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.