"Yes, and then go back round by the way Stuart went to the mountain tribe and track up the gold reef."
"Not a bad idea, anyhow. I think it will be the safest way to go home."
That afternoon, Billy, with the aid of one of the old men, found a canoe not far below the surface, and brought it up and bailed it out. Then it transpired that on the last onslaught of the Warlattas they had sunk all the canoes. The one recovered was a large one, fitted up with outriggers, and leaked but very little. Charlie soon improvised a mast by lashing two spears together, and with a blanket for a sail announced himself ready to face the dangers of the deep. Morton agreed to join him in his voyage of discovery round the lake the next morning, but Brown preferred to stay and continue the investigation of the cave drawings.
Next morning there was a gentle breeze blowing, and Morton and Charlie were soon afloat and off. Brown wandered over the hill, telling Billy to try and make the blacks understand the catastrophe of the burning mountain.
Several lesser caves attracted his attention, but only one seemed to promise any result. To this one he devoted himself, and after some trouble found some inscriptions resembling the former one in character, but differing in the arrangement of the letters. In this case they were placed perpendicularly in two parallel lines.
After copying the inscription, Brown stood in thought for some time, mechanically thrusting a yam stick he held in his hand into the sandy floor of the cave. The soil over the bed rock in this cave was apparently only a few inches in depth, but suddenly he was roused from his reverie by the yam stick going down more than a foot without meeting with any opposition. Sounding hastily, he soon found that a trench extended at right angles to the rock, immediately under the inscription. Going outside he shouted loudly, and Billy and some of the blacks came running up. He set them to work to clear all the sand away from the trench and its neighbourhood with their hands, and it was soon visible artificially cut in the rock. It was about three feet long and a foot broad, so the work of clearing it out did not promise to take long.
With so many hands going, the depth of three feet was soon reached without anything being discovered; then the fingers of the workers came in contact with something hard, and very soon a sheet of metal was disclosed, cut exactly to fit the hole. Brown at once recognized it as resembling the gongs used at the burning mountain. Greatly excited, in spite of his usual assumption of calmness, Brown inserted the point of the yam stick under the metal and prised it up.
CHAPTER XIX.
The Grave of one of the Unknown Race—Morton's Departure—Charlie falls Sick.