Tree after tree was chosen and marked with the tomahawk, each one appearing taller and straighter and more beautiful than any of its fellows until, finding ourselves back at the camp, Johnny went for his axe and left us to look at the beauty around us.

“Seems a pity to spoil all this, just to make four walls to shut the missus in from anything worth looking at,” Dan murmured as Johnny reappeared.  “They won’t make anything as good as this up at the house.”  Johnny the unpoetical hesitated, perplexed.  Philosophy was not in his line. “’Tisn’t too bad,” he said, suddenly aware of the beauty of the scene, and then the tradesman came to the surface.  “I reckon my job’ll be a bit more on the plumb, though,” he chuckled, and, delighted with his little joke, shouldered his axe and walked towards one of the marked trees, while Dan speculated aloud on the chances a man had of “getting off alive” if a tree fell on him.

“Trees don’t fall on a man that knows how to handle timber,” the unsuspecting Johnny said briskly; and as Dan feared that “fever was her only chance then,” he spat on his hands, and, sending the axe home into the bole of the tree with a clean, swinging stroke, laid the foundation-stone—­the foundation-stone of a tiny home in the wilderness, that was destined to be the dwellingplace of great joy, and happiness, and sorrow.

The Sanguine Scot had prophesied rightly.  There being “time enough for everything in the Never-Never,” there was time for “many pleasant rides along the Reach, choosing trees for timber.”

But the rides were the least part of the pleasure.  For the time being, the silent Reach forest had become the hub of our little universe.  All was life and bustle and movement there.  Every day fresh trees were felled and chopping contests entered into by Johnny and the Dandy; and as the trees fell in quick succession, black boys and lubras armed with tomahawks, swarmed over them, to lop away the branches, before the trunks were dragged by the horses to the mouth of the sawpit.  Every one was happy and light-hearted, and the work went merrily forward, until a great pile of tree-trunks lay ready for the sawpit.

Then a new need arose:  Johnny wanted several yards of strong string, and a “sup” of ink, to make guiding lines on the timber for his saw; but as only sewing cotton was forthcoming, and the Maluka refused to part with one drop of his precious ink, we were obliged to go down to the beginning of things once more:  two or three lubras were set to work to convert the sewing-cotton into tough, strong string, while others prepared a substitute for the ink from burnt water-lily roots.

The sawing of the tree-trunks lasted for nearly three weeks, and the Dandy, being the under-man in the pit, had anything but a merry time.  Down in the pit, away from the air, he worked; pulling and pushing, pushing and pulling, hour after hour, in a blinding stream of sawdust.