CHAPTER II.
A Native Cemetery—Billy's Explanation—Stopped once more by Dense Scrub—Discovery of a Strange Road.
As the party emerged, one after another, from the scrub, their eyes were delighted by a prospect of open-downs country before them, dotted here and there with clumps of gum-trees. But, better than all, there was plainly to be seen, scarcely a short mile away, a line of gum-trees, creek timber, whilst the presence of water was plainly attested by flights of white corellas hovering about.
It was not long before the whole party were comfortably encamped beside a good-sized waterhole, and the horses luxuriating on succulent Mitchell and blue grass.
Brown, with his pipe as usual under full blast, was enjoying the scene, when Billy, who had been wandering around the camp, came up and remarked:
"No sleep here."
"What's the matter?" asked Brown.
Billy pointed to a patch of scrub a short distance off, and beckoned to him to follow.
Brown noticed that the tops of the trees looked particularly thick and dense, but it was not until he was quite close that he saw the reason. Nearly every tree of any size bore a rude scaffolding, and on the top of every scaffold lay either a bleached skeleton or a dried mummy-like corpse. The ground, too, was covered with bones and skulls that had fallen through. Brown called the others, and they gazed with awe at this strange sepulchre.
"I've often seen the bodies put in trees, but never in such numbers as this. Why, there must be hundreds here!" said Morton.
"I never saw more than two together at the outside," returned Brown. "Strange," he went on, after a closer inspection; "all the bodies who have any dried skin remaining on their foreheads have a red smudge there!"
"No sleep here; by and by that fellow get up, walk about," insisted Billy.
This remark helped to dispel the gloom caused by the sight of so many dead bodies, and Billy had to undergo a good deal of chaff. It was evident, however, that his fright was genuine, although, like most natives, the reason of it could not be drawn from him.
No ghostly visitants came near the camp that night, and all slept the sleep of tired men.
Charlie, waking up before daylight and finding Billy in the sound stupor common to the aborigines at that hour, conceived a wicked idea. Brown dabbled a little in sketching, and Charlie, after hunting up the colour-box in one of the pack-bags, proceeded to paint Billy's forehead red, after the manner of the mummies in the tree-tops.
"Hallo, Billy!" said Morton, when they were all about and the quart-pots for breakfast merrily boiling. "What's up with your head?"
Billy grinned, not understanding what was meant.
"Look here," said Brown, taking a hand-glass out of the pack and holding it in front of his face. Billy looked, and turned as white as it was possible for a blackfellow to do.
"Him bin come up!" he yelled, starting up and pointing to the scrub where the bodies were. Then looked apprehensively around, as though he expected to see some belated corpse still walking about.
"Tell him you did it, Charlie," said Morton. "I'm afraid you've funked him, and if so he'll bolt. Never play tricks on a blackfellow."
Charlie at once complied, and after Billy had been induced to wash the paint off and had inspected the colour-box, he was somewhat comforted; but he evidently still thought that the subject was not a fit one to joke about.
Struck by Billy's evident panic, Morton again attempted to extract the reason from him, and after some trouble learned that he had heard of the men with a red smear on the forehead, who were supposed to be in some way connected with the burning mountain. That, during the day-time, they pretended to be dead, but at night got up and walked about.
"This looks as though we were on the right track," said Morton to Brown.
"Hum! Nice sort of company you are introducing us to. However—Death or glory! Let's saddle up and make a start."
In a short time the friendly water-hole and the ghastly scrub beside it were left behind, but the patch of open country unfortunately proved to be of very limited extent in the direction they were going, and in a short time they found themselves again entangled in the dense scrub, which was now becoming such a formidable obstacle to their progress. Towards the middle of the day, the sanguine Morton began to despair of pushing on, even at the slow rate at which they were going, and to meditate a return to their last night's camp and a fresh start in a new direction. At noon they were compelled to halt; the desert hedge-wood had now made its appearance, and the barrier presented by it was almost impenetrable.
They stopped for a hasty meal, and when it was finished, Morton said to Brown:
"What do you say, old man? Will you go north for a bit, and I will go south, and we'll see if there is anything like a gap in this confounded scrub?"
"My dear old boy I am entirely at your disposal. But allow me to suggest that we shall get along infinitely better on foot."
"I think so too. Charlie, you and Billy stop here with the horses until we come back."
It was a good two hours before the cracking of branches and muttered bad language, coming from the south, announced to Charlie and Billy the return of Morton.
"How did you get on?" was the query.
"Get on!" returned Morton savagely; "I did not get on at all. I don't believe I got half a mile from here. It's the worst old-man scrub I was ever in in my life; I've barked my hands nicely. If old Brown did not get on any better than I did, we shall have to go and chop him out with an axe."
Almost as he spoke, Billy held up his hand and said:
"Mitter Brown come up."
In a few minutes his tall form emerged from the thicket.
"I beg to report, sir," he said to Morton with mock solemnity, "that the main road to somewhere is about three-quarters of a mile to the northward."
"What on earth do you mean, old man?"
"Just what I say. After fighting my way through some of the most awful scrub I ever met with, I came to a fine clear road—gas-lamps, milestones, and probably bridges and public-houses."
"Well, we'd better go there at once. I wonder you came back without patronizing one of the pubs."
"I did not exactly see all that I have stated, but I have no doubt whatever of their existence," returned Brown. "Joking apart, there really is a cleared track out there, but we'll have to cut a road to get the horses there."
"This bangs everything into a dust-heap. But it's getting late and we had better shape. Charlie, you and Billy go ahead with the tomahawks, and we will dodge the horses along after you."
It took time, labour, and patience to make the distance indicated by Brown; but about an hour before sundown, to the astonishment of three of them, they stood upon what was evidently a cleared track, about the width of an ordinary bridle-track. Morton examined the stumps, and pointed out that the work had been done by stone tomahawks. Billy looked for tracks, but none had been made since the rain from the last thunder-storm had fallen.
"It's running westward. I suppose it's all right to follow it, but this sort of thing beats my experience. What say you, Brown?" asked Morton.
"Forward, gentlemen, while the light lasts," was the reply of that individual.
Their progress was now easy, for the track had been most carefully cleared, and the horses, all old stagers, marched along in single file without any trouble. Darkness, however, fell, and the scrub was still on either hand of them unchanged.
"Morton," said Brown, breaking the silence, "I've got an idea."
"Stick to it hard, old man; it's the first I ever knew you to possess."
"Don't try to be too funny. Well, I shouldn't be in the least surprised to meet a first-class funeral coming along at any moment."
"You're worse than Billy."
"Billy was partly right. Those old mummies, skeletons, &c., we saw back there, have all been carted along this road from—wherever we're going to. That is the reason it is so carefully cleared."
"Jove! you're right. And we might have come along this road all the way if we had kept our eyes open, instead of tearing ourselves to pieces in the scrub, travelling parallel with it."
"That view of the question did not occur to me, but it's a perfectly feasible one."
"Rather a surprise for the mourners if we blunder on to them in the dark to-night."
"Just what we want to avoid. There's something ahead no white man has yet heard of, and if we can sneak along without our presence being suspected, so much the better."
"What do you propose? We can't budge a step off the track just now, and if unluckily there happens to be a funeral ceremony on to-night, there's bound to be a collision."
"We must go on until we come to a piece of open country, and then pull off and wait for daylight."
"All serene. But our tracks will tell tales."
"We can't help that, unfortunately."
The conversation had been carried on without halting, and the march now continued in silence, until a low whistle from Morton gave the signal to pull up.