We all wanted to get back,for home,though home be only a V hut,is worth pushing for;a little thing will induce a man to leave it,but if he is near his journey's end he will go through most places to reach it again.So we determined on going on,and after great difficulty and many turnings up one stream and down another we succeeded in getting safely over.We were wet well over the knee,but just avoided swimming.
I got into one quicksand,of which the river is full,and had to jump off my mare,but this was quite near the bank.
I had a cat on the pommel of my saddle,for the rats used to come and take the meat from off our very plates by our side.She got a sousing when the mare was in the quicksand,but I heard her purring not very long after,and was comforted.Of course she was in a bag.I do not know how it is,but men here are much fonder of cats than they are at home.
After we had crossed the river,there were many troublesome creeks yet to go through--sluggish and swampy,with bad places for getting in and out at;these,however,were as nothing in comparison with the river itself,which we all had feared more than we cared to say,and which,in good truth,was not altogether unworthy of fear.
By and by we turned up the shingly river-bed which leads to the spot on which my hut is built.The river is called Forest Creek,and,though usually nothing but a large brook,it was now high,and unpleasant from its rapidity and the large boulders over which it flows.Little by little,night and heavy rain came on,and right glad were we when we saw the twinkling light on the terrace where the hut was,and were thus assured that the Irishman,who had been left alone and without meat for the last ten days,was still in the land of the living.Two or three coo-eys soon made him aware that we were coming,and I believe he was almost as pleased to see us as Robinson Crusoe was to see the Spaniard who was brought over by the cannibals to be killed and eaten.What the old Irishman had been about during our absence I cannot say.He could not have spent much time in eating,for there was wonderfully little besides flour,tea,and sugar for him to eat.There was no grog upon the establishment,so he could not have been drinking.He had distinctly seen my ghost two nights before.I had been coherently drowned in the Rangitata;and when he heard us coo-eying he was almost certain that it was the ghost again.