Chapter VIII., and were substantially thatched with fern fronds and

that coarse kind of grass that grows in the open spaces in the scrub called “pockets” by northern bushmen. These “pockets” are treeless spots circular in form, and generally half an acre in extent, and are used by the aborigines for _boorers_ (native tournaments) and dances. One of these native _Champs de Mars_, on the upper Barron river, covers quite fifteen acres, and is also a perfect circle.

It was still dark, the next morning, when Billy and old Weevil started once more on their journey; and the latter, in consequence, fell into a two-foot hole near the gunyah in which they had slept, and found himself lying on a mass of loose, rattling objects, which his sense of touch quickly told him were human skulls,—the remains, doubtless, of by-gone picnics of the good people whose village the two men had appropriated during the previous night.

Pushing onwards, our friends spent the first half of the day in climbing rocky peaks, and crossing the dark, rugged sources of creeks, wrapped in their primeval gloom of frizzled, intricate masses of thorny vines and dangerous stinging-trees; and, after making only three miles in six hours, were forced to rest awhile in a ragged gully, walled in by grey slate cliffs, and strewn with glistening blocks of white and “hungry” quartz.

The stinging-tree, which we have twice mentioned in this chapter, is worthy of a few remarks, for it is perhaps the most terrible of all vegetable growths, and is found only in the scrub-country through which Billy and his friend are now forcing their way.

This horrible guardian of the penetralia of the Queensland jungle stands from five to fifteen feet in height, and has a general appearance somewhat similar to that of a small mulberry-tree; but the heart-shaped leaves of the plant before us differ from those of the European fruit just mentioned in that they are larger, and because they look as if manufactured from some light-green, velvety material, such as plush. Their peculiarly soft and inviting aspect is caused by an almost invisible coating of microscopic cilia, and it is to these that the dangerous characteristics of the plant are due. The unhappy wanderer in these wilds, who allows any part of his body to come in contact with those beautiful, inviting tongues of green, soon finds them veritable tongues of fire, and it will be weeks, perhaps months, ere the scorching agony occasioned by their sting is entirely eradicated. Nor are numerous instances wanting of the deaths of men and animals following the act of contact with this terrible _lusus naturæ_.

Billy and Weevil make more progress during the afternoon, the country being more level and the scrub less thick; but, although both men are inured to fatigue and discomfort of all sorts, they are forced to camp early, after doing another six miles. Ragged, weary, and barefooted,—for even the most imaginative mind could hardly recognize the flabby pieces of water-logged leather that still adhere to the men’s feet as boots,—the two travellers fling themselves down on the dry, sandy bed of a mountain torrent, and scrape the clusters of swollen leeches from their ankles, which are covered with clotted blood, and pick the bush-ticks and scrub-itch insects from their flesh with the point of the long scrub-knife the old digger carries.

As our friends are engaged in this painful but necessary toilet of a voyager through the Queensland scrub, a wild turkey comes blundering by in all the glories of her glossy, blue-black feathers and brilliant red and yellow head,—not the _Otis Australasianus_ which is known to southern settlers as a “wild turkey” and is in reality a bustard, but a true scrub turkey (_Telegallus_).

Billy is not long in tracking the footprints of the bird back to its enormous mound nest. For this ingenious feathered biped, like her smaller contemporary the scrub hen (_Megapodius tumulus_), saves herself from the monotonous duty of sitting on her eggs by depositing them in a capital natural incubator, formed of rotting and heated leaves, which she collects into a pile, and arranges so as to do the hatching part of the business for her.

A meal of turkey eggs and roasted “cozzon” berries, whose red clusters are to be seen hanging from parasitic vines upon the great stems around in plentiful profusion, and then the men retire to rest upon their wet blankets, beneath a great ledge of granite, upon whose surface some aboriginal artist has delineated in different colours the admirable representations of immense frogs in various attitudes.

But trouble commences with the morrow; and when old Weevil raises his stiff and patchwork form from the hard couch upon which he has passed the night, he finds Billy, gun in hand, watching something on the dim summit of the cliffs opposite their camp.

“Sh!” observes that individual, without turning his head; “plenty black fellow all about here. D’you see that beggar’s head?”

“Bust ’em!” yawns the old digger, stretching; “they won’t interfere with us. Let’s have tucker, and ‘break camp’ as soon as we can.”

The frugal repast is soon silently completed, but half a mile down the creek, where the aborigines have constructed an ingenious weir, armed with conical baskets in which to catch what fish may pass that way, Billy and his companion find a small army of copper-coloured natives collected on the opposite side of the stream, who wave and beckon to the two travellers to return whence they came. Their gesticulations and fierce yells not having the desired effect, a series of signals are given by them to other natives in ambush on the jungle-fringed precipices that rise with lycopodium-tasselled ledges above the heads of the intruders.

“We’re in fur it now!” grunts the older man, who has done some prospecting in New Guinea, amongst other places. “Them yellow niggers is Kalkadoones, and as like Papuans as may be; and they’re devils to fight. Keep close under the cliff.”

Billy guesses the mode of attack which the old digger’s experience teaches him to anticipate, and which prompts his advice to his mate to seek the shelter of the rocks as much as possible. The wiseness of this precaution is soon seen. For when our friends are fairly started on their way past the rapids in the gloomy gorge, the natives commence hurling down great boulders of conglomerate. These would speedily have crushed the adventurous twain below, had they not been sheltered by the overhanging base of the precipice, which was worn concave by the river’s action during floods. As it was many of the rocks bounded horribly close to the men’s heads.

“I can’t use my gun here, that’s sartin,” presently observes the old man, as he puts fresh caps upon his old companion of many years. “We’ll have to clear them beggars off before we go any further.” Then springing from his shelter with his rags and tangled grey locks flying in the air, Weevil makes for a rocky reef that juts out into the river, which is deep at this place, with the idea of peppering the enemy from this point of vantage.

But the Fates are against him, and sable Sister Atropos snaps her weird scissors on poor old Weevil’s thread of existence. A shower of stones descends upon the wild-looking figure as it hurries towards the river, and the old miner falls an uncouth, bleeding object upon the strand, groaning heavily.

Happily, the gun has escaped destruction, and by its aid Billy, who rushes forward to defend his friend, performs prodigies of valour that on a field of civilized warfare would certainly have gained him some such coveted distinction as the Victoria Cross.

A hurried shot at the yelling figures that are clinging to the trees overhanging the edge of the cliff in an appalling manner, and one of them comes spinning down with a sickening thud upon the rocks below. A second wire cartridge sent in the same direction is equally successful, and another of the enemy tumbles forward on to a jagged rock that projects from the precipice; while his friends, horrified at the sudden illness that has thus overtaken two of their number, stop short in the middle of a diabolical yell of triumph, and clearing off are seen no more.

Billy bathes the crushed features of the old man, whose stentorious breathing shows how badly he is injured, and the cold water revives him somewhat.

“I’m busted in my inside, lad,” he murmurs raspily. “Gimme me pipe. I can’t see to——How blind I’m gettin’!”

After a pause, during which he has tried to smoke in vain, he asks to be raised in a sitting posture.

“Billy,” he says, when this is effected, “you’re a good boy. I’m goin’ fast. Listen ter me afore I chuck it up altogether. Me legs is dead already.”

The dying man has a crime upon his soul, and dreads to take the secret of it with him into the unknown which he is about to enter, so he fights gamely against the dissolution that is fast approaching till he has told it to Billy.

“Remember what I tell ye, lad. ’Twas I as stole Wilson Giles’s only son. Giles had ruined my life, and (gasp) I tuck revenge. I marked the boy blue star an’ W. G. on near shoulder. Then I cleared out an’ tuck him (gasp) ter Sydney.”

Silence for a time follows, after which the expiring flame of life flickers up, and the last words Weevil speaks on earth are gasped out.

“God furgive me! Intended to return boy after a bit. Lost him in Sydney. God furgive me! (gasp). Goo’-bye, ole man. Let’s have ’nother——(gasp). Oh God! Jane! Jane! come back ter me!”

The old man stretches out his wounded hands as he wails the last sentence in tone of wild entreaty, and Billy feels, by the suddenly-increased weight in his arms, that he is holding a corpse.