Part 2

On they went again; but they had not gone far before they came to what is called in Australia a "chain of ponds." The creek had partly dried up, and they had to pull and push the cot from one pond to another. This was hard work, and not very pleasant work either, for the sand-flies got into the corners of their eyes as if they wanted to give them the blight, and the leeches crawled up their trousers and turned their white socks red with blood. Their heads throbbed so that they could hardly bear to hear the locusts--thousands of them--clattering on the trees like iron-ship wrights hammering, and they felt quite angry when the long-tailed, brown coach-whip bird flew by, making a noise just like a slavedriver cracking his lash. At last, however, they got into clear water again--clear except for the grey snags and sawyers--and paddled lazily along; listening to the twittering wood-swallows as they dipped their blue wings into the water, and the great, black, sharp-winged swifts screaming for joy as they tacked high overhead. Harry and Donald could not help wishing that the cot (which they had christened the _Endeavour_, in honour of Captain Cook) would dart along of herself like the swifts.

It had taken such a time to get her through the chain of ponds, that evening was coming on. Great flocks of cockatoos were circling round their roosting-trees like English rooks, and parrots and lories--their fine green, and red, and blue, and yellow feathers beginning to look very dull and ragged, because moulting-time was near--were taking their evening bath in the shallow water by the banks, splashing it over their heads and wings, and chattering as if they were saying, "Isn't this prime fun?" Presently the cockatoos lighted on the dark trees, and made them look as if a hundred or two of ladies' pocket-handkerchiefs had been hung out to dry on them, and then the boys thought it was time to find a roosting-place themselves. They pushed the cot into a little bay in the bank, and fastened her to an old black stump, and then they scooped a hole in the ground for a fireplace, and gathered sticks, and lighted a fire. But when they were going to cook their supper, they found that they had lost their flour, and that their sugar-bag had got so wet that there was only a little sweet mud left in it. But that did not matter nearly so much as the loss of the flour. They boiled their tea, and sweetened it with the mud, and after a good deal of trouble they got the salmon-tin open. Harry, who was very hungry, was for finishing the salmon and what was left of the damper; but Donald said,

"No; we must go on allowance now--we'll keep half for to-morrow's breakfast, because, perhaps, we shan't be able to shoot anything to-night--that's how explorers manage."

When supper was over, the moon had risen, and the boys went down with their gun to the creek to see if they could shoot a duck. The dark water was plated in patches with ribbed and circling silver, and, just in the middle of one of the patches, up came a black something like a bottle.

"Hush! it's a water-mole," whispered Harry; but before he could point his gun at it the queer duck-billed thing had gone under again. The boys found no ducks, and did not go very far to look for them. They were tired, and had had their supper, and were sure of a breakfast. So they soon went back to their fire, piled more sticks on it, and then, snuggling under their blanket, fell asleep. They said their prayers before they fell asleep beneath the bright moon and stars, and, as they said them, they thought for the first time that they had not done quite right in leaving Wonga-Wonga without letting any one there know that they were going.

When they woke in the morning, the sun was up, and the glossy magpies were hopping about the logs, and everything looked cheerful. The boys took a dip in the creek, and boiled their tea, and had their breakfast, and then away they went again in high spirits, although now they had no food except what they might shoot or catch. The kingfishers in their blue coats and yellow waistcoats were darting backwards and forwards over the water, and the fussy little sedge-warblers were dodging about the reeds, and twittering a little bit of every bird's song they could think of; but they weren't worth powder and shot. By noon--they could tell the time pretty well by the sun--both Harry and Donald felt very hungry, for they had had a very early breakfast. They began to wish that they had saved some of the salmon for their dinner; but just then the _Endeavour_ was gliding between banks that had no tree or scrub, but only tufts of dry coarse grass on them, and Donald saw a bandicoot run out of one of the tufts. Up went the gun to his shoulder, and in a second Mr. Bandicoot had rolled over dead upon his back. A bandicoot is a very big brown kind of rat--nicer to eat than any rabbit. The boys soon made a fire, and baked the bandicoot in the ashes, in his skin; and they relished him ten times more than the preserved salmon. Rat, and tea without sugar or milk, may not seem a very inviting bill of fare, but you know the Delectus says that hunger is the best sauce, and, besides, baked bandicoot anybody might like.

Harry and Donald had some more shooting that day. About a mile from the place where they had taken their dinner they found a break in the creek-bank, filled up with tall rusty bulrushes. They got out of the cot, and pushed their way through the rushes, looking out very carefully for snakes, and sometimes sinking into the slush below the baked upper earth, just as if their feet had gone through a pie-crust, and on the other side they found a lagoon full of water-fowl. Then they forced the _Endeavour_ through the rushes--she made a great black steaming furrow in the yellow ground--and launched her down the dry border of the lagoon, and pulled about in her, popping away in turns, and fancying themselves in Fairy Land. There were two or three black swans cruising proudly backwards and forwards, and fleets of piebald geese, and grey geese, and sooty ducks, and silvery ducks, and chestnut ducks with emerald necks, and musk ducks with double chins, and all their bodies under water. It was very funny to see their heads and necks moving about, as if they had lost their bodies and were looking for them. There were coots, too, on the banks of the lagoon, and purple herons and white herons holding up one leg as if they were trying how long they could do it for a wager; and ibises with untidy tufts of feathers on their breasts, that looked like costermongers' dirty cravats dangling out of their waistcoats, and native companions, great light blue cranes lifting their long legs out of the mud, and trumpeting "Look out!" to one another, when the _Endeavour_ was coming their way. There were beautiful water-lilies on the lagoon, also, with broad round leaves like shields of malachite, and great blossoms of alabaster, and blue and rose-coloured china. The boys, however, were too busy with the water-fowl to look at the water-flowers. They kept on popping away until the moon had been up for some time, and the bitterns were booming in the swamps all round, and the nankeen cranes were stalking about, nodding their white crest-plumes like Life Guardsmen, and croaking, "Now we'll make a night of it."

When Harry and Donald left off shooting, they found that they had fired away all their powder and shot except two charges, and that they had got three little ducks. They made a very merry supper off one, baking it on the lagoon bank, as they had baked the bandicoot, and then they went to sleep by their fire. Early in the morning, just as the laughing jackass was hooting before daybreak, Donald woke. The moon had gone down, and so had the fire, and Donald, though it was summer, felt very chilly.

He got up to stamp his feet and stir up the fire. What do you think he saw? An iguana--that's a great lean lizard--sneaking off with the two ducks that were to serve for breakfast and dinner. Donald flung a hot log at him, but it only made the lizard run the faster. Plenty of red sparks were scattered about, but the two ducklings were not dropped.

"Hech, weel," said Donald (he had picked up a little Scotch from his father). "it's nae guid greetin' ower spilt milk;" and he lay down again and slept like a top, until Harry woke him, asking him what ever could have become of the ducks? They had to breakfast on tea alone that morning. They tried to shoot a duck, but they had made the birds wild, and they were very anxious not to waste their precious powder, and so they did not succeed.

When they had hauled the cot into the creek again, they were half inclined to go back to Wonga-Wonga, but they determined to go on for one day more.

They looked about eagerly for something to shoot, but everything except insects seemed to have vanished from the creek. On both sides there were stony ridges with scarcely a blade of grass on them. One landrail ran along the bank, calling out "ship, ship," as if it was hailing the _Endeavour_, but Donald missed it when he fired at it. Harry took the gun then, and said he would try to shoot a fish. He saw something black wriggling about in the water, which he thought was an eel, and he fired and hit it; but it was a snake, and it bit itself before it died; so they were obliged to leave it in the water, instead of cooking it on shore and getting a dinner as white and delicate as a roast chicken.

Still, however, the boys determined not to turn back until next day; and late in the afternoon they got more fish than they could eat. They came upon a black fellow's "fish-trap"--a kind of little mud hut, thatched with dry grass--and out of it they scooped up a score or two of black fish, and what they call trout in Australia. They were not very tasty, but the boys enjoyed the little fellows greatly when they had grilled them, though they had no soy.

When they had finished their dinner, they rowed on to find the black fellows' camp, which they knew could not be very far off. The moon had come up again, however, before they reached it. The creek, fringed with shea-oaks with dark long leaves like lanky tassels, wriggled about there like a snake. Long before the boys got to the camp, they heard the measured tramp of feet and fierce shouts, and when they got there they saw ever so many black fellows, streaked with ochre, dancing and brandishing their boomerangs and waddies, whilst the "gins" (that's the women) in their 'possum cloaks and blankets, squatted on the ground beating time.

Harry and Donald were not a bit afraid of black fellows. They were generally very friendly in those parts, and often came to Wonga-Wonga. But it happened that the black fellows were in a very savage mood. They had been doing a little sheep-stealing, and an overseer had fired at them, and killed one of them; and so they had made up their minds to kill the first white fellow they came across, in revenge. As soon as they saw the cot, they rushed down to the creek, shouting out, "Wah! wah! wah!" and they pulled the boys on shore, and burnt the cot on the great fire they had lighted to keep the "debil debil" away. Then they jabbered for a long time, disputing which of the boys they should kill; and Harry and Donald, brave little fellows though they were, most heartily wished themselves back at Wonga-Wonga.

All of a sudden, however, a black fellow held up his finger, and then a dozen of them put their ears to the ground. It was horses' hoofs they heard in the distance. Then they jabbered again, and all the blacks ran into the scrub, leaving the boys, but carrying off their gun. In a few minutes up galloped Mr. Lawson, and Sydney, and a stockman. The boys had been hunted far and wide, but it was only that day that the cot had been missed, and so a clue found to their whereabouts. Mr. Lawson, having heard that the up-creek blacks were "in a scot," and fearing that the youngsters might fall into their hands, had then started with his little party in pursuit. Of course, he could not help feeling very angry with the young truants, but there was no time to tell them so then. Boomerangs and spears began to whiz out of the scrub, and there was no good in three men stopping to fight with a hundred whom they could not see. So Mr. Lawson pulled Donald on to his horse, and the stockman pulled Harry, and off they galloped; whilst Sydney brought up the rear, firing his revolver right and left into the scrub as he rode away.

III. THE CAVE OF THE RED HAND.

Harry and Donald were not frightened out of their love for exploring by their adventure up the creek. The next expedition they went on, however, was by land. They had heard a good deal of the Cave of the Red Hand in the Bulla Bulla Mountains, about ten miles from Wonga-Wonga; and one Saturday afternoon, directly after dinner, they started in search of the cave--Harry on his own horse Cornstalk, and Donald on his own mare Flora M'Ivor. They knew that they had to steer for a very tall blasted gum tree that stood on the top of a ridge, and that when they had "rose the ridge," as Australians say, they would find the mouth of the cave somewhere near at hand on the other side of the gully.

When they got down into the gully they dismounted, and hobbled their horses where there was a little feed; and then they began to look about them. It was some time before they found the cave's mouth, but, whilst they were looking for it, they saw what neither of them had ever seen alive before, though they were Australian-born; and that was one of the shy birds after which the mountains were named. They got a full view of the dingy cock-pheasant, as he stood between two clumps of scrub, with his beautiful tail up like a lyre without strings. "Bulla, bulla, bulla, bulla," he was gurgling like a brook; but, as soon as he saw the boys, he was off like a shot.

"Here it is!" at last shouted Harry, and when Donald ran up, he found his cousin standing outside a very gloomy-looking opening in the hillside, with a moustache and whiskers of almost black brushwood about the gaping mouth. On the rocky wall at the entrance, a red hand with outstretched fingers pointed inwards; and when the boys had lighted their lantern and groped their way into the cave, they found more red hands on the walls, and white hands too--some pointing forwards and some backwards, some up and some down.

"Don't they look queer, Donald?" said Harry; "just as if they were murderers and people getting murdered poking their hands out of the stone. I wonder who did them, and what they mean."

"Why, the _black fellows_ don't know," answered Donald. "They say the _old people_ did them, but they don't know who the old people were. I expect a flood drowned them. Do you know the story the black fellows tell about the Flood? They say that somewhere or other in Australia the black fellows' father lies asleep on the ground, with his head resting on his arm; and that he woke up ever so long ago, and that then all the country was flooded; and that when he wakes next, he will eat up all the black fellows. They say he is a giant--taller than that blue gum on the ridge. The old fellow puts them into a great funk. Up at our place I went out one day with a black fellow after honey. He caught a native bee, and stuck a bit of down on it, and chased it till it lighted on a tree, and then he climbed up with his tomahawk, and tapped till he found where the nest was. He cut out the combs and the bee-bread before you could say 'Jack Robinson;' but he took precious care to leave some of the honey for the old giant. If he's asleep, though, I don't see what good it would do him."

"They're a queer lot, the black fellows," philosophically remarked Harry; "but they're a long sight better than new chums--they were born in the colony just like us. A black fellow can ride like a native, but those Englishmen look so scared when a horse begins to buck."

Just then, however, it was Harry's turn to look scared, for a great grey owl, with round eyes that gleamed like polished guineas, brushed against his face, and directly afterwards two or three flying foxes floated by, looking in the dark very much like dirty cherubim off a tombstone.

Donald laughed to see how the owl and the great bats made Harry jump, when he had been talking so big the minute before. Presently they walked into a cloud of great dusky moths that came fluttering about the lantern like butterflies' ghosts, and then they saw stalactites hanging down like sheets and chandeliers, and fruit and flowers, and plucked geese, and organ-pipes, and joining on to the stalagmites on the floor, and making columns and cloisters and great hour-glasses. Some of the stalactites rang in tune when they rapped them, like harmonicons. It would have been a very jolly place to wander about in, if the water had not dropped off the roof down the napes of their necks, and if they had not been obliged to look out so sharp to keep from tumbling down little precipices, or into the streams they could hear running, and the ponds they could sometimes see shining through the darkness.

They had scrambled down three or four of the little precipices (the cave's floor was like a great rough flight of stairs) when they stopped to look at a pillar that was just like a huge candle with a "winding-sheet."

"Why, there's a red hand up there," said Harry, pointing to the winding-sheet.

Donald could not see it, and so Harry put the lantern on to the end of a long stick he carried, and held it up to what he said was the hand. But still Donald could not see one.

"You must be blind, then," said Harry impatiently; "there, don't you see now?" and he pushed the lantern against the stalactite.

Down the lantern dropped, rolled over for a few feet, and disappeared. The boys joined hands, and groped with the stick after the lantern; but presently the end of the stick ran on without anything to stop it, and if they had not pulled themselves up very quick, they would have fallen down the deepest drop they had come to yet. At the bottom was a light, dancing about like a will-o'-the-wisp. The lantern had tumbled into one of the black subterranean streams, and soon, either the water put the candle out, or else the lantern was carried underground. At any rate, Donald and Harry were left quite in the dark.

"We must keep on lighting matches," said Donald; "or, perhaps, we could make torches out of this stick-it seems dry. Where are the matches?--You had them."

But when Harry felt in his pocket, the matchbox was gone. He felt in all his pockets, and Donald felt in all _his_ pockets, but not a single match could they find. Then, at first, they did feel very much afraid, and I think you would have been afraid, too, however plucky you may be. The cave was pitch-dark where they had got to. They could hear water dripping and dashing and running all round about them--some of it a long way down. When they moved, they were forced to tap about with the stick like a blind man, and to slide their feet along the ground at a snail's pace, for fear of suddenly tumbling down some deep pit or into a well-like water-hole. And if they could find their way back to the great steps they had come down, it would be very hard to find the proper places to ascend, and to scramble up them in the dark. It had not been easy scrambling down them, even with a lantern. No wonder Donald and Harry felt frightened. But funking, they knew, would do no good. If they sat down scared in a corner, there they would have to starve, most likely; for no one at Wonga-Wonga knew that they had started for the cave.

"Let's say our prayers," said Donald (it was Harry told me); and when they had said them, they gripped hold tight of one another's hands, and set out.

At first they went quite wrong. After stumbling about for nearly half an hour, they had got again to the top of the precipice the lantern had tumbled down, instead of to the foot of the first one they had to climb up; but then they felt their way along by the wall of the cave, until they came at last to the bottom of the drop they wanted. They could not always keep by the wall. Every now and then their guiding-stick went splash into water. Sometimes, too, they ran full butt against rocks that knocked sparks out of their eyes, and made their noses bleed, and tore their clothes into ragged ribbons; and Donald lost one of his shoes, and Harry both of his, in some mud, as sticky as birdlime, that they floundered into. But, at last, as I have said, they came to the foot of the first great step they had to mount. They felt about with their stick, but for a long time they could find no foot or hand-hold. And when they did come by-and-bye to jutting big stones, they were no good, because a waterfall was tumbling down them. The stream it made below was not very broad, but it ran so fast that the boys could not pole how deep it was; and so they had to be very careful in crossing it, and they would not have been able to cross it at all, if it had not been for a great stone in the middle that the stick tapped against. As it was, Harry (who was more slapdash in his ways than Donald) went into the water up to his waist before he got to the other side.

When they had crossed, they seemed at first as far off from the cave's mouth as ever; but, after ten minutes' groping about, they got into a zigzag crack in the great step, through which, with more tearing of clothes and bruising of shins, they managed to wriggle up to the sloping platform above. They had learnt wisdom from experience, and did not try to strike right across it. Perhaps you have tried to walk right across a common in a fog, and have come out not far from the place you started from: well, Donald and Harry had discovered that making short cuts in the pitch-dark Cave of the Red Hand was like that, and so they tapped along the edge of the step until they came to the cave's wall once more, and then followed that--running up against rocks, and floundering into mud and water as before--until they got to the foot of the next step. When they had climbed a good way up the last step they had to mount, they met with a great disappointment. There were no more stones sticking out for them to take hold of. They swished the stick backwards and forwards like a scythe, but it went over the rock just as if it had been a brick wall.

So they had to go back and try again, and it was so long before they found a mounting-place, that they began to lose heart, and fear that, after all, they would have to die in the cave, with nothing but the pointing red hand at the entrance to show where they were. But at last their heads rose above the edge of the great step, and there, far away, the moonlight was pouring in at the cave's mouth, and making silver gauze of the mist just inside. Close by them the cave still looked very gloomy; but oh, how jolly they felt! When the owls and the flying foxes brushed against Harry now, he could have shaken hands--or wings--with them, they seemed so much like old friends welcoming him back to life.

It did not take the boys long to get out of the cave when they had the moonlight to guide them, and they did not stop long to look at the inwards-pointing red hand, at which they had looked so curiously when they were going to follow its direction. Then the faded red fingers seemed burnt up by the blazing sunlight; now they pointed dim beneath the dewy moonlight. When the boys thought of the dismal darkness the hand pointed to, they hurried by it as if it had power to push them back into the gloom. In spite of their hobbles, Cornstalk and Flora M'Ivor had strayed a long way, and it was early Sunday morning before they and their riders got back to Wonga-Wonga.