The crack of stockwhips and the neighing of horses aroused Mr. Merton from his reverie, and he started up in surprise at the lateness of the hour. He adjusted his cap, and, lighting his pipe, strolled outside. The tired horses were rolling in the soft sand at the stockyard gates, and the men were preparing for supper, as he made his way towards the hut. This stood on the hillside a quarter of a mile below the house. It was an old but commodious building, with slab walls and shingled roof. The interior formed a pleasant contrast to its external roughness and irregularities. There were two long dining-rooms, for whites and blacks, the latter being often in predominance. Both compartments were scrupulously clean, and replete with their complement of furniture, which, though not of an elaborate description, was at least substantial. Adjoining these was a room containing a long narrow table, strewn with various papers and periodicals, while on the walls were a few shelves stocked with a miscellaneous assortment of books. This was the, reading-room, where the rollicking stock-riders read and discussed the news of the world; where exciting debates and arguments were held; where cards, draughts, and other games were played for tobacco and matches when papers and books became "stale"; where many a thrilling tale of the bush was related, and many a stirring song was sung, in the winter months, when a huge log-fire burned briskly in the fireplace at the end, now appropriately filled with a few green bushes standing in an oil drum.
These various apartments were presided over by a West Indian cook named Sam. He was a man six feet one in stature, robust and powerfully built. He was intellectual, too, for an Ethiopian, and, unlike the obtuse aborigines of Australia, possessed the advantages of a liberal education. He was well liked by the white men, but held in abhorrence by the blacks. The dislike was reciprocal, for Sam detested the very sight of a native; and this animosity occasioned no end of broils and bickerings between them. The scholarly Sam classed them as a disjointed link between the orangoutang and the Ethiopian, making sarcastic allusions to their crude gunyahs, and comparing them with the accommodations of the white men.
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