Billy commenced a long rambling yarn about waking up to find himself being carried along by a short, hairy man with red eyes; but his tale ended somewhat lamely, for his next remembrance was of finding himself in the familiar family camp, with his mother administering severe slaps with the small end of a nulla-nulla. Still he persisted in his statement that there were Jinkarras, and that they lived underground.
"I shouldn't wonder," suddenly exclaimed Brown, "if this legend of the Jinkarras, which is common all over the central portion of Australia, was not a surviving tradition, much distorted, of our dear old friends the devil worshippers."
"Not at all unlikely. We will run this particular brand of Jinkarra to earth in the morning," answered Morton.
Charlie was out before breakfast to inspect the ground where he had seen the figures in the night; but beyond a few good-sized boulders, which he was certain he had not fired at, he failed to discover any marks of a nocturnal visit.
Morton went out after breakfast, and immediately saw what had caused the alarm. He called Charlie over and pointed the tracks out to him.
"This is a regular pad for the rock-wallabies," he said. "Only it has been covered up by the burnt ashes of the grass. They were coming in last night to feed on the young grass on the bank of the creek, just springing after the rain. I suppose some of them hopped on to these boulders."
This explanation failed to satisfy Billy, who was still convinced that the Jinkarras were about, and was now anxious to get away.
They devoted themselves to finishing the sling for his leg, and made him take a short ride two or three times, to get accustomed to it and find out if it hurt him.
It was with feelings of great thankfulness that they at last got ready to make a final start and leave the place which had grown so wearisome to them. For the sake of making it easy for Billy, they intended to take two days on the journey to the lagoons, so they camped the first night on the creek above what had been the hot swamp.
The next night they reached the familiar camp at the lagoons, and now felt that they were finally on the homeward track. They had made a rude pair of crutches for the black boy, and he was now able to limp about on, what he called, his "waddy-mundoees".