Walkabout - James Vance Marshall [0]
JAMES VANCE MARSHALL
PUFFIN BOOKS
PUFFIN BOOKS
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Putnam Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA
Penguin Books Australia Ltd, 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia
Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcom Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2
Penguin Books India (P) Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi – 110 017, India
Penguin Books (NZ) Ltd, Cnr Rosedale and Airborne Roads, Albany, Auckland, New Zealand
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
www.penguin.com
First published as The Children by Michael Joseph 1959
Published in Peacock Books 1963
Reissued in Puffin Books 1979
45
Copyright © James Vance Marshall, 1959
All rights reserved
Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
ISBN: 978-0-14-192981-1
CHAPTER ONE
IT was silent and dark, and the children were afraid. They huddled together, their backs to an outcrop of rock. Far below them, in the bed of the gully, a little stream flowed inland – soon to peter out in the vastness of the Australian desert. Above them the walls of the gully climbed smoothly to a moonless sky.
The little boy nestled more closely against his sister. He was trembling.
She felt for his hand, and held it, very tightly.
‘All right, Peter,’ she whispered. ‘I’m here.’
She felt the tension ebb slowly out of him, the trembling die gradually away. When a boy is only eight a big sister of thirteen can be wonderfully comforting.
‘Mary,’ he whispered, ‘I’m hungry. Let’s have something to eat.’
The girl sighed. She felt in the pocket of her frock, and pulled out a paper-covered stick of barley sugar. It was their last one. She broke it, gave him half, and slipped the other half back in her pocket.
‘Don’t bite,’ she whispered. ‘Suck.’
Why they were whispering they didn’t know. Perhaps because everything was so very silent: like a church. Or was it because they were afraid; afraid of being heard?
For a while the only sounds were the distant rippling of water over stone, and the sucking of lips round a diminishing stick of barley sugar. Then the boy started to fidget, moving restlessly from one foot to another. Again the girl reached for his hand.
‘Aren’t you comfy, Pete?’
‘No.’
‘What is it?’
‘My leg’s bleeding again. I can feel the wet.’
She bent down. The handkerchief that she had tied round his thigh was now draped like a recalcitrant garter over his ankle. She refastened it, and they huddled together, holding hands, looking into the powdery blackness of the Australian night.
They could see nothing. They could hear nothing – apart from the lilt of the rivulet – for it was still too early for the stirring of bush life. Later there’d be other sounds; the hoot of the mopoke, the mating howl of the dingo, and the leathery flip-flap-flip of the wings of flying foxes. But now, an hour after sunset, the bush was silent: frighteningly still: full, to the children, of terrors all the greater for being unknown. It was a far cry from here to their comfortable home in Charleston, South Carolina.
The hours meandered past like slow, unhurrying snails. At last the boy’s head dropped to his sister’s lap. He snuggled closer. His breathing became slower, deeper. He slept.
But the girl didn’t sleep; that would never have done; for she had to keep guard. She was the elder. The responsibility was hers. That was the way it had always been, as far back as she could remember. Always she had been the big sister who had stuck plaster on Peter’s knees, had taught him