We camped for the night at one extremity of the little bay, while the natives occupied the other, in which there was a well sunk, where we supplied ourselves with fresh water. We soon became on friendly terms with our wild neighbours, but took care never to linger amongst them singly, and always had our weapons ready for immediate use.
In the evening Lizzie came over from the blacks' camp, where she had been holding a great palaver, and asked us if we should like to see a "corroborrie," or dance; and much pleased at getting a glimpse of the native customs, and glad of anything to break the monotony of our lives, we followed her to the group of palms, and there took up our positions to watch the proceedings. A tremendous fire was soon flaming on the beach, near it the gins and piccaninnies assembled, with bits of stick, clubs, and calabashes, on which to beat time. Some thirty of the men then stood up, armed with spears, tomahawks, nullah-nullahs (war-clubs), and boomerangs, and commenced a series of ludicrous antics, to a most melancholy dirge chanted by the women, a kind of rude time being observed. Gradually, however, they grew excited, and worked themselves up by going through a sort of mock fight; and when at the last the women danced round them with torches, all howling and shrieking at the top of their voices, and banging the calabashes with kangaroo bones or anything that would add to the noise, the whole scene reminded one of the infernal regions broken loose. This lasted an hour, at the end of which time we withdrew, after expressing ourselves highly gratified, and the whole camp was shortly buried in repose. We kept double sentries, but we might all have gone to sleep, for there was no symptom of treachery. At daylight we had breakfast; gave the warriors and gins a few trifling things we could spare, such as knives, two or three blankets—for we hoped to reach the township that night—and, wonder of wonders to the savages, some matches (nearly all of which they expended in verifying the fact that they would go off), and then took our departure from the "bora ground," guided by a native, who showed a very short way, unknown to Lizzie, by which we arrived at the 'Daylight' early in the afternoon, to find that the latter had been joined by the 'Black Prince', the steamer that had brought up the Cleveland Bay party. We quitted in our little craft for Cardwell, and the Townsville men went south in their steamer, intending to get some shooting at the Palm Islands before going home for good. Eleven o'clock that evening saw us at our township, fully determined to carry out the work thoroughly by searching the Macalister River, an account of which I hope to give in a future chapter.
AN AUSTRALIAN SEARCH PARTY—V.
BY CHAS H. EDEN.
HOW WE EXPLORED THE MACALISTER RIVER.
The reader who has been good enough to follow me so far, will see that hitherto our efforts had been unattended with the slightest success, and that the fate of the missing schooner and her living freight still remained buried in the deepest mystery. To say that we were not disheartened by our numerous disappointments would be untrue, for we well knew that each closing day rendered our chances of affording relief to the survivors more and more difficult; so much so, in fact, that at the council assembled to discuss the matter in the large dining-room of the hotel, several voices urged the expediency of abandoning any further attempts. Much valuable time, they remarked, had been already expended by men to whom time represented money, nay more—the means of living. Their own avocations imperiously demanded their presence, and although they were the last men in the world to desert their fellow-beings in extremity, still, in a country where every man lived by the sweat of his own brow, self-interest could not be entirely sacrificed.
[ILLUSTRATION—AUSTRALIANS IN CAMP.]
Even we, who were most anxious to organise another expedition, could not but acknowledge that the searchers had much justice on their side; but when we were discussing matters in rather a despondent tone, a new ally came to the front in the person of Jack Clarke, the horse-breaker.
"Where do you propose going next?" he asked Dunmore.
"We must search the ranges at the back of the township first, and another party must go up the Macalister River," was the reply.