could be looked for: and I beg you will say no more, but rather tell me of Padeen Colman.'
'I think you will be pleased with him,' said Paulton with a smile. 'He came skin and bone, though that good man Redfern had almost healed his back - he came, by the way, labelled Patrick Walsh, which is I take it the registry clerks' way of covering their traces and confusing the issues to a hopeless degree - and he has been eating ever since. I have let it be known that he is infectious and I have put him by himself in the lamb-pasture hut. If you had come up the stream from the lagoon you would have seen it. May I lead you there now?'
'If you please.'
The meadow was true meadow, the largest stretch of grass that Stephen had seen in New South Wales; it was scattered with thick lambs, some of whom still gambolled heavily, and in the middle stood a cabin built of sods and thatched with reeds, the roof held down against the wind by stone-weighted lines. The reeds came from the beds at the far end of the meadow, where the stream ran into the lagoon, forming the little bay where the settlement's produce was shipped to Sydney. In front of the cabin sat Padeen, singing about Conn C? Cathach to two young Aborigines, standing there tall and thin before him.
'I dare say you would like to speak to him,' said Paulton. 'I shall go back and stir up the cook.'
'It will not take me five minutes,' said Stephen. 'I shall say no more than that I may be at the mouth of the stream in a boat on the twenty-fourth or two or three days later in case of bad weather; but never before noon. Brief I shall be: I do not wish to disturb his spirits; they have been so sadly racked.'
It did not take him so long; but in that time it was clear to his companions that his own spirits too had been much affected. 'Those black youths,' he said sternly as they sat down to their infinitely welcome meal, 'those black youths that ran away when I came near, do they belong to the place at all?'
'Oh no,' said Paulton. 'They come and go as they choose, in their wandering way of life; but there are nearly always a few of them in the neighbourhood. My cousin will not have them ill-used or their women debauched; he has a kindness for them, and sometimes gives them a sheep, or what they very much prefer, a cauldron of sweetened rice. He is trying to compile a vocabulary of their language, but since they appear to possess at least ten synonyms for everything, all of many syllables, while he has a most indifferent ear, the list makes little progress.'
They talked at random about the remarkable butterflies they had seen all the way, particularly along the last lagoon, and their lack of a net, left behind at Riley's; about the curved throwing-stick seen at the same place; about the Aborigines, and at one point Paulton said 'Do you really think them intelligent?'
'If intelligence can be defined as an ability to solve problems, they are intelligent,' said Stephen. 'For surely the very first problem is to keep alive; and in such a disinherited country as this the problem is enormous. Yet they have solved it. I could not.'
'Nor I,' said Paulton. 'But would your definition bear close inspection?'
'Perhaps not; in any case I am far too stupid to defend it.'
'Oh dear,' cried Paulton. 'You must both be dropping with weariness. May I recommend a warm bath before you retire?
The coppers will be on the boil by now; and as far as my experience goes there is nothing more relaxing for body or for mind.'
'I am afraid we were but dismal guests,' said Stephen, turning in his saddle to wave across the scrub to the disappearing Paulton, who chose this same moment to look back and wave before disappearing down the slope and into the tall bush, 'and even this morning I was somewhat chuff: I particularly wished to prevent him committing himself, so that he could always assert that he was not a party to my actions.'
'Morally he could not possibly do so. He knows perfectly well what we are about.'
'I mean legally. In the foolish rigour of the foolish law I wish him to be able to put his name to an affidavit that says 'Maturin never said this to me' and 'I never said the other to Maturin'. Do you think that could conceivably be a peregrine?'
'I believe so,' said Martin, shading his eye. 'A tiercel. Lewin says they occur in New Holland.'
'That bird,' said Stephen, watching the falcon out of sight, 'is as great a comfort to me as your oystercatcher was to you.' Then returning to Paulton, 'What a good-natured man he is, to be sure; it is a pleasure to be in his company. I only wish his sight would allow him to distinguish a bird from a bat. Perhaps if he were given a microscope, a good compound microscope with a variety of eyepieces and an ample stage, he might take great pleasure in some of the smaller forms, the rhizopods, the rotifera, the parasites of lice themselves... I knew an old gentleman, an Anglican parson, who delighted in mites.'
Now that their wisdom was wholly superfluous, the track being almost a carriage-road, the mares looked quite intelligent, stepping out with a confident pace for their distant stable, so briskly that in spite of several stops for botanizing and shooting odd parrots and bush-birds, they reached Newberry's, an inn on a drovers' road some way north ,f the Woolloo-Woolloo track, with daylight and to spare. It was in this daylight that Stephen saw the boomerang at last. A dissolute black, wrecked by his contact with the whites but still retaining his skill, threw it for a tot of rum. The boomerang did all that Riley had said of it and more: at one point, having returned, it rose and floated above the Aboriginal's head in a slow circle before descending into his hand. Stephen and Martin gazed at the object in astonishment, turning it over and over in their hands.
'I cannot understand the principle at all,' said Stephen. 'I should very much like to show it to Captain Aubrey, who is so very well versed in the mathematics and dynamics of sailing. Landlord, pray ask him whether he is willing to part with the instrument.'
'Not on your fucking life,' said the Aboriginal, snatching the boomerang and clasping it to his bosom.
'He says he does not choose to dispose of it, your honour,' said the landlord. 'But never fret. I have a dozen behind the bar that I sell to ingenious travellers for half a guinea. Choose any one that takes your fancy, sir, and Bennelong will throw it to prove it comes back, a true homing pigeon, as we say. Won't you?' This much louder, in the black man's ear.
'Won't I what?'
'Throw it for the gentleman.'
'Give urn dram.'
'Sir, he says he will be happy to throw it for you; and hopes you will encourage him with a tot of rum.'
