Dyke. “Nothing ever seems to worry you.”

“Hah! I know you, Dicky, better than you know me. I feel as keenly as you do, boy. No: we will not give up. We haven’t given the ostriches a fair trial yet.”

“Oh, haven’t we!”

“No; not half. I know we’ve had terribly bad luck just lately. We did begin well.”

“No: it has all been a dreary muddle, and I’m sick of it.”

“Yes, you often are of a night, Dyke; but after a night’s rest you are ready enough to go on again in a right spirit. No, my lad, we’ll never say die.”

“Who wants to! I want to have a try at something else. Let’s go and hunt and get lion and leopard skins, and fill the wagon, and bring them back and sell them.”

“Plenty of people are doing that, Dicky.”

“Well then, let’s go after ivory; shoot elephants, and bring back a load to sell. It’s worth lots of money.”

“Plenty of people are doing that too, boy.”

“Oh, you won’t try, Joe, and that’s what makes me so wild.”

“You mean, I won’t set a seed to-day and dig it up to-morrow to see why it hasn’t come up.”

“That’s what you always say,” said Dyke grumpily.

“Yes, because we came out here with so many hundred pounds, Dicky, to try an experiment—to make an ostrich-farm.”

“And we’ve failed.”

“Oh dear, no, my lad. We’ve spent all our money—invested it here in a wagon and oxen and house.”

“House! Ha, ha, ha! What a house!”

“Not handsome, certainly, Dicky.”

“Dicky! There you go again.”

“Yes, there I go again. And in our enclosures and pens, and horses and guns and ammunition, and in paying our men. So we can’t afford to give up if we wanted to.”

“But see what a desolate place it is!”

“Big, vast, level, and wild, but the very spot for our purpose.”

“And not a neighbour near.”

“To quarrel with? No, not one. No, Dyke, we mustn’t give it up; and some day you’ll say I’m right.”

“Never,” cried the boy emphatically.

“Never’s a long day, Dyke.—Look here, lad, I’m going to tell you an old story.”

“Thankye,” said Dyke sullenly. “I know—about Bruce and the spider.”

“Wrong, old fellow, this time. Another author’s story that you don’t know.”

“Bother the old stories!” cried the boy.

The big manly fellow laughed good-humouredly.

“Poor old Dyke! he has got it badly this time. What is it—prickly heat or home-sickness, or what?”

“Everything. I’m as miserable as mizzer,” cried Dick. “Oh, this desert is dreary.”

“Not it, Dyke; it’s wild and grand. You are tired and disappointed. Some days must be dark and dreary, boy. Come, Dyke, pluck! pluck! pluck!”

“I haven’t got any; sun’s dried it all out of me.”

“Has it?” said his brother, laughing. “I don’t believe it. No, Dicky, we can’t go home and sneak in at the back door with our tails between our legs, like two beaten hounds. There are those at home who would sorrow for us, and yet feel that they despised us. We came out here to win, and win we will, if our perseverance will do it.”

“Well, haven’t we tried, and hasn’t everything failed?”

“No, boy,” cried the young man excitedly. “Look here: my story is of a party of American loafers down by a river. Come, I never told you that.”

“No,” said Dyke, raising his brown face from where he rested it upon his arm.

“That’s better. Then you can be interested still.”

“One needs something to interest one in this miserable, dried-up desert,” cried the boy.

“Miserable, dried-up desert!” said his brother, speaking in a low deep voice, as he gazed right away through the transparent air at the glorious colours where the sun sank in a canopy of amber and gold. “No, Dicky, it has its beauties, in spite of all you say.”

“Oh Joe!” cried the boy, “what a tiresome old chap you are. Didn’t you say you were going to tell me a story about some Americans down by a river? Oh, how I should like to get to a mill-race and have a bathe. Do go on.”

“Ah! to be sure. Well, I only want you to take notice of one part of it. The rest is brag.”

“Then it’s a moral story,” cried Dyke, in a disappointed tone.

“Yes, if you like; but it may be fresh to you.”

“’Tain’t about ostriches, is it?”

“No.—They were throwing stones.”

“What!—the loafers?”

“Yes, from a wharf, to see who could throw farthest, and one man, who was looking on, sneered at them, and began to boast about how far he could throw. They laughed at him, and one of them made himself very objectionable and insulting, with the result that the boasting man said, if it came to the point, he could throw the other fellow right across the river. Of course there was a roar of laughter at this, and one chap bet a dollar that he could not.”

“And of course he couldn’t,” said Dyke, who forgot his prickly heat and irritation. “But you said it was all brag. Well?”

“The boastful fellow, as soon as the wager was laid, seized the other by the waistband, heaved him up, and pitched him off the wharf into the river, amidst roars of laughter, which were kept up as the man came drenched out of the river, and asked to be paid.

“‘Oh no,’ said the other; ‘I didn’t say I’d do it the first time. But I kin dew it, and I will dew it, if I try till to-morrow morning;’ and catching hold of the wet man, he heaved him up again, and threw him by a tremendous effort nearly a couple of yards out into the river. Down he went out of sight in the deep water, and out he scrambled again, hardly able to speak, when he was seized once more.

“‘Third time never fails,’ cried the fellow; but the other had had enough of it, and owned he was beaten.”

“But it was by an artful trick,” cried Dyke.

“Of course it was, boy; but what I want you to notice was the spirit of the thing, though it was only bragging; I kin dew it, and I will dew it, if I try till to-morrow morning. We kin dew it, and we will dew it, Dyke, even if we have to try till to-morrow morning—to-morrow-come-never-morning.”

“Oh!” groaned Dyke, sinking back upon the sand; “I am so hot and dry.”