Matters of the bowel, as you are no doubt aware, are omnipresent in my mind since the Excursion. Picnic be damned - it cost me half my right leg and the use of three fingers. Blasted wildlife accounted for the former; sheer boredom, the latter. Gumnuts Murphy claimed he heard rumours of de Breton's presence in the upper reaches of Cooper’s Creek: says a blackfeller – they’re Wilyakali out there, if memory serves – came in to Burke swearing he’d been told by one of the wild tribes from further out of a stranger, naked but for a pith helmet, sitting cross-legged on a stump in front of a fold-out table (no doubt the oak dresser the Earl left him, the old rogue – damn thing must weight four hundred pounds. Confoundit it, I admire him for lugging it that far. But good taste will always out, eh?) drinking his infernal home-distilled whiskey, reading half a novel (Murphy tells me the blackfellers picked up the other half near Bedourie) and taking the occasional shot at the more foolhardy of the crows out there (for this reason alone, Murphy reckons it took the blackfellers some days to approach de Breton close enough to where they could ascertain the manner of man he be.) “He made it,” I ejaculated immediately ‘pon hearing the description.
Needless to say, useful though he’s been, Murphy has since had his membership of the Club revoked. Damn fool, relying on hearsay instead of saddling up and going out to check the story personally. (I would have gone myself, of course, were it not for this problem with the gut). Ah, but I must admire the man’s moxie. He left the Club with three hundred guineas worth of stolen silverware stuffed up his arse, and it altered his gait not a whit.
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