rendezvous, and on no account, nor under any inducement, was he to quit until he either saw or heard from us, however long the time might be. During the daytime the whale-boat was to be kept hauled up alongside the cutter, with the carbines belonging to the crew loaded and triced up under the thwarts, ready for immediate service, and a bright look-out was to be kept on the channel, in both directions. If the natives attempted the smallest communication with the mainland, the whale-boat was to give chase immediately, and either intercept and capture the canoes, or compel them to return to Hinchinbrook Island.

Such was the rough plan we sketched out for the guidance of the 'Daylight'. With regard to ourselves, we could make no standing rule, for the country was comparatively unknown to us, and we must, Micawber-like, trust to something turning up and, in the pursuit of this happy event, must follow whithersoever fortune and Miss Lizzie thought fit to lead us.

At least an hour before dawn we were astir, and swallowing the scalding tea that the man on watch had prepared: this done, and a snack of damper and cold meat eaten, we got quietly into the boat and were pulled ashore. Until daylight, we were unable to make our way, for paths there were none, and the ground was dangerous from the quantity of stones, etc., so we were compelled to sit down quietly and smoke our pipes until we could see to pick our way. In the tropics there is but little dawn; the sun springs up without heralding his approach by a lengthened gradation from darkness to night, as obtains in more temperate climes, and but little patience was requisite to enable us to commence our search. As many of our readers are doubtless aware that in Australia no journey is ever undertaken on foot; that the real bushman would think himself sunk to the depths of abject poverty, if he had not at least 'one' horse of his own; and that a man will wander about for a couple of hours looking for a horse to carry him half a mile, when he might have gone to his destination and back half a dozen times, in the interval wasted in searching for his steed. Knowing this, they will doubtless wonder why we did not bring our mounts with us, and perform the journey comfortably, in place of the tedious method we now adopted. It must not for a moment be imagined that the great assistance horses would have afforded us had not been duly weighted and considered, and our reasons for leaving them behind were as follows:—From the little we knew of Hinchinbrook, and from the description Lizzie gave of the country, they would have been rather in our way than otherwise. The whole island is a mass of lofty volcanic mountains; and the passes through the gorges so strewn with huge boulders, debris, and shale, that we should have been compelled to lead our nags, and thus they would have only proved an encumbrance. This was one reason, and apparently a very good one, but I doubt if it would have had much effect upon our party, who could hardly contemplate any undertaking without the agency of horseflesh, had not a more cogent argument been forthcoming, to which they were compelled to give in their adherence.

"The 'Daylight' is quite big enough to carry them all, for such a short distance, if they're properly stowed," said Jack Clark, the roughrider, who was a zealous advocate for the conveyance of his pet quadrupeds.

"Of course she can," said another; "and we shall get the work over as quickly again."

"How will you land them?" I ventured to suggest; "for the cutter can never go near enough to the shore to walk them out."

"She can't get within a quarter of a mile," said the pilot; for at this time none of us knew of the little inlet, into which Lizzie so deftly guided us.

"Pitch them overboard, of course," cried Jack; "they'll pretty soon make for the land; and I'll send my mare Gossamer first; she'll give them a lead, I'll bet. Cunning old devil!"

The impetuosity of Jack was fast gaining converts, when Cato pulled Dunmore quietly by the sleeve, and said—

"Marmy, baal you take 'em yarroman like 'it Hinchinbrook; my word, plenty of alligator sit down along of water. He been parter that fellow like 'it damper."

"By Jove! Cato's right," said Dunmore; "we forget about the alligators and sharks. I won't let the boys take their horses, and shall not take my own. I lost one horse from an alligator last year, on the Pioneer River, and Government wanted to make me pay for it, and I'll take care I don't risk losing 'three'. Bring Gossamer, if you like, Clark, but, take my word for it, you'll never see her again."

This unexpected contingency; the prophesied fate of Gossamer, which was as the apple of Jack's eye; and the point-blank and sensible refusal of Dunmore to hazard the Government horses, completely turned the tables. After a little inward grumbling, Jack consoled himself, saying—

"Well, at all events, I can 'think' of riding!"

And thus it came to pass that we landed on Hinchinbrook, with no means of locomotion beyond those with which nature had endowed us.

And now, headed by Lizzie, and walking in single file and in silence, we struck out for the interior of the island. The path—if path it could be called, for it consisted only of a dim track beaten by the naked feet of the blacks—wound in and out among the long grass, which, as we approached the foot of the mountain range, became exchanged for boulders and loose shale, which rendered walking most tedious, and played the very mischief with our boots. Here even this track seemed, to our eyes, to die out; but Lizzie led the way confidently, and evidently with a thorough knowledge of what she was about. We had now been walking for more than three hours, and had apparently only got half way up a kind of gorge in the mountains, which seemed to become gradually narrower and narrower, and from all appearances afforded every prospect of terminating in a 'cul-de-sac'. A watercourse must at some period have run down this ravine, for the boulders were rounded; but it was now quite dry. As the sides of the mountains drew nearer, our path led along this watercourse, and the walking became dreadfully fatiguing. The boulders were sometimes so close as to render walking between impossible, and then it became necessary to clamber over them, which, loaded as we were, was very painful. If, on the other hand, we attempted to journey on the 'top' of the boulders, they were not only of unequal heights, but sometimes so wide apart, that a good spring was requisite to get from one to the other. Lizzie was the only one of the party who appeared thoroughly at home; her light figure bounded from rock to rock with the greatest ease and rapidity. Even Cato and Ferdinand, barefooted as they were, seemed to be a long way from enjoying themselves, and for us wretched Europeans, with our thick boots, that obtained scarcely any foothold, we slipped about from the rounded shoulders of the rocks, in a way that was anything but pleasant.

Thus we scrambled along for another hour, at the expiration of which we could only see a blank wall of mountain before us, up which it would have been both impossible and useless to climb. Wondering where the deuce Lizzie was leading us, we blundered along until we arrived at the base of the perpendicular cliff, and saw that by some convulsion of nature the ravine now branched off at a right angle to the left, and gradually widened out into a beautiful and gently declining stretch of country, perfectly shut in by hills, and into which a pretty little bay extended, with several canoes on its placid surface. We were distant from the beach about three miles, and could see clearly the smoke of several fires; while with binocular glasses we could make out the figures of the blacks fishing, and of the piccaninnies and gins romping in the sand.

Lizzie was a sight to see, as she pointed triumphantly to the unconscious savages, and, trembling with eagerness, tapped the butt of Dunmore's carbine, as she whispered—

"Those fellow sit down there, brother