"Then how is we to do it, boss?" inquired Charlie, poising his pick in mid-air. "Does ye think it will come out if we whistle on it?"

I did not; nor to this day have I found how to get that opal out intact. We tried every method that could be devised, but without success, for each time we broke the outer casing the more brittle core was also shattered by the blow. Patiently and laboriously we chipped the ironstone, only to find that the gem was in powder form when we reached it. We then tried roasting the stones, carrying them to a small clump of stunted gidgyas for that purpose; but found then, that although the shell broke with less hammering, the "life" of the opal was destroyed by the heat, and a dull lump of glass-like substance was all our reward.

For two days we wandered among the Ghingi holes trying specimens continually, but with the same results, and at last I was convinced that further work under the circumstances was useless. The horses were now beginning to suffer for want of proper food, and I saw that the water question would also trouble us as soon as the pools formed by the willy-willy shower had evaporated. Cooper's creek as a flowing stream had ceased to exist. Probably its waters, or all that seven years' drought had left of them, had gone to feed that strange tide which ebbs and flows so mysteriously under the heart of the great Lone Land; but in its old channels we saw only dead and dying creatures of the desert, and the banks were simply a nursery for fever germs.

"I reckon we'll have to give it best," at length said Gilgai Charlie, and I could see no alternative.

"If sufficient rain came, we might be able to bring a team out," I said, "and cart a load of boulders back to Eromango. If we could not there get the ironstone dissolved with acid, we could at least send them to Brisbane and get them cut.

"That's all right, boss," spoke George, "but I reckon we might as well look for gold nuggets droppin' from the sky as enough water for a team." And I knew he was right.

"Leichardt's" Tree.
The Last Trace Found of the Great Explorer who Attempted to Cross the Interior and was Never Heard of Again.