The country got prettier--swelling pastures and stony pinches and a distant outline of hills.

They could see the green line of a water course.
'Plenty water sit down along a creek ?' McKeith asked the black boy.

But Cudgee shook his woolly head.
'Ba'al* mine think it, Massa.

No rain plenty long time.' [*ba'al--the Aboriginal negative.] McKeith sighed.

The dark shadow of coming drought is a fearsome spectre on the Never-Never Land..