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It was a desperate race, for his strength was nearly spent. His long fast had told upon him, and the fictitious power of the spirit he had swallowed had passed away. His breath was coming in quick, short gasps. His foot caught in a tussock of grass, and he fell face foremost to the ground, and, before he could regain his feet, a hand was on his collar. "Let me go!
From Tussock Bay to the coast, the Irene sailed by way of a branch of Shark River. The deep water of this river near the Gulf of Mexico was roughened by a high wind and the rising and falling of the skiff seemed to excite the alligator which for hours had been as quiet as if he were asleep or dead.
It is to be a wooden one made out of our packing-cases and thatched with tussock. Wednesday, January 16. Repetto has been here since Saturday putting up a three-cornered cupboard in the sitting-room. We need it to keep daily stores in. We tried keeping them in the loft, but to run up a ladder every time you want tea, sugar or biscuits is rather tiresome, and the kitchen is too damp for stores.
"I must sing. Only music can quiet my nerves. I will sing a little threnody composed by myself, about the good old days of this world before the Flood." And as it spoke, the Platypus moved into an upright position amongst the tussock grass, and after a little cough opened its bill to sing.
One he put on a little tussock in the water where he knew Jerry would find it. The other he tossed across the Smiling Pool where he felt sure Peter would find it. Presently he noticed two or three feathers on the water close to the edge of the bank. Mrs. Quack had left them there. "I believe that was a Mallard Duck," said he, as he studied them. "I know what I'll do.
But nearer than two hundred yards it was impossible to get; even to raise my head or find a tussock whereon to rest the rifle would have started any deer but this one. From the hollow I was in, the most I could see of him was the outline of his back and his head and neck. I put up the 200 yards sight and killed him. A vivid description of the body is not desirable.
Not without reason has this island been called “a cattle farm.” What inexhaustible pastures, what an abundance of that savoury grass, the tussock, does nature lavish on animals there! Australia, though so rich in this respect, does not set a better spread table before her ovine and bovine pensioners. The Falklands ought to be resorted to for the re-victualling of ships.
When startled or hunted, the weka glides, for it can scarcely be called running, with incredible swiftness and in perfect silence, to the nearest cover. A tussock, a clump of flax, a tuft of tall tohi grass, all serve as hiding-places; and, wingless as she is, the weka can hold her own very well against her enemies, the dogs. I really believe the great desire of Brisk's life was to catch a weka.
Archers there were from the border towards the Solway side lithe men, accustomed to spring from tussock to tuft of shaking grass, whose long strides and odd spasmodic side leapings betrayed even on the plain and unyielding pasture lands the place of their amphibious nativity. "The Jack herons of Lochar," these were named by the men of Galloway.
The tussock, in thick clumps, is also seen growing in various directions; indeed, altogether, the Campo is far more completely clothed than either the Llanos or Pampas. Among these mountains are the celebrated diamond-mines of Brazil. Some of the mines are reached by shafts of great depth, sunk into the earth, whence galleries are run along the veins, somewhat in the mode of gold-mines.
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