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He was both astonished and exceedingly indignant that a dingo should have the brazen impudence to stand and stare at him, within thirty yards of camp, too. In his hand he carried a stock-whip, with its fifteen-foot fall neatly coiled about its taper end.
The stock-whip cracked again, nearer home this time; and Norah crammed the blue silk sock hastily into a little work-bag, and raced away over the lawn, her slim black legs making great time across the buffalo grass. Beside her tore the collie and Puck, each a vision of embodied delight.
"Yes," Gregson, the Member of Parliament, continued, "if I had my way I'd muster every mob of Chinamen in Australia, I'd have one thundering big roundup, and into the Pacific and the Indian Sea they'd go, to the crack of a stock-whip or of something more convincing." The Hon.
He is a burly rough, bearded to the eyes, the shapeless remnant of a coarse wide-awake covering a head of hair that has seemingly been long unknown to the barber; his blue flannel shirt, ragged jacket, breeches, and long riding-boots, are all crusted deep with mud, while a stock-whip is coiled round his shoulders.
He cracked it round and round my head and arms, but I did not feel the least afraid, as I saw at a glance that he was exceedingly dexterous in the bushman's art of handling a stock-whip, and knew, if I kept perfectly still, I was quite safe. It was thanks to uncle Jay-Jay that I was able to bear the operation with unruffled equanimity, as he was in the habit of testing my nerves in this way.
"He had been rounding up some cattle, and had a stock-whip with him. I had one, too, a beauty, with a sixteen-foot green-hide thong. I knew him as soon as I saw him half a mile away. I skulked in the scrub as he came up just behind a clump of wattle. To fool him I rode out and past him; he turned after me, and I wheeled." The bright eyes glittered as they watched Tony's face.
'Give 'em Botany Bay! Give'em the stock-whip and the rifle! That's a nice gospel for the Anglo-Saxon dispensation." The suddenness of the attack overwhelmed the Member, but he was choking with wrath. Had he not stone-walled in the New South Wales Parliament for nine hours, and been placed on a Royal Commission for that service? "My word!"
Mac Lindsay, the stock-whip expert and jack-of-all-trades, confessed to only one ambition in life to dress in a little red jacket and fez and lead him round on a chain! The report that he made a Ford car out of bully-beef tins has, I understand, been officially denied. Just a week before the Armistice we lost Colthart, the best quartermaster in the Army, and one of the best of fellows.
He it was who had given a shrill shout, and as I ran across a piece of waste ground to see what was the matter, I saw him crouching on the ground, while over him stood a big bully, whom I had before seen at the door of a low grog-shop; making a vicious cut at the "nigger" with a heavy stock-whip.
He went on till he came to the boundary fence which ran at right angles to the water, and then turning tried to drive the animals towards the corral. He met, however, with unexpected difficulties. He had brought a stock-whip with him, and used it with some skill, though without result. The bullocks and cows swerved from the lash, but before they had gone ten yards they wheeled and bolted back.
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