It Was A Very Dusky, Cloudy, But Moonlight Night.

I dared not make any quick movement, but slowly withdrawing my right hand from the sextant, I took hold of my rifle which lay close alongside.

A second of time was of the greatest importance, for the enemy were all ranged, and just ready balancing their spears, and in another instant there would have been a hundred spears thrown into the camp. I suddenly put down the sextant, and having the rifle almost in position, I grabbed it suddenly with my left hand and fired into the thickest mob, whereupon a horrible howling filled the midnight air. Seizing Verney's rifle that was close by, I fired it and dispersed the foe. All the party were lying fast asleep on the tarpaulin, but my two shots quickly awoke them. I made them watch in turns till morning, with orders to fire two rifle cartridges every half hour, and the agony of suspense in waiting to hear these go off, kept me awake the whole night, like Carlyle and his neighbours' fowls.

Our foes did not again appear. At the first dawn of light, over at some rocky hills south-westward, where, during the night, we saw their camp fires, a direful moaning chant arose. It was wafted on the hot morning air across the valley, echoed again by the rocks and hills above us, and was the most dreadful sound I think I ever heard; it was no doubt a death-wail. From their camp up in the rocks, the chanters descended to the lower ground, and seemed to be performing a funereal march all round the central mass, as the last tones we heard were from behind the hills, where it first arose.

To resume: we left the almost exhausted channel of the Ferdinand, and pushed on for the Telegraph Line. In the sandhills and scrub we came upon an open bit of country, in latitude 27 degrees 35' 34", and found a shallow well, at which we encamped on the evening of August 11th. In sixty miles farther, going nearly east by north, the nature of the country entirely altered; the scrubs fell off, and an open stony country, having low, flat-topped ridges or table-lands, succeeded. This was a sure indication of our near approach to the Telegraph Line, as it is through a region of that kind, that the line runs in this latitude. I turned more northerly for a waterhole in the Alberga, called Appatinna, but we found it quite dry. There were two decrepit old native women, probably left there to starve and die by their tribe. I gave them some food and water, but they were almost too far gone to eat. From thence, travelling south-easterly, we came upon the Neale's River, in forty miles. At twenty miles farther down the Neale's, which was quite dry as far as we travelled on it, going easterly, we arrived at Mount O'Halloran, a low hill round whose base the Trans-Continental Telegraph Line and road sweeps, at what is called the Angle Pole, sixty miles from the Peake Telegraph Station. We were very short of water, and could not find any, the country being in a very dry state.

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