I should be a sailor."

"Would you?" said Gerrard, as he looked at the animated, beautiful face.
"I, too, am fond of the sea, though it robbed me of father, mother, and
a brother-in-law, my twin sister's husband. She died of a broken heart
soon after."

Kate's eyes filled with tears. "Oh, how dreadful!" and then as they rode
on Gerrard told her the story of the _Cassowary_.

"What a sweet child your little niece Mary must be," she said, when he
had finished, "and I am sure, too, that your _protege_, Jim Coll, must
be a perfect little man. I wish I could see him."

"I can safely promise you that, now that I have bought Kaburie, and
I feel pretty sure that you will gain his affections very quickly;
especially if you will let him ride that bucking filly. I daresay that I
shall be back here within twelve months, and bring Master Jim with me."

"This is where we separate, boss," said a stockman named Trouton, "if
you, Mr and Miss Fraser and me take the right bank of this creek, my two
mates will work down on the other bank, and we'll get the cattle on both
sides at the same time, and drive 'em all on to Wattle Camp, which is
between this creek and the next to the south of us." Then turning to the
other stockmen, he warned them to be careful of alligators.

"You chaps must keep your eyes skinned if you have to swim any bits of
backwater, now the creeks are up. Don't cross anywheres unless you have
some cattle to send in fust, and keep clost up to their tails if yous
can't get in among 'em. 'Gaters like man and horse meat next best to
calf."

The two men nodded, and riding down the bank, crossed the creek and
quickly disappeared in the scrub on the other side; then Gerrard's
party turned towards the coast, Trouton leading the way with the
packhorses along a well-defined cattle-track. A quarter of an hour later
they came across a small mob of cows and calves, which as the stockwhips
cracked, trotted off in front, to be joined by several more, and in a
short time the mob had increased to five hundred head, and Trouton and
Gerrard decided to drive them across the creek to join those which were
being rounded up by the two stockmen on the left hand bank. In reply
to a question by Gerrard, Trouton said that the crossing was a good
one even when the creek was as high as it was then, on account of its
width--about two hundred yards from bank to bank.

"It is a hard, sandy bottom, boss, and we shall only have about forty
yards