"Perhaps it is all for the best, sad as it seems," said Morton. "Those six devils could not keep their lust for murder under, and but for this row we might not have run across them. Then they would have gone to the lake again and finished their villainous work."
"I wonder where they got their weapons from."
"There must have been some left in the bottle tree camp in the basalt. We did not look about much, if you remember."
"Well, that's the end of it all, I suppose."
"Unless somebody comes across Lee-lee's brothers or sisters amongst the tribe to the north."
The party perforce had now to remain where they were until Billy was able to ride again, and a dull time it was. A trip to the hot swamp showed them that, during their absence at the lake, the water had subsided and the swamp become so dry that the fire had ravaged it, burning the ragged, inflammable bark of the trees, and licking up the reeds surrounding the lakelet, which was now but a surface of cracked mud.
"There is one question that always worries me," said Brown, as they came to the spot where the Warlatta track led into the basalt rocks. "Do you think that Murphy was compelled to join in their cannibal feasts?"
"I have thought of it too," replied Morton, "and have come to the conclusion that he was not. At least, while he retained his reason. When we saw him, you know, he was nearly blind, and his mental faculties almost gone. My reason for this is the anchor we found cut on the tree at the lagoons; I daresay there were more, and there were numberless marks of the others. There was an ample game supply up and down that creek, and I believe he spent most of his time there hunting, until he became too infirm to leave the cave."
"I am glad you think that, as I am of the same belief. I think any white man, no matter how slow his intellect, would prefer death."
"Still, cases have been known where men have been maddened by starvation in an open boat at sea; but in this case he would not have been desperate with hunger. No, I think, and am glad to think, that he had no part in their evil doings or rites until he was irresponsible for his actions."