With them Mary had numberless new experiences. She got accustomed
to seeing the boys climb big trees by cutting steps in the bark
with a tomahawk, going out on the most giddy heights after birds'
nests, or dragging the opossum from his sleeping-place in a hollow
limb. She learned to hold a frenzied fox-terrier at the mouth of
a hollow log, ready to pounce on the kangaroo-rat which had taken
refuge there, and which flashed out as if shot from a catapult on
being poked from the other end with a long stick. She learned to
mark the hiding-place of the young wild-ducks that scuttled and
dived, and hid themselves with such super-natural cunning in the
reedy pools. She saw the native companions, those great, solemn,
grey birds, go through their fantastic and intricate dances, forming
squares, pirouetting, advancing, and retreating with the solemnity
of professional dancing-masters. She lay on the river-bank with
the children, gun in hand, breathless with excitement, waiting for
the rising of the duck-billed platypus--that quaint combination of
fish, flesh and fowl--as he dived in the quiet waters, a train of
small bubbles marking his track. She fished in deep pools for the
great, sleepy, hundred-pound cod-fish that sucked down bait and hook,
holus-bolus, and then were hauled in with hardly any resistance,
and lived for days contentedly, tethered to the bank by a line
through their gills.
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