pipe.

"Yes--couldn't miss him. He's lying there. Great Scott! Didn't he jump."

"Poor beggar--smelt the tucker, I suppose. Well, better a dead dog than
a torn saddle-bag. Hear the horses?"

"Yes, they're all right--feeding outside the timber belt How's the time,
Ted?"

"Three o'clock. What a deuce of a row those duck and plover kicked up
when you fired! We ought to get a shot or two at them when daylight
comes."

"Harry," a big, bearded fellow of six feet, nodded as he lit his pipe.

"Yes, we ought to get all we want up along the blind creeks, and we'll
have to shift camp soon. It's going to rain before daybreak, and we
might as well stay here over to-morrow and give the horses a spell."

"It's clouding over a bit, but I don't think it means rain."

"I do. Listen," and he held up his hand towards the river.

His companion listened, and a low and curious sound--like rain and yet
not like rain--a gentle and incessant pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat, pit-a-pat,
then a break for a few seconds, then again, sometimes sounding loud and
near, at others faintly and far away.

"Sounds like a thousand people knockin' their finger nails on tables.
Why, it must be rainin' somewhere close to on the river."

"No, it's the pattering of mullet, heading up the river--thousands,
tens of thousands, aye hundreds of thousands. It is a sure sign of heavy
rain. We'll see them presently when they come abreast of us. That queer
_lip, lap, lip, lap_ you hear is made by their tails. They sail along
with heads well up out of the water--the blacks tell me that they smell
the coming rain--then swim on an even keel for perhaps twenty yards or
so, and the upper lobe of their tails keeps a constant flapping on the
water. You know how clearly you can hear the flip of a single fish's
tail in a pond on a quiet night? Well, to-night you'll hear the sound
of fifty thousand. Once, when I was prospecting in the Shoalhaven River
district I camped with some net fishermen near the Heads. It was a calm,
quiet night like this, and something awakened me It sounded like heavy
rain falling on big leaves. 'Is it raining, mate?' I said to one of
the fishermen. 'No,' he replied, 'but there's a heavy thunderstorm
gathering; and that noise you hear is mullet coming up from the Heads,
three miles away.' That was the first time I ever saw fish packed so
closely together--it was a wonderful sight, and when they began to pass
us they stretched in a solid line almost across