Walkabout - James Vance Marshall [36]
Here the children made camp beside the water’s edge. They camped early, close to a patch of pink-tinted pipe-clay, agreeing to explore the precipice the following morning. Well before sundown they were eating rose hips and bauble nuts beside a blazing fire.
Then Peter discovered the clay. Discovered that, when moistened, it could be used for drawing; for drawing faces on the smooth lakeside rocks. He called Mary, and together brother and sister experimented with pieces of moistened clay. They found that it drew like chalk on a blackboard; and soon the lakeside rocks were covered with drawings: crude but evocative drawings: drawings that would have been a psychologist’s delight.
After a few experimental dabs and smudges, the children settled down to their respective works of art. Peter drew koalas, lizards, and Jesus-birds: symbols of the new life. But Mary drew girls’ faces framed with glamorous hair styles, dress designs that might have come out of Vogue, and strings of jewels like the Fifth Avenue advertisements: symbols of the life that was past. And after a while she drew something else: something even more revealing: a house. A simple outline: one door; one window; one chimney; one pathway lined with flowers. Symbol of subconscious hopes and nightly dreams.
The sun dipped under the rim of the hills. The children left their drawings; they stretched out, side by side, in front of the fire. Darkness on velvet wings came flooding into the valley.
‘Coo-ee, coo-ee!’ sang the brain-fever bird. Over and over again.
Down by the lake a bittern moo-ed among the reeds. A crescent moon lifted clear of the hills. The valley slept.
Next morning they smoothed out the ash of their fire. They were just starting off to explore the head of the valley when they saw the smoke. A thin spiral of wood-smoke, pencilling the skyline above the opposite shore of the lake.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
THE smoke rose lazily: a slender, blue-grey column, pencil straight. For a long time the children looked at it in silence.
Suddenly the column broke, changed to a succession of puffs: in sequences of three; one large, one medium, one small.
‘They’re signalling, Pete.’
‘Yes.’
The boy looked first at the smoke then at his sister; he saw that her eyes were shining, her lips parted. In the ashes he traced a pattern with the toe of his foot.
‘You reckon we oughta answer ?’
She nodded, silently, with eyes for nothing but the smoke.
They raked over the ash, pushed in kindling wood, and soon there rose from beside the bed of pipe-day an answering column of bluish-grey, a misty spear stabbing the azure sky.
‘Fetch a branch, Mary. A big ’un, with lots of leaves.’
The girl knew what was wanted: something light enough to lift, but bulky enough to block off the smoke. Soon their column too was broken into a sequence of irregular puffs.
While the boy signalled, the girl watched; watched the farther shore of the lake. Suddenly she saw movement. She strained her eyes; but the figures she had momentarily caught sight of merged chameleon-like into the background of lush-growing reeds. For a while everything was very still. Then the figures appeared again; three ill-defined pin-points leaving the column of wood-smoke, coming down to the lagoon. The sunlight glinted on three fountains of spray, as the strangers dived into the lake. A second later three arrow-heads of white were moving slowly towards them across the sunlit water.
‘They’re coming, Pete.’
The boy left the fire. Came and stood by his sister. Saw she was trembling. Took her hand.
‘Don’t worry, Mary. I’ll look after you.’
She squeezed his hand: gratefully.
‘You reckon they’re white men, Pete? Or black, like the darkie?’
The children strained their eyes as the swimmers came steadily nearer. They swam in single file; and it seemed to Peter that their heads were black and abnormally large.
‘I reckon they’re darkies, Mary. Darkies with big heads!’
The girl nodded; she