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Updated: June 7, 2025
The bull remained master of the field, and the spectators, grown tired of waiting, began to express their disapproval audibly. Piers Major pushed his way to Constans's side. "A chance for you and your fire-stick," he whispered. "I have been talking to Red Oxenford and the others about it, and they are curious to see for themselves.
"I picked up a school of mullet before I'd been rowing five minutes. Fine big fat ones they were, and I could smell them over the fire. When I stood up, fire-stick in one hand, dynamite stick in the other, my knees were knocking together. Maybe it was the gin, or the anxiousness, or the weakness and the hunger, and maybe it was the result of all of them, but at any rate I was all of a shake.
"The next day the cook announced that he would rather take his chance with dynamite than continue trying to exist on coconut, and that, though he didn't know anything about dynamite, he knew a sight too much about coconut. So we bit the detonator down for him, shoved in a fuse, and picked him a good fire-stick, while he jolted up with a couple more stiff ones of gin.
They seemed busy, digging at the root of a large tree; but on seeing me advance they came forward with a fire-stick and sat down; I followed their example, but the cordiality of our meeting could be expressed only by mutual laughing. They were young men, yet one was nearly blind from ophthalmia or filth.
Apunkewis, who had the two villages under Black Rock and was a friend of Long-Hand, told him that there would be a Sign. "'There will, said Taku-Wakin, 'but I shall bring it. He knew that Opata meant mischief, but he could not guess what. All the way to Opata's his thought went round and round like a fire-stick in the hearth-hole. When he heard the drums he flared up like a spark in the tinder.
"He is chasing the reed-legged Antelope now; or, perhaps, even in his sleep, Camous pursues him with the many-breathed Fire-stick. Well, well, by my hump, but we all have our troubles; even this Dog-Wolf, who is not half my age, has lived into the hard winter of life."
They may have three or four harpoons of their own manufacture, besides a live fire-stick lying on a piece of bark sprinkled with sand, or they may carry a couple of dry sticks for raising a fire by friction. It has been duly seasoned and straightened by immersion in running water and exposure to fire. At the heavy end it is hollowed out to a depth Of 4 inches.
After filling our calabash, we returned to the camp of the natives, and examined the things which they had left behind; we found a shield, four calabashes, of which I took two, leaving in their place a bright penny, for payment; there were also, a small water-tight basket containing acacia-gum; some unravelled fibrous bark, used for straining honey; a fire-stick, neatly tied up in tea-tree bark; a kangaroo net; and two tomahawks, one of stone, and a smaller one of iron, made apparently of the head of a hammer: a proof that they had had some communication with the sea-coast.
When he went inside, the uncomfortable hiss with which snakes receive human beings struck his ear, and a sluggish mass moved under his foot; perhaps he had trodden on a tortoise. Timar kept up the fire all night, and drew fantastic figures in the air with the glowing end of the fire-stick perhaps the hieroglyphics of his own thoughts. What a miserable night!
I've forgotten what tea tastes like.... Five years and never a taste or smell.... Any tobacco?... Ah, thanks, and a pipe? Good. Now for a fire-stick and we'll see if the weed has lost its cunning." He scratched the match with the painstaking care of the woodsman, cherished its young flame as though there were never another in all the world, and drew in the first mouthful of smoke.
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