Page:The romance of Runnibede (IA romanceofrunnibe00rudd).pdf/63

Ted and I yelled joyously to the Governor ‘‘to look at the bucket an the red fellow’s horns.’’ But [ re- member that the Governor looked very sour at Ted. Handicapped with the shafts and his harness, and with bullocks raking him hip and thigh and ribs and shoulder with their horns as they shoved their heads under him and over Lim and areund him in their thirst, the wretched horse, Temmy, plunged and reared, aud fought desperately for life. Poor Harry perched himself on the tank, which wasn’t much higher than the guard-iron, and occupied three- fourths of the dray, and gazed distractedly at the mass of horned heads on every side of him. Reach- ing out above his head and drooping over the water was the stout limb of an aged gum tree.

“Have you a rope?’’ the Governor shouted to him. “Tf you have, fasten it to the limb above your head and hold fast to it. They might upset the dray!’’ Poor old Harry heard every word, and looking up and seeing the limb, clumsily stood on the tank and clutched it with both hands as though it were a human being er a gold mine. “‘Put your belt around it, Harry,’’ Tom Merton ealled. ‘‘You’ve got one on.’’ Tfarry unbuekled his belt, and putting it round the limh, hung ov like a passenger to a strap in a tram-car. Tommy meantime, finding the pressure easing a little, made further desperate plunges; and as the dray came after him, the wheels went dewn into several feet of water. But laws, what a pre- dicament it put poor old Elarry in! The tank went too far forward, and left him hanging by the strap from the limb with his feet eight inches or so off the bed of the dray.