Cattle Rush on a Night Camp

"Look out on your left," said McKenzie, "the cattle are off like a streak! -
Rouse up the camp as you're passing" - his words seemed to end in a shriek.
And instantly into the saddle and out in the teeth of the rain,
We followed like fiends demented out o'er the soft Boree plain;
The splash of the hoofs through the gilgais and snapping of horns far in front
As the mad cattle raced helter-skelter, solely our guide in the hunt.

"Hell take it, I'm down," said the darkie, "walla-walla make terrible hole."
But no time had I to stay nursing, or think of a body or soul,
But to get to the head ere they scattered out through the scrubs on the right.
So on with the clogs racing after, we rode through the depths of the night
Till, presently, down went my charger, hard o'er a log in the mud -
And when I arose shortly after, all shaken and dripping with blood,
And my brave stockhorse "Taffy" bespattered, I knew as I mounted again
There's many a game more alluring than a break on the Billabong plain.

But the maddest of breaks has an ending - and after a twenty-mile run,
We headed the badly-blown leaders, and with the first tint of the sun
While the mists of the night were departing we leisurely counted the cost:
The black had a leg badly broken, our young British drover was "lost",

McKenzie was battered all over, and Nicholls as sore as myself,
And if hospitals there were availing we'd all have been laid on the shelf;
But only six pikers were missing, and scarcely a dozen were maimed -
Some minus eyes, others horns, and others a little lamed -
So we reckoned we'd call ourselves lucky, and on through the rest of the bush,
It was plain that the cattle conceded we had beaten them bad in the rush.