V. THE LIME IN THE MORTAR
I shall presume in all my readers some slight knowledge about lime.
I shall take for granted, for instance, that all are better informed
than a certain party of Australian black fellows were a few years
since.
In prowling on the track of a party of English settlers, to see what
they could pick up, they came--oh joy!--on a sack of flour, dropped
and left behind in the bush at a certain creek. The poor savages had
not had such a prospect of a good meal for many a day. With endless
jabbering and dancing, the whole tribe gathered round the precious
flour-bag with all the pannikins, gourds, and other hollow articles
it could muster, each of course with a due quantity of water from the
creek therein, and the chief began dealing out the flour by handfuls,
beginning of course with the boldest warriors. But, horror of
horrors, each man's porridge swelled before his eyes, grew hot,
smoked, boiled over. They turned and fled, man, woman, and child,
from before that supernatural prodigy; and the settlers coming back
to look for the dropped sack, saw a sight which told the whole tale.
For the poor creatures, in their terror, had thrown away their pans
and calabashes, each filled with that which it was likely to contain,
seeing that the sack itself had contained, not flour, but quick-lime.
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