Australian Tales - Setis

the same time frightened his wife into a fit. How Peggy M'Faddle slipped
down on a slimy rock, and went limping the rest of the day, although she
declared that she had not even scratched herself. How Miss Twist's
parasol was blown inside out and ruined; and her cousin Jane cut one of
her best boots, and one of her big toes with an oyster shell. How the
infant M'Faddle swallowed a periwinkle, and grew black in the face,
until his mother succeeded in curing him by thumping him on the back.
How Nick and Johnny while walking round the island, in search of stray
edibles, found a cocoa-nut, and began at once to fight for the ownership;
but after boxing each other until they were winded, they discovered that
the nut was rotten, which incident, if they remember it, may teach them a
good moral lesson for after life; it would also be useful — if calmly
studied — to older persons than they, who are fighting for rotten nuts, or
snarling over matters equally worthless.
I might also describe the vain struggles of the party to “cloy the hungry
edge of appetite,” with native oysters, of the smallest size and the most
obstinate tenacity for their rocky beds. But I pass over all these details,
and briefly record that hungry, jaded, cold, and cross, they all
reassembled in the cave about three o'clock, there to confer upon the best
thing to be done to avert impending starvation. Twist moved the first
impromptu resolution (as he sat shivering in his wet garments beside his
bonnetless wife), which was, “that Mr. M'Faddle should swim over to
Darling Point, with his clothes on his head; then walk to Rushcutter's
Bay, and borrow a boat from somebody.” The motion was not seconded,
but somebody moved that Twist was a brute for wanting to drown his
neighbour. Numerous other suggestions and objections were made, and
ill temper was beginning to show itself in the senior ladies, when,
perhaps luckily for their caps and curls, one of the boys suddenly called
out, “Oh crikey! here comes a boat! Hoorah!”
Every neck was stretched, and every eye directed towards the welcome
boat, which was off Shark Island, plunging her way up the harbour under
double-reefed canvas. I may here remark that, in consequence of the
tempestuous state of the weather, there were very few boats afloat that
afternoon.
“Coom awa, coom awa, doon on the rocks,” said Mr. M'Faddle,
starting up in exciting haste. “Stand althegether, an when I tell ye to
skreel, skreel like bogles every ane of ye.”
Down the whole party hastened to the water's edge, and as the boat
came abreast of the island, Mr. M'Faddle gave the word of command to
skreel.
Never was heard such a chorus on Clark Island since the last
corroboree of “Old Gooseberry,” and her maids of honour: the caves
behind them echoed back the sounds, like the cries of tormented, water
sprites. In an instant they were answered by loud shouts of the six sailors