Charlie, waking up before daylight and finding Billy in the sound stupor common to the aborigines at that hour, conceived a wicked idea. Brown dabbled a little in sketching, and Charlie, after hunting up the colour-box in one of the pack-bags, proceeded to paint Billy's forehead red, after the manner of the mummies in the tree-tops.
"Hallo, Billy!" said Morton, when they were all about and the quart-pots for breakfast merrily boiling. "What's up with your head?"
Billy grinned, not understanding what was meant.
"Look here," said Brown, taking a hand-glass out of the pack and holding it in front of his face. Billy looked, and turned as white as it was possible for a blackfellow to do.
"Him bin come up!" he yelled, starting up and pointing to the scrub where the bodies were. Then looked apprehensively around, as though he expected to see some belated corpse still walking about.
"Tell him you did it, Charlie," said Morton. "I'm afraid you've funked him, and if so he'll bolt. Never play tricks on a blackfellow."
Charlie at once complied, and after Billy had been induced to wash the paint off and had inspected the colour-box, he was somewhat comforted; but he evidently still thought that the subject was not a fit one to joke about.
Struck by Billy's evident panic, Morton again attempted to extract the reason from him, and after some trouble learned that he had heard of the men with a red smear on the forehead, who were supposed to be in some way connected with the burning mountain. That, during the day-time, they pretended to be dead, but at night got up and walked about.
"This looks as though we were on the right track," said Morton to Brown.
"Hum! Nice sort of company you are introducing us to. However—Death or glory! Let's saddle up and make a start."