The Maluka’s eyes twinkled as he listened.  “Does the cap fit, little ’un?” he asked; but the women-folk told him that it was not a matter for joking.

“Do you know there is not another white woman within a hundred-mile radius ?” they asked; and the Maluka pointed out that it was not all disadvantage for a woman to be alone in a world of men.  “The men who form her world are generally better and truer men, because the woman in their midst is dependent on them alone, for companionship, and love, and protecting care,” he assured them.

“Men are selfish brutes,” the opposition declared, rather irrelevantly, looking pointedly at the Maluka.

He smiled with as much deference as he could command.  “Also,” he said, “a woman alone in a world of men rarely complains of their selfishness”; and I hastened to his assistance.  “Particularly when those men are chivalrous bushmen,” I began, then hesitated, for, since reading the telegrams, my ideas of bush chivalry needed readjustment.

“Particularly when those men are chivalrous bushmen,” the Maluka agreed, with the merry twinkle in his eyes; for he perfectly understood the cause of the sudden breakdown.  Then he added gravely:  “For the average bushman will face fire, and flood, hunger, and even death itself, to help the frail or weak ones who come into his life; although he’ll strive to the utmost to keep the Unknown Woman out of his environments particularly when those environments are a hundred miles from anywhere.”

The opposition looked incredulous.  “Hunger and death!” it said.  “Fiddlesticks!” It would just serve them right if she went; and the men folk pointed out that this was, now, hardly flattering to the missus.

The Maluka passed the interruption by without comment.  “The Unknown Woman is brimful of possibilities to a bushman,” he went on; “for although she may be all womanly strength and tenderness, she may also be anything, from a weak timid fool to a self-righteous shrew, bristling with virtue and indignation.  Still,” he added earnestly, as the opposition began to murmur, “when a woman does come into our lives, whatever type she may be, she lacks nothing in the way of chivalry, and it rests with herself whether she remains an outsider or becomes just One of Us.  Just One of Us,” he repeated, unconsciously pleading hard for the bushman and his greatest need—­“not a goddess on a pedestal, but just a comrade to share our joys and sorrows with.”

The opposition wavered.  “If it wasn’t for those telegrams,” it said.  But Darwin, seeing the telegrams in a new light, took up the cudgels for the bushmen.

“Poor beggars,” it said, “you can’t blame them.  When you come to think of it, the Unknown Woman is brimful of possibilities.”  Even then, at the Katherine, the possibilities of the Unknown Woman were being tersely summed up by the Wag.