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He felt rather than saw that nothing had happened while he slept. No enemy to be feared had come, while all his own strength and elasticity had returned to him. Never had he felt stronger or more perfectly attuned in body and mind. He moved again in a circuit about the cabin, watching carefully, and now and then looking up among the trees. Perhaps an opossum might be hanging from a bough!
This seemed like a signal; for, almost at the instant of its discharge, a terrific fire of shot and shell from forty pieces of cannon was hurled on the unfortunate Plover and her consort the Opossum, which followed her close up behind, both being immediately wreathed in smoke and flame and having their decks swept fore and aft by every discharge. It was a regular ambuscade, a hornet's nest!
In this manner do these people climb trees, whose circumference is ten or fifteen feet, or upwards, after an opossum or a squirrel, though they rise to the height of sixty or eighty feet before there is a single branch. Governor Phillip had occasionally seen a few of the natives climb the trees at Sydney and Rose-Hill, but this old man greatly surpassed them.
The quadrupeds hitherto discovered, with very few exceptions, are all of the kangaroo or opossum tribe; having their hinder legs long, out of all proportion when compared with the length of the fore legs, and a sack under the belly of the female for the reception of the young.
He hesitated, and then turned aside into the bracken; he would wait till I had finished and had gone to sleep, or had moved off. How much less wit have such animals, animals like the porcupine, opossum, skunk, turtle, that nature has armed against all foes, than the animals that have no such ready-made defenses, and are preyed upon by a multitude of enemies!
Quite late at night she was visited by the Opossum, the Native Bear, and the Nightjar, who entered by the open window, and, sitting in the moonlight, conversed about the day's events. They said that their whole rest and sleep had been disturbed by the noise and excitement of the day creatures spreading the news through the Bush.
Opossum hunting by moonlight, excepting in the beauty of the spectacle, offers no feature different from what I have above described; the dusky forms of the natives moving about in the gloomy woods and gazing up into the trees to detect an animal feeding, whilst in the distance natives with firesticks come creeping after them, is a picturesque sight, and it is also pretty to see the dark body of the native against the moonlight as he climbs the tree, forcing the poor opossum to retreat to the very end of some branch, whence he is shaken off or knocked down with a stick.
An Eastern opossum, Cuscus orientalis; found also in the Moluccas, if not a distinct species. The fact that not one of these species is Australia or nearly allied to any Australian form, is strongly corroborative of the opinion that Timor has never formed a part of that country; as in that case some kangaroo or other marsupial animal would almost certainly be found there.
Even the otter, which propels itself through the water mostly by means of its long and powerful tail, has the feet furnished with webs. So has the aquatic Yapock opossum of Australia, while the feet of the duck-bill are even more boldly webbed than those of the bird from which it takes its popular name.
In a moment the opossum had jumped down close to it, and turned towards us her threatening jaws; then, finding all her treasure complete, she disappeared among the brush-wood. "Why didn't you let me shoot at the tlacuache?" asked l'Encuerado. "What is the good of killing a poor creature which would be of no use to us?"
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