“Of course I did,” I replied quietly, though I felt very uncomfortable.
“Thank you!” he said quietly, and then he turned away.
“Black fellow hear powder bang,” said Jimmy, grinning. “Tink um big bunyip. All go way now.”
I turned to him sharply, listening the while.
“Yes: all go ’long. Tink bunyip. Kill um dead. No kill bunyip. Oh no!”
There was the sound of voices, but they were more distant, and then they seemed to come up the rift in quite a broken whisper, and the next moment they had died away.
“Safe, doctor!” I said, and we all breathed more freely than before.
The blacks had gone. Evidently they believed that the occupant of the cave had expired in that final roar, and when we afterwards crept cautiously round after a détour the next morning, it was to find that the place was all open, and for fifty yards round the bushes and tree-ferns torn down and burned.
The night of our escape we hardly turned from our positions, utterly exhausted as we were, and one by one we dropped asleep.
When I woke first it was sometime in the night, and through the trees the great stars were glinting down, and as I lay piecing together the adventures of the past day I once more fell fast asleep to be awakened by Jimmy in the warm sunlight of a glorious morning.