Pelican Pool: A Novel

Where the equator girdles the earth, the Indian Ocean and the amorous waters of the Pacific have their marriage bed. Afire with the passions of the tropics, excited by breezes f...

The last week of October was ending. At Surprise seven red-hot days had crowded after one another; six breathless nights had brought men and women gasping to their doors. The se...

Kaloona Homestead lies distant from Surprise fifteen Queensland miles, and the traveller by that road learns a Queensland mile is a mile and anything you wish beyond. The red tr...

Power was abroad again before sunrise. Daylight moved over the country, and he bathed, dressed, and pulled on his boots while butcher birds called, and small finches bobbed and...

Power picked up his whip by way of company, and took the road to the camp. The journey was done in ten minutes' time. The moon had not risen, and he found the place in darkness,...

Next day Power kept his promise, and rode into Surprise as soon as he could. He let go the horse in a yard, and tramped the stony stretch which lies before the house. Outside th...

The week was beggared, and had borrowed two days from the next, when Power came riding back to Surprise. He had left the musterers and the cook's waggon after breakfast to find...

Power rode out of Surprise with the hag of reproach seated at the crupper of his horse. He would have proved poor company for a wayfarer; but fortune left him to follow the road...

Every day of the week, at fall of dark, I grope my way here into my tent at Surprise, light the hurricane lamp, hook it to the beam overhead, find paper and pen, and spur myself...

The long days of early summer went by on Kaloona Station. While the last stars were leaving the sky, Jackie, the black horse-tailer, let down the slip-rails of the house paddock...

Now his mind was made up, he felt weakness leave him. Trouble never nagged when there was work to do. The horse waited to be saddled at the bottom of the hill, which task he did...

The sun climbing round the base of Conical Hill at daybreak next morning, found Selwyn already abroad, and in the very best of humours. The gentle trickle of last night's nightc...

Coming up from the yard near the creek where the goats were herded, Maud Neville stood a moment in the darkened dining-room; and, standing there, she heard Selwyn begin his stor...

"Jim, we can't ride like this for ever. A good thing if we could! I am over the first sharpness. Don't choose your words. We can't ride on like this."

Power kept his promise. The afternoon sun was still high in the sky when he let loose his horse in the stable yard at Surprise and walked across the stones to the house. He appr...

In this far country spendthrift November used up one by one its days. Each fiery noontide pulled the sun a little higher into the sky. His way was set in a wide field of blue, w...

On the afternoon of the last of those November days Maud Neville chose again the road to Pelican Pool. She had learned of Power's banishment until dark to a corner of the run, a...

When the same afternoon had worn to evening, Power rode down to the river. His comings and goings at the hut passed unremarked. Gregory kept always ready his loud welcome, and h...

Seven days of every week a fiery sun rolled through a wide, high, empty sky. Seven noons of every week discovered that sun mounting a little higher. All day long the roofs of th...

There dawned at last a day hotter and longer than any the summer yet had sent. With break of morning banks of sullen clouds were rolling out of the South into an empty sky. The...

The storm burst in the middle of the night. A rush of wind came with a high call out of the South and tore at the hessian walls of Surprise with multitudinous fingers. It fell w...

Power dismounted. He was full of tiny pains and the cold was beginning to eat into his bones. Neville had pulled up the buggy near at hand. The old man was plastered with mud to...