Gorbo was a well-known, utterly irresponsible Snerg who occasionally came over to Watkyns Bay to do a job of work, and who was quite celebrated for his habit of doing it very badly and getting tired of it almost at once and wandering off again. He was of average size for a Snerg and fairly young—possibly two hundred and fifty—and though good-natured to excess he had little intelligence of the useful kind. He had given it out that he was a potter by trade—he had indeed some superficial knowledge of the business—and he had induced Miss Watkyns to let him start a little kiln in order to supply the Society with pots. But there was no particular shape to his pots when he had made them and many of them fell to bits when they were handled, so Miss Watkyns told him plainly that he was a fraud; and to this he agreed heartily for he did not like to contradict people. She told him to go away—to potter off was her bitter expression—so he had gone to spend a day or two with Vanderdecken’s men, who rather liked his face but I don’t know why, and then he had come across the forest on his way to the town, where he had a little house of one room and a kitchen. And that is why the children met him that morning, grinning all over his face and carrying his bow and arrows, and a little bundle containing his few potter’s tools and his other shirt and a bunch of wheat-cakes. He had slept in a thicket of ferns, some of which he had chopped up to form a sort of nest, and what with the odds and ends of fern sticking to his clothes and his wild hair straggling out from his saucer cap, he looked as disreputable a person as you might expect to meet even among the Snergs, who are not over particular about their personal appearance at the best.
But he was a welcome sight to Sylvia and Joe. All three took hands and made two little dancing steps first to one side and then to the other, which is the Snerg manner of greeting, and which all the children had taken to (in spite of Miss Watkyns’ objection to it as absurd and unnecessary) and he was then asked if he had anything to eat. He produced his wheat-cakes and then made a little fire in order to warm them up on his potter’s trowel, which he cleaned first with a bunch of grass. Before they sat down to eat he sneaked up to a herd of deer which came into sight a little distance away and somehow blarneyed one of them into letting him milk her. He came back with a good deal of milk in a silver-tipped horn that he had, and the children divided it between them. They did not reflect of course that they were causing some small deer to go short that morning. But it was a very jolly breakfast. It was quite a joy to the children to note Tiger’s figure showing signs of sleekness and roundness again; he being of an age when it shows quickly.
When Gorbo heard that they had the nerve to run away he was not at all shocked at their folly but highly delighted with their sporting character, which is just what would be expected of him. But he said it was lucky they had met him, because left to themselves it was very doubtful if they would ever reach the town; and there was always the danger that they might wander into the parts where the trees grew closer and closer and are all twisted until at last there is no going forwards or backwards, and then they would be lost for keeps and a fine to-do. This, by the way, is the only thing with a touch of sense in it that he ever said to them, on that day at least.
Feeling tremendously refreshed with this wholesome meal, they started off again on their journey, Gorbo leading the way and showing nice little short-cuts through clumps of bracken and so forth, and sometimes carrying Sylvia over rough ground and through swampy places and the like. They had the luck to meet another large cinnamon bear, which carried both children for several miles; but at length it intimated in the usual way that it had had enough (this is done by crouching on the ground with all four paws tucked underneath, laying the head sideways, and emitting a long, loud, melancholy howl). So they got off and the bear sprang up and went swiftly away, and they never found another. It was the time of the annual migration of bears to the country of slug-nuts, and that is why so few bears were seen on this trip.
It was a long journey and both children got very tired; Gorbo had at last to carry Sylvia pick-a-back, while Joe had to carry the puppy, who was getting his pads sore with so much travel. But just when it seemed to them that there would never be any end to the journey, to their great joy they saw from a slight eminence a cluster of high-peaked red roofs, which Gorbo told them (rather unnecessarily I think) was the town.