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Updated: June 12, 2025
He knew the bush-folk well, and that their instinct would be unerring, and left the missus to slip into whichever niche in their lives they thought fit to place her.
We sleep wherever we are, for it is easy to grow accustomed even to nigger alarms, and beside, the bush-folk know that when a man has clean hands and heart he has little to fear from even his "bad fellow black fellows."
It goes without saying that the Maluka sent that neighbour's mail to him without delay, even though it meant a four-days' journey for a "boy" and station horses, for the bush-folk do what they can to help each other and the Department in the matter of mails, as in all else.
Few except the bush-folk now wear the Ibongo, Ipepe, or Ndengi, the woven fibres and grass-cloths of their ancestry; amongst the hunters, however, a Tanga, or grass-kilt, may still be seen. The exposure of the upper person shows the size and tumidity of the areola, even in young girls; being unsupported, the mammae soon become flaccid.
We returned compliments, and after the usual complications we came to the main point, the "dash." I had privily kept a piece of satin- stripe, and this was produced as the very last of our viaticum. The interpreter, having been assured that we had nothing else to give, retired with his posse to debate; whilst we derided the wild manners of these "bush-folk," who feared to shake hands with us.
In the meantime we discovered the remainder of the Settlement from the Cottage verandahs, spying out the Police Station as it lurked in ambush just round the first bend in a winding bush track apparently keeping one eye on the "Pub"; and then we caught a gleam of white roofs away beyond further bends in the track, where the Overland Telegraph "Department" stood on a little rise, aloof from the "Pub" and the Police, shut away from the world, yet attending to its affairs, and, incidentally, to those of the bush-folk: a tiny Settlement, with a tiny permanent population of four men and two women women who found their own homes all-sufficient, and rarely left them, although the men-folk were here, there, and everywhere.
What did these jungle savages of the dark heart of Guadalcanal know of helmets? Had Mendana's men-at-arms worn helmets and penetrated here centuries before? And if not, then whence had the bush-folk caught the motive?
In all the knowledge of the bush-folk, only one man had proved "mean enough."
Bush-folk being old fashioned, no one raised any objection to the term "owner," as Dan chuckled over the amendment. After thinking the matter well out, Dan decided he was "what you might call a tail-less tyke." "We've had to manage without any wagging, haven't we, Brown, old chap?" he said, unconscious of the note in his voice that told of lonely years and vague longings.
Let them look from their own dark alleys and hideous midnights into some or all of the cattle camps out-bush, or, better still, right into the "poor dark souls'" of the bush-folk themselves if their vision is clear enough before they judge.
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