed’s the thing,” cries the world, and speeds on, gaining little but speed; and we bush-folk travel our sixty miles and gain all that is worth gaining—­excepting speed.

“Hand-over-hand this time!” Mac said, looking up at the telegraph wire that stretched far overhead.  “There’s no pulley here.  Hand-over-hand, or the horse’s-tail trick.”

But Mine Host of the “Pub” had seen us, and running down the opposite side of the gorge, launched a boat at the river’s brink; then pulling up-stream for a hundred yards or so in the backwash, faced about, and raced down and across the swift-flowing current with long, sweeping strokes; and as we rode down the steep winding track to meet him, Mac became jocular, and reminding us that the gauntlet of the Katherine had yet to be run, also reminded us that the sympathies of the Katherine were with the stockmen; adding with a chuckle, as Mine Host bore down upon us.  “You don’t even represent business here; no woman ever does.”

Then the boat grounded, and Mine Host sprang ashore—­another burly six-foot bushman—­and greeted us with a flashing smile and a laughing “There’s not much of her left.”  And then, stepping with quiet unconcern into over two feet of water, pushed the boat against a jutting ledge for my convenience.  “Wet feet don’t count,” he laughed with another of his flashing smiles, when remonstrated with, and Mac chuckled in an aside, “Didn’t I tell you a woman doesn’t represent business here?”