66
Sad stories are told about these poor lost people. Sometimes they disappear for ever, like rain-drops swallowed by the ocean; sometimes they are found wandering about mad; sometimes they are found starved to death; sometimes just dying. Sometimes a heap of picked and bleached2 bones is found, with nothing to tell the name of the person whose flesh has been torn or has rotted off them. Sometimes the name, and one or two sprawling3, half-unintelligible words have been feebly scratched on the pannikin that rusts4 hard by.
You may fancy, then, how dreadfully frightened a mother in the bush is when her little child is missing. But, though some of the little strays are never recovered, a great many of them are wonderfully protected, and come upon at last. It is about a little girl that was lost in the bush that I am going to tell you.
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One morning I had ridden over to Wonga-Wonga, and was having lunch with Mr. Lawson and Sydney, when Mrs. Jones rushed into the room, crying as if her heart would break.
“Oh, master,” she sobbed6 out, “I can’t find my Maggie; an’ I’ve been seekin’ her an hour an’ more. Oh! it was you who persuaded Jones to come when you was over at home, an’ if you don’t find my Maggie, I shall do myself or some on ye a mischief7, I feel sure I shall. Oh, oh, oh! my ’ead feels fit to burst!”
Mr. Lawson quieted the poor screaming woman, and, when he found that little Maggie was really lost, he had horses run up, and every man and boy about the station started in search of Mrs. Jones’s lost lamb.
68
Little Maggie was a flaxen-haired, blue-eyed, laughing, lisping little pet; but if she had been a crosspatch everybody would have looked for her just as carefully. Harry8 and Donald bounced out of the weather-board cottage that was used for a school-room, like pellets from a popgun, when they heard the news; and after them the tutor rushed to horse, though he wasn’t much of a rider. John Jones was fetched up from the paddock where he was ploughing, and when he heard that little Maggie was lost, he made a rush at a young horse that had only had the tacklings on once or twice, and would have got on it too, somehow, though he had been thrown over its head the next second, if the horsebreaker had not laid hold of him, and given him a leg up on to a horse fitter for his riding.
In the course of the day the news spread to the stations round about, and before nightfall the whole countryside was up hunting for poor little Maggie. The shepherds left their dogs to look after their flocks, if they had dogs, and their flocks to look after themselves if they hadn’t dogs, to scour9 the bush.
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Mrs. Lawson and her girls searched all round the head station as if they were looking for a pin. Even Miss Smith mastered her dread5 of the bush, and went quite a quarter of a mile away from the house, all by herself, as she afterwards related proudly, even into places where she couldn’t see the house, and where she was dreadfully afraid that a bushranger would carry her off, or a snake would bite her, or the little imported bull would run at his timorous10 countrywoman. As for poor Mrs. Jones, she kept on rushing out into the bush, determined11 to walk on until she dropped, and then rushing back, before she had walked a mile, to hear whether little Maggie, or any tidings of little Maggie, had been brought home.
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Some of those who had been hunting for the little girl gave up the hunt at the end of the first day; some went on hunting with fire-sticks during the night, and then went back to their work next morning very cross because nothing had come of their kindness, and also because—pity often makes people cross—they couldn’t help thinking of the poor father and mother, and of how they would feel if their little ones had “gone a-missing.” Others camped out when the sun had gone down on one day’s unsuccessful search, that they might be fresh to renew their search on the morrow. Harry and Donald were two of these. They had thoroughly12 fagged themselves out, poking13 here and poking there, and then riding, as if for a wager14, to some place where one or other of them had fancied they might, perhaps, find some traces of poor little Maggie. They were too tired even to be hungry when they got off their horses, as the stars were coming out. They almost fell asleep as they took the saddles off their horses, and were soon snoring between the saddle-flaps they used for pillows.
When the boys woke next morning they were as hungry as fox-hunters, but what were they to do for a breakfast? Donald saw a grass tree, and remembered what he had seen the black fellows do with grass trees on his father’s station, which was farther up the country than Wonga-Wonga.
71
“It looks as if it would come up easy,” said Donald; “let’s loosen the earth round it a bit though. Now then, Harry, lay hold, and pull with a will, as old Tom the sailor says.”
The two boys laid hold of the queer crooked15 stump16, and pulled with such a will that presently flat they tumbled on their backs, with the grass tree between them. The root was rotten, and swarmed17 with fat grubs. They made a black fellow’s breakfast off these, and then they saddled their horses, and off they rode again.
72
They had not gone far before they came upon King Dick-a-Dick, admiring himself at a water-hole. He was in full dress, and he seemed very proud of it, as he made a looking-glass of the water, and then tossed up his head again. His Majesty18’s crown was a battered19 white hat, and he wore a pair of light-striped knee-breeches—that was all his dress. He had had the hat and the breeches given him at some of the stations near, and the settlers about there had given him a brass20 chain too, and a brass plate engraved21—
“H.M. Dick-a-Dick,
King of the ’Possum Tribe,”
“H.M. DICK-A-DICK, KING OF THE POSSUM TRIBE.”
73
with a ’possum engraved underneath22. The ’possum was the crest23, so to speak, of King Dick-a-Dick’s tribe. Now this was the tribe from which Harry and Donald had had such a narrow escape, and, therefore, they felt rather nervous when they saw King Dick-a-Dick standing24 by the water-hole with his spear in his hand. But his Majesty was anxious to conciliate. He was fond of tobacco and flour, and he and his people had run short of both since they had been on bad terms with the whites. So, as soon as he saw the boys rein25 in, he stuck his spear, point downwards26, into the ground, and beckoned27 to them to come on, grinning as if the top of his head was coming off. That was his way of giving “a winning smile.” When he learnt what the boys’ business was, he chuckled28 greatly at the thought of white fellows trying to find any one in the bush without black trackers, and then proposed that he and the boys should share the credit of finding the little girl. He made sure that he could find her. The direction in which she had left the station was known, so Dick-a-Dick took the boys back to within about a mile and a half of home, and then began to beat about. He went down on his hands and knees, and put his nose to the ground like a dog. Presently he stopped at an ant-hill, peered about for a minute, and then jumped up, and cut a caper29. The boys couldn’t make it out, but he had discovered the mark of a tiny little bare heel in a dent30 on the ant-hill. When he had once found Maggie’s track, he scarcely ever lost it. On he went, walking with his nose almost as low as his toes. He found out little stones that had been moved, and grass-blades that had been scarcely brushed by poor little Maggie’s bare feet. He found out too the blood that had come from a scratch in one of them, got by scrambling31 over a splintery log.
74
“Dat where piccaninny lubra stop to drink,” said Dick-a-Dick, pointing to a “crab-hole”—the hole made by a bullock’s hoof—on whose side he could see the print of a chubby32 little brow. “Missy proud now, pick waratah,” said Dick-a-Dick soon afterwards, as he gathered up the still crimson33 leaves of the flower which the little girl had bruised34 and thrown down. “Now Missy ’fraid o’ debil-debil,” said Dick-a-Dick by-and-bye, when he came to a place in which the tracks, invisible to the boys’ eyes, were so bewilderingly visible to him on all sides that he did not know at first which to follow. He soon found the right one, however, and led the boys to a place in which he said the little girl must have slept.
75
So they kept up the search until, after travelling for hours in a circuitous35 zigzag36, they came upon poor little Maggie, not four miles from home, but on the opposite side of the station to that from which she had started, coiled up in a black, jagged, charred37 tree-stump, with bright-eyed, basking38 little lizards39 watching her. Of course, the lizards vanished as Dick-a-Dick and the boys drew near, but his sharp eyes had seen something peculiar40 in their bright ones. Poor little Maggie was sound asleep; her fat little face, and neck, and arms, and legs, were sadly scratched. In a scratched, podgy little hand she held a posy of withered41 wild flowers.
76
When she woke and saw Dick-a-Dick, trying to look specially42 amiable43, grinning down upon her, she shrieked44 out, “Mammy!” But when she saw the boys, she jumped up and ran to them, and hid her face between them, and clung to them with two little leech-like arms. They tried to explain to her that if it had not been for her “nas’y b’ack man” she might never have seen her “Mammy” again; and Dick-a-Dick grinned his broadest grin to propitiate45 her; but it was no use. She screamed whenever her eyes fell upon Dick-a-Dick. And yet, according to her own pretty little prattle46, she had not been “much f’ightened in the thoods.” She had seen “nas’y b’ack ’igglin’ thin’s,” but “the kin’ yady”—whoever that might be—“thoodn’t ’et ’em bite me.”
Harry took Maggie on his horse, and cantered on in front, and Donald and Dick-a-Dick cantered behind on Flora47 M‘Ivor.
What a reception they had when they got to the station, for they were getting anxious there about the boys as well as the little! The head-station shepherds had come in with their sheep, and a good many of the people who had been searching for a couple of days had gathered at the station quite dispirited at their lack of luck. They all gave a great cheer when Cornstalk and the mare48 laid down their ears, and brought up their four riders at a steeple-chase gallop49.
77
When Mrs. Jones had almost squeezed the breath out of poor little Maggie, she tried to garotte Harry and Donald, and then hugged Dick-a-Dick; and John Jones seemed inclined to hug all three of them, too, when he had done his best to press the little life his wife had left in her out of little Maggie; and then Mrs. Jones went into hysterics, and John Jones ran indoors and hid his face in the bed-clothes, and blubbered for a quarter of an hour; and everybody thought the better of him because he blubbered.
Just wasn’t there a supper at Wonga-Wonga that night! And didn’t Dick-a-Dick tuck into it? And didn’t Harry and Donald, between them, eat nearly half as much as he did?
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收听单词发音
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1
bumptious
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| adj.傲慢的 | |
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bleached
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| 漂白的，晒白的，颜色变浅的 | |
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sprawling
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| adj.蔓生的，不规则地伸展的v.伸开四肢坐[躺]( sprawl的现在分词 )；蔓延；杂乱无序地拓展；四肢伸展坐着（或躺着） | |
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4
rusts
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| n.铁锈( rust的名词复数 )；（植物的）锈病，锈菌v.（使）生锈( rust的第三人称单数 ) | |
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5
dread
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| vt.担忧，忧虑；惧怕，不敢；n.担忧，畏惧 | |
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sobbed
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| 哭泣，啜泣( sob的过去式和过去分词 )； 哭诉，呜咽地说 | |
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7
mischief
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| n.损害，伤害，危害；恶作剧，捣蛋，胡闹 | |
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8
harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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9
scour
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| v.搜索；擦，洗，腹泻，冲刷 | |
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10
timorous
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| adj.胆怯的，胆小的 | |
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11
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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12
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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13
poking
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| n. 刺，戳，袋 vt. 拨开，刺，戳 vi. 戳，刺，捅，搜索，伸出，行动散慢 | |
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14
wager
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| n.赌注；vt.押注，打赌 | |
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15
crooked
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| adj.弯曲的；不诚实的，狡猾的，不正当的 | |
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16
stump
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| n.残株，烟蒂，讲演台；v.砍断，蹒跚而走 | |
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17
swarmed
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| 密集( swarm的过去式和过去分词 )； 云集； 成群地移动； 蜜蜂或其他飞行昆虫成群地飞来飞去 | |
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18
majesty
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| n.雄伟，壮丽，庄严，威严；最高权威，王权 | |
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19
battered
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| adj.磨损的；v.连续猛击；磨损 | |
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brass
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| n.黄铜；黄铜器，铜管乐器 | |
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engraved
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| v.在（硬物）上雕刻（字，画等）( engrave的过去式和过去分词 )；将某事物深深印在（记忆或头脑中） | |
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22
underneath
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| adj.在...下面，在...底下；adv.在下面 | |
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23
crest
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| n.顶点；饰章；羽冠；vt.达到顶点；vi.形成浪尖 | |
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24
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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25
rein
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| n.疆绳，统治，支配；vt.以僵绳控制，统治 | |
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downwards
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| adj./adv.向下的（地），下行的（地） | |
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27
beckoned
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| v.（用头或手的动作）示意，召唤( beckon的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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28
chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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29
caper
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| v.雀跃，欢蹦；n.雀跃，跳跃；续随子，刺山柑花蕾；嬉戏 | |
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30
dent
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| n.凹痕，凹坑；初步进展 | |
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31
scrambling
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| v.快速爬行( scramble的现在分词 )；攀登；争夺；（军事飞机）紧急起飞 | |
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32
chubby
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| adj.丰满的，圆胖的 | |
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33
crimson
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| n./adj.深(绯)红色(的)；vi.脸变绯红色 | |
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34
bruised
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| [医]青肿的，瘀紫的 | |
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35
circuitous
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| adj.迂回的路的，迂曲的，绕行的 | |
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36
zigzag
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| n.曲折，之字形；adj.曲折的，锯齿形的；adv.曲折地，成锯齿形地；vt.使曲折；vi.曲折前行 | |
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37
charred
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| v.把…烧成炭( char的过去式)；烧焦 | |
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38
basking
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| v.晒太阳，取暖( bask的现在分词 )；对…感到乐趣；因他人的功绩而出名；仰仗…的余泽 | |
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39
lizards
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| n.蜥蜴( lizard的名词复数 ) | |
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40
peculiar
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| adj.古怪的，异常的；特殊的，特有的 | |
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41
withered
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| adj. 枯萎的，干瘪的，（人身体的部分器官）因病萎缩的或未发育良好的 动词wither的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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42
specially
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| adv.特定地；特殊地；明确地 | |
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43
amiable
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| adj.和蔼可亲的，友善的，亲切的 | |
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44
shrieked
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| v.尖叫( shriek的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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45
propitiate
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| v.慰解，劝解 | |
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46
prattle
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| n.闲谈；v.（小孩般）天真无邪地说话；发出连续而无意义的声音 | |
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47
flora
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| n.(某一地区的)植物群 | |
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48
mare
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| n.母马，母驴 | |
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49
gallop
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| v./n.(马或骑马等)飞奔；飞速发展 | |
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