“I’m white fellow’s boy,” explains Billy, sitting down on a boulder in order to show his faith in the miner’s good sense, and also to give that dangerously excited old individual a chance to examine him and cool down. “I’m white fellow’s boy, and I see black fellow coming after you. They make a circle to catch you. See, I have swum the lake to bring to you this news. I was hidden when I saw them first. They will try to get me now as well as you; you must let me go with you.”
“Where’s your boss?” asks the old miner, glancing round on all sides for any signs of approaching foes.
“My boss is dead. His name was Dr. Dyesart, Dyesart the explorer. Perhaps you’ve heard of him? But you had better clear before the Kurra (vermin) reach us.”
The old “hatter’s” eyes gleam suspiciously at Billy as he speaks again.
“Yer may be a good nigger. But yer too durned well spoken fur a nigger fur my thinkin’. I knew Dyesart once, and I’ll soon find out if ye’re trying ter fool me. But here, take the pick an’ dish, and go on ahead of me down past the rock there.”
Billy picks up the utensils mentioned, and, summoning up all the remainder of his strength, totters along the bed of the stream in the direction indicated by the skinny finger of the dirty old solitary, who comes shuffling along after him.
The part of the ravine the two men are now entering is even wilder than that where they first became acquainted with each other. The ground sinks rapidly, as the increasing noisiness of the brawling streamlet indicates, as it leaps from rock to rock on its way, as if rejoicing upon its approach to freedom and the sea. Some way down the gorge, the steamy haze of a cataract climbs up the cliff sides and blots out further view in that direction, and the soft thunderings of falling waters come up the gully at intervals, as the evening breeze begins to stir the topmost branches of the stately trees.
Great black cliffs tower skywards on the left-hand side, and their grim fronts yawn with numerous caves, the cold husks of what were once enormous air-bubbles in that awful flood of molten rock that in the far-off past poured down these mountain slopes from the Bellenden Ker group of ancient volcanoes.
A few more words have passed between Billy and the ancient “hatter,” which have apparently fairly satisfied the latter as to the goodness of the dark-skinned younger man, when the clamour of shouting voices behind them makes both turn round.
The sight that meets their eyes is by no means a pleasant one. Halfway down a part of the cliffs that the two men had passed only a minute or so before, a party of natives has just arrived, all of them naked, and carrying long spears, probably with the intention of cutting off the old digger’s escape down the gully. These sable hunters, seeing that their quarry has, for the time, escaped them, are shouting to their friends up the gorge to join them, for a fresh effort to surround the object of their hatred and suspicion.