They ate their unpalatable meal without much further remark. Then Bob, who had been pondering deeply over the events of the last twenty-four hours, showed the trend of his thoughts by asking quietly if any of the aboriginal tribes had been known to use bows and arrows.
"I never saw, nor heard tell o' such a thing before," grunted Emu Bill.
"In that case," said Bob, "these natives show that they have originated that custom here, or have retained it from an earlier period, before the blacks began to degenerate; and, in either case, it proves them to be an exceptional lot altogether."
"That's just what's bothering me, Bob," admitted Mackay. "We might well tackle an ordinary tribe, even though we only numbered five against fifty, but wi' these beggars here, I'll allow we seem to be embarking on a job that is, to say the least of it, a bit unhealthy. No, no, don't think I'm gettin' nervous, Bill, but we must calculate the chances before we start. Bob counted fifty niggers on the hill this morning, so we've a fair idea o' what we are goin' to run up against."
"Hang it, boss," complained the Shadow; "you doesn't think a crowd o' nigs is goin' to hustle us back now, does ye? If we kin join their happy family in the daytime we'll scatter 'em quick an' lively, but the night gives me the creeps, it does. I can never see the sights o' my rifle in the dark."
"If we were once on the other side of the mountain," said Jack, eagerly, "we could soon shift the blacks; it's the wretched old tunnel that keeps worrying us here."
"Ay, my lad," said Mackay, dryly; "the tunnel is a vera curious construction for a crowd o' aborigines to make, an' the more I think about it, the more puzzled I become. I was going to suggest that Bill an' me should force the passage in the morning, while the three o' you waited out by the camels in case o' accident."
"I'm right wi' you there," cried Emu Bill. "I reckon it ain't safe for these here young 'uns to come along wi' us first——"
A storm of protest greeted his words, and Bob turned to Mackay reproachfully.