We could do nothing but watch, expecting the black every moment to return and report.
But five minutes’, ten minutes’ anxiety ensued before we heard a shout right before us, followed by a rush, and as we realised that the black had come back past us so that he might make a circuit and get round the enemy, there was a rush, and away bounding lightly over the tops of the bushes went a little pack of a small kind of kangaroo.
It was a matter of moments; the frightened animals, taking flying leaps till out of sight, and Jimmy appeared, running up panting, to look eagerly round.
“Whar a big wallaby?” he cried. “No shoot? No killum? Eh? Jimmy killum one big small ole man!”
He trotted back as he spoke, and returned in triumph bearing one of the creatures, about equal in size to a small lamb.
This was quickly dressed by the black, and secured hanging in a tree, for the doctor would not listen to Jimmy’s suggestion that we should stop and “boil um in black fellow’s pot all like muttons;” and then we continued our climb till we had won to a magnificent position on the shoulder of the mountain for making a careful inspection of the country now seeming to lie stretched out at our feet.
A more glorious sight I never saw. Green everywhere, wave upon wave of verdure lit up by the sunshine and darkening in shadow. Mountains were in the distance, and sometimes we caught the glint of water; but sweep the prospect as we would in every direction with the glass it was always the same, and the doctor looked at me at last and shook his head.
“Joe,” he said at last, “our plan appeared to be very good when we proposed it, but it seems to me that we are going wrong. If we are to find your father, whom we believe to be a prisoner—”
“Who is a prisoner!” I said emphatically.
“Why do you say that?” he cried sharply, searching me with his eyes.