“If he were not a good runner he wouldn’t be here now,” said Archie, in reply to their exclamations of wonder. “His lightness of foot has saved his scalp, I suppose, a score of times. He says he never was beaten.”
The boys did not doubt it at all. They were now prepared to accept without question anything that Frank and Archie might tell them concerning the trapper.
In a very few days the Club had seen everything of interest there was to be seen about the station, and Uncle Dick’s proposition to take a run over to Australia was hailed with delight. They went by steamer from Hobart Town to Melbourne, and during the next three weeks had ample opportunity to gain some idea of what the settlers meant when they talked of life in the bush. They first explored every nook and corner of the city of Melbourne, spent a few days in the mines where Uncle Dick had worked during the gold excitement, and finally camped on another sheep station, where they made their headquarters as long as they remained in Australia. Archie did not succeed in shooting a kangaroo, but his horse was stolen from him by the bushrangers, and the Club spent a week in trying to recover it. The animal was never seen again, however, and it took all Archie’s pocket-money, and a good share of Frank’s, to make the loss good when they reached Melbourne; for that was the place where the horses had been hired.
At length a letter from Uncle Dick’s agent in Hobart Town brought the information that the repairs on the schooner were rapidly approaching completion, and that she would be ready to sail in a few days. As he had promised to spend one more week with his friend, Mr. Wilbur, before he started for Natal, the captain ordered an immediate return to Tasmania, and in due time the Club found themselves once more under the sheep-herder’s hospitable roof. We must not forget to say, however, that they stopped two days in Hobart Town, for it was while they were there that an incident happened which had something to do with what afterward befell two of the members of the Club.
On the morning after their arrival, Uncle Dick and some of the boys went down to the docks to see how the schooner was getting on, and the rest sauntered off somewhere, leaving Frank in the reading-room of the hotel, deeply interested in a newspaper. Shortly after the others had gone, he was interrupted in his reading by a slap on the shoulder, and upon looking up he saw the consul’s clerk standing beside him.