belonging to me, plenty you shoot 'em, Marmy."

"You take us close up along of those fellow, Lizzie?" said Dunmore.

"Your Marmy, plenty close, you been shoot 'em all mine think," replied our amiable little guide, who, enjoining the strictest silence, at once put herself in motion, bidding us, by a sign, to follow her.

For more than an hour and a half we crept cautiously along, sometimes crawling on all fours where the country was open, and frequently stopping, while Lizzie went noiselessly forward and reconnoitred, before beckoning to us to advance again. The direction in which she led us lay at the base of the hills, which on one side bounded the little plain and its bay, and though we could form but a crude idea of where we were going, owing to the thickness of the undergrowth, yet it was sufficiently evident that the young lady was one of nature's tacticians, and meditated a flank blow at her unfortunate relatives. Proceeding, we came at last within a stone's throw of the beach, and could hear the mimic waves rolling on the sand, at no great distance, on our right hand. Lizzie now pointed to a small belt of vine shrub that lay in front of us, and indicated that immediately outside it were the 'gunyahs', or huts; and, "plenty you shoot," she added showing her white teeth as she grinned with glee at the thoughts of the cheerful surprise she had prepared for her old companions. We were not thoroughly on the 'qui vive', for we thought this unknown bay would be the very spot in which the blacks were likely to seclude any prisoners from the 'Eva', and accordingly willingly followed the lithe figure of our little guide, as she wound her way through the tangled brake, like a black snake, and with a facility that we in vain attempted to imitate. The troopers—who had reduced their clothing to a minimum, for their sole vestment consisted of a forage-cap and cartridge-belt—wound along as noiselessly as Lizzie; but we poor whites—with our flannel shirts and other complicated paraphernalia that custom would not permit us to dispense with in the matter-of-fact way they were laid aside by our sable allies—were getting into continual trouble; now hitched up helplessly by a lawyer vine, whose sharp prickles, like inverted fish-hooks, rent the skin; now crawling unsuspiciously against a tree-ants' nest, an indiscretion that the fierce little insects visited with immediate and most painful punishment; or else, becoming aware, by unmistakable symptoms, that we were trying to force a passage through a stinging tree-shrub. Whenever we thus came to grief, Lizzie would stop, turn round, and wave her arms about like a semaphore, indicative of impatience, contempt mingled with pity and warning.

Luckily for us, the belt of scrub was not of great extent; Lizzie had already reached its edge, and was peering cautiously through, and we were struggling along, each after his own fashion, when bang went a carbine, the bullet of which we distinctly heard whistle over our heads, and turning round we got a glimpse of Jack, the roughrider, hung up in a vine, one of whose tendrils had fired off his weapon; and had just time to hear him exclaim, "If I'd only been mounted, this wouldn't have happened," before we broke cover, and all further concealment being now unnecessary, rushed recklessly on to the encampment.

But we were too late to capture any of the men, for I need hardly tell the reader that never had we intended to make use of the curt arguments that Lizzie had relied upon for cutting off the abrupt exit of her quondam friends; it would be quite time enough to commence a system of reprisals when it was ascertained that the blacks had actually been guilty of any atrocity. At present it was mere surmise on our part, and putting altogether on one side the natural reluctance to shed blood, an aggressive policy would have been an unwise one, engendering, as it infallibly would, a bad feeling against any other luckless mariners whom the winds and the waves might in time to come cast upon the inhospitable shores of Hinchinbrook Island.

The sudden report of Jack's carbine, which occasioned a momentary halt, and the few seconds required to burst through the scrub, afforded sufficient time for the male portion of the encampment to make their escape at speed, in different directions, some taking to the water, where they were picked up by the fishermen in the canoes; others diving into the nearest cover, and being lost to sight without hope of recovery. The women and children followed the tactics usual on such occasions, and flung themselves into a heap, similar in colour and contour to that described in a previous chapter, when we searched the Herbert River. The same thing took place again exactly; we sat down in a circle round them, waiting for the deafening "yabbering" to die away, which "yabbering" burst forth in all its pristine discord, whenever one of the party made the slightest movement. Time and patience, however, had the desired effect, restoring tone to their not over sensitive systems, and at the expiration of half an hour, we could distinguish sharp, bead-like black eyes peering at us out of the mass, which had now sunk into silence, but burst out again louder than ever, when Lizzie made her appearance from one of the gunyahs—perhaps the paternal roof, who knows?—where she had retired, swelling with indignation, and as sulky as a whole team of mules. Finding that no one took any notice of her, and half an hour's reflection having, I suppose, convinced her, that if she wanted to make a display before her relations, now was the time, her ladyship came slowly up to the circle, and commenced an attack on poor Dunmore, as she knew him best. To transcribe her words would be impossible, for she put in a native sentence whenever she found herself at a loss for an English one, but the burden of her plaint was this:—

"Plenty d—d fooly fellow, white fellow"—a string of Hinchinbrook vernacular—"Baal you been shoot 'em like 'it dingo"—more Hinchinbrook, but evidently, from the accompanying gestures, indicative of intense disgust—"Baal mine take any more along of black fellow camp"—half sobs—"Baal mine care suppose you fellow all go like 'it—"

And she summarily consigned us to the bottomless pit, as the only place at all suited for such stupid idiots who could refrain from shooting blacks when so grand an opportunity presented itself. Her eyes flashed fire as she delivered herself of her woes, and at the concluding sentence she stamped her little foot, and flinging a short waddy she held, with remarkable dexterity and no mean force, into the midst of the sable mass, she turned round to depart with the dignity of a tragedy queen, when Dunmore jumped up, caught her, and holding her wrist, walked off a little way from us.

"You like 'it one fine fellow red shirt, Lizzie? Mine give you one with 'plenty long tail'. Baal any other gin along of camp have shirt like 'it you; and when piccaninny sit down" (for there was a prospect of her presenting Ferdinand with a little pledge of affection), "mine give that fellow two budgeree flour-bag shirts, suppose only you good fellow girl Lizzie."

Evidently, Dunmore knew the way to the young lady's heart—we nicknamed him "Faust" afterwards—for at the mention of the red shirt, with the lengthy tails, her eyes lost their fierceness, and the allusion to the piccaninny completed his victory, and changing at once from one extreme to the other, as only a black or a child can, Miss Lizzie took her seat in the circle, lighted her pipe, commenced nodding to, and chatting most affably with, her relatives, and looking so kind, that it seemed impossible to believe that an intense longing for bloodshed and cruelty had so shortly before lurked in the breast of the pretty, smiling little savage who was now beside us.

During the task of pacifying Lizzie, the "heap" had again sunk into comparative silence, and only a confused murmur was audible from its depths. Allowing no time to be lost, Dunmore said to Lizzie—who was puffing out huge mouthfuls of