CHAPTER IV.

ABOARD THE "MOONDARRA."

Dick woke early next morning, and looked about him for a minute in bewilderment before he remembered where he was. He had been dreaming that he was in the dormitory at school, with Bottles snoring as he always snored. It was confusing to awaken in a narrow berth, with white-panelled walls creaking close by. The ship gave a lurch, and a cabin trunk slid half-way out from under the opposite berth, then it went back again, and Dick experienced a peculiar feeling of hollowness and discomfort that he could not classify, coupled with a longing for fresh air.

He hopped up on his bed, and put his head out of the open porthole. The sun had just risen, and stared him in the face across a long stretch of heaving sea--grey, tossing water, broken here and there by a "white horse." A keen breeze swept by; Dick drank in a great draught of it, and from that moment forgot his first and last hint of seasickness. It was too cold to stay, however, he shivered in his thin pyjamas, and returned to the shelter of the blankets.

The snoring that had put Bottles into his dream was still going on, though louder than Bottles had ever snored. It came from the berth where Mr. Warner slumbered peacefully, lying on his back, with his mouth wide open. Dick reflected enviously upon the chance such an attitude on the part of Bottles would have afforded his interested dormitory mates, though Master Glass had grown cunning, even in repose, since his friends, having caught him snoring open-mouthed, had filled up the yawning cavity with soap shavings. The memory of the victim foaming at the mouth returned to Dick and he chuckled--at which, to his great alarm, Mr. Warner half roused and said, "Eh, Merle?" Dick refrained from answering, and in a moment there was audible evidence that the huge man, waked, like the lobster, too soon, was slumbering again.

The ship was beginning to stir. Overhead could be heard trampling feet and the swish of hoses, as the decks were washed down; in the passages the stewards were busy with mops and brooms. Dick decided that bed had lost its charms, and, seizing a towel, went forth in search of a bath. A friendly steward directed him to a bath-room, and gave him a big, rough towel, remarking that the smooth and shiny one he carried was merely for "moppin' yourself up in the cabin," and Dick presently revelled in a huge bath of hot sea-water, followed by an icy shower. He returned glowing, and finished dressing rapidly, while Mr. Warner slumbered and snored in calm majesty. Then he seized his cap and ran out.

In the alleyway he met his own cabin steward, who greeted him cheerfully.

"Morning, you're up early. Like a cup of tea?"

"Rather!" said Dick, who, like all bush boys, could drink tea a dozen times a day if opportunity occurred.

"Right-oh!" said the steward. "Wait half a jiff."

He dived into a passage, and presently reappeared with a cup of tea, the saucer encumbered with two biscuits and a banana.

"Like to take it up on deck?"

"Good idea," said Dick. "Thanks, awfully."

He mounted the stairs with care--the ship was lurching a little, and he was not used to carrying liquids on a floor that rose and fell beneath him. Still, he reached the deck, although with not more than a quarter of the tea in the saucer--he had prudently pocketed the biscuits and fruit--and sat down near the rail to dispose of his load. This over, he took back his cup and saucer and was greeted with astonished thanks by the bewildered steward, who said, "Lor', you could 'a lef' it up on deck--someone or other'd take it down."

Dick ran up again quickly. The wet decks glistened in the morning sunshine. A few of the men passengers were astir; some still in pyjamas; but no women were visible. An officer coming by gave him a pleasant greeting. He went forward until he could look down on the lower deck, where sailors were busy mopping, coiling ropes and generally stowing everything in ship-shape fashion for the uninterrupted run west. Land was still in sight on the starboard, a faint blue line of hills; ahead and to port there was nothing but the grey waste of heaving sea, brightened to blue wherever the sunlight sparkled on it. The air was full of sea birds, circling round the ship on the alert for any scrap of food that might be thrown over. As he watched a flock of gulls pounced, screaming, on the contents of a refuse tin from the galley, and fought over the spoil. To port, half a mile away, a little steamer wallowed along, her smoke making a black trail in her wake.

It was too cold to stand still, so Dick joined the steady march round the deck, taken by the few passengers who were about. Turning a corner presently he almost ran into someone coming rapidly in the opposite direction--Merle Warner, with her shock of hair flying in the wind, and her hands digging deeply into the pockets of a rough blue serge overcoat.

"Can't you look where you're goin', silly," she demanded.

"Didn't see you," Dick responded cheerfully. He had had ideas of apologising, but they vanished hurriedly. They glared at each other.

"Is my daddy up?" she demanded.

"He wasn't when I left," Dick said. "Don't think he meant to be, either, by the way he was snoring."

She flamed into anger.

"You're cheeky. My daddy never snores!"

"Oh, doesn't he?" returned the bewildered Dick. "Well, you go down to the cabin and listen, that's all, if you don't believe me."

"I don't need to go--I know he doesn't," she said loftily. "I expect you were snoring yourself, and thought it was my daddy. I think he's jolly good to let you sleep in his cabin."

The amazing effrontery of this made Dick gasp.

"Well--you have a nerve!" he said. "His cabin, indeed. I like that. It's mine just as much."

"No it isn't---my daddy had it before you came."

"Well, we've paid for half, anyhow," said Dick, practically. "And even if your father is big, he can't sleep in two bunks."

"I don't care--you're just a horrid little nuisance, getting into a gentleman's cabin," declared Merle, endeavouring to tilt a rather snub nose.

The speech was meant to crush--as Dick remarked, later, to his mother, it might have been employed in describing a cockroach; but it had the wrong effect on Dick. He broke into a shout of laughter.

"I say," he cried, "it's as good as a play to hear you talk. You weren't behind the door when they served out bad tempers, anyhow, were you?"

It was ordinary schoolboy repartee, but it reduced Merle to impotent fury. She glared at him, speechless, her face flushing from brow to chin; and just then a friendly, boisterous presence swung round the corner.

"Hullo, children." The doctor greeted them cheerily. "Out for an early walk, eh?" Something in their demeanour made him look more keenly. "Why, I believe you're quarrelling! Fie now, for shame."

"Not we!" declared Dick laughing.

"I am," Merle exploded. "He's just a beastly little boy."

She turned, wriggled from the hand the doctor dropped on her shoulder, and fled, leaving the two bewildered males staring after her.

"Now that's a firework in petticoats!" ejaculated the doctor. "What's annoyed her, Dick?"

"Blest if I know," Dick replied, grinning. "You wouldn't have said she was in a good temper from the start, and then she went off like a packet of crackers 'cause I said her father snored. And he does snore, too!"

"Snore--why, man alive, he's like an engine!" said the doctor. "He went to sleep in the smoking-room the other day, and before long he'd cleared the room. Snored 'em clean out. How could a man of his build fail to snore, may I ask?"

"Well, he doesn't fail to," said Dick laughing.

"That is so, certainly. But I suppose that square-faced small daughter of his thought you were insulting him. Never mind, she'll get over it. Come for a walk. You ought to do a mile round the deck three times a day at least. Passengers who do that never develop livers!"

"I don't think I have one," Dick grinned.

"Continue in that belief, if you can, my son, and then you won't make any doctor's fortune. There's disinterested advice for you!" The doctor set off round the deck with long strides, so that to keep up gave Dick no little exertion. They pounded along, too fast for conversation. The deck was sprinkled with passengers now, and at every moment new heads appeared, coming up the companion ladders. There was no sign of Merle, but presently they encountered Mrs. Warner, with a five-year-old boy, and stopped to greet her.

"Good morning," said the doctor. "And how's my friend Bobby?"

"Vezzy well," said Bobby, solemnly. He looked at Dick with interest. "Is you the new boy?"

"I expect so," Dick replied.

"Merle says you is a beast. Is you?"

"Never mind Merle," Mrs. Warner said hastily. "She's just an old stupid. Of course Dick isn't a beast, Bobby."

"I don't fink you looks like one," Bobby pronounced, solemnly, after inspecting him.

Dick grinned, somewhat confused. He was never a person of many words, except with his mother; it was somewhat disconcerting to be dissected in public.

"You come along, and I'll show you the gulls," he said, and Bobby tucked a fat little hand into his hard paw and trotted off ecstatically. They made great friends over the swooping gulls, and Dick learned that there were two little Warners younger than Bobby--"twinses," the small boy said. Being but three, they were considered too young to travel; they stayed in Perth with Grannie. "We's goin' back to find the twinses now," Bobby finished.

"Are you glad?"

"Wather! They's troublesome kids, but they's nice. I've got a pony at home."

"So have I," said Dick. "Is yours a good one?"

"He's lovely," Bobby said solemnly. "His name's Micky. Can yours jump?"

"Can he--what!" said Dick, with a sudden homesick vision of Tinker and the great galloping stretches at home, of the log fences over which they loved to fly. It was believed that Dick would take Tinker across anything over which the pony could lift his nose. "Yes, he can jump a bit." Speech fell upon him with that beloved subject, and he talked of Tinker, with his eyes dancing, while the little boy hung upon his words and spurred him whenever he paused with, "Tell me more about him."

"We lost him once when he was a two-year-old," Dick said. "Some ass of a swagman burned some of our boundary fence--didn't put his camp fire out properly---and a lot of our horses got out through the gap and into the ranges. We got most of 'em back, but Tinker and a little bay mare joined a mob of wild horses, and we never saw them for six months."

"Never any more?" Bobby's eyes were round with horror.

"Yes, we did. Father said he'd get Tinker back if it took him a year, and he took all the men out with him to hunt the mob down. He took me, too, on old Pivot. And we found the wild horses in a big gully in the ranges, and the men managed to get nearly round 'em before they smelt us. Then they went off like smoke. I was on top of a hill and I could see Tinker going with them. The men headed them back towards the plains, but they found a way up another gully, and I don't believe we'd ever have seen them again if it hadn't been for father."

"What did your faver do?"

"He just set sail across country--up the hill between the two gullies--you never saw such a hill to ride up--and down the other side. If it was bad going up, it was simply awful going down--all overgrown with trees and scrub, and great rocks sticking out of the ground. And father went down it at a gallop, as if he was on one of the plains. You never saw anything like it. The men said, 'Well the boss can break his neck if he likes--we're not going!'"

"Oo-oh!" said Bobby.

"The mob came up the gully at an awful bat--it was just a race between them and father. But he got down first, and he swung round down the gully, and, my aunt! you should have heard his stockwhip. It was just like rifle shots. He met the mob coming up in a narrow place, and they wouldn't face him--they pulled up and looked at him for a moment, and then they wheeled and went tearing back, and father after them. And of course the men were ready enough then--they kept 'em going down, never gave 'em a chance to wheel back into the ranges--got em out on the open plain and across through the gap into our run--and we yarded the whole blessed lot!"

"And Tinker, too?"

"Yes, Tinker too, of course. Father never would have come back if we hadn't got Tinker. My word, that was a gallop!" Dick's eyes were dancing. "I don't know how I got down the hill--old Pivot did it--he's the best stock horse you ever saw. He just did what he liked. I hadn't a say in it. You see, the only chance was to keep the mob going, never giving them a second to turn or break. All the men were using their stockwhips and yelling like fury, and father was riding out on the wing, near the big chestnut that was leading the mob---he knew that was the horse to watch. He did try to wheel too, but father was always there with his whip. I guess that chestnut found out who was boss that day!"

"I say--your faver must be splendid."

"Of course he's splendid." Dick brushed away so superfluous an observation. "That chestnut's his best hack now. Father lassoed him in the yards, and broke him in himself, and you should have seen him buck. The men swore he'd always be an outlaw, but father said he wouldn't, and he beat him in the end. He wouldn't let another soul touch him, and though he goes quietly enough with father, no one else can ride him now. I guess father will have to break him in again now, 'cause he's been turned out for a year since father went to England."

"Was Tinker all right?" asked Bobby eagerly.

"Tinker just came up to me in the yards when they cut him out from the mob and put his old head down to my pocket, looking for an apple. He always did that from the time he was a foal."

Someone behind them--they were leaning over the rail, the ship forgotten--put a hand on Dick's shoulder, and the boy jumped round, his face flushing. Mr. Warner stood laughing at him--near him, Merle, her face a curious mixture of interest and sullenness.

"That was pretty exciting," said Mr. Warner.

Dick's colour deepened. He muttered incoherently something about "just telling the kid a yarn."

"You come to breakfast, Bobby," Merle said crossly. "Mother wants you." She seized the unwilling Bobby's hand and led him away.