"Come on, then, for all you're worth. It's neck or nothing with us now!"
We set off down the angle of the plain as fast as our horses could lay their legs to the ground. It was a near thing, for, hard as we went, we were only just in time to prevent the leaders from plunging into the river. If you know anything of overlanding, you'll understand the work we had. As it was, I don't believe we could have managed it at all if it had not been for the extraneous—or, as I might perhaps say, spiritual—aid we received.
While Spicer took the river side, I worked inland, along the bottom of the cliff, and as the two black boys had bolted for the Homestead long before the cattle broke, we had no one between us to bring up the tail. Suddenly, Heaven alone knows how, the Phantom Stockman came to our assistance; and a more perfect drover could scarcely have been found. He wheeled his cattle and brought up his stragglers, boxed 'em, and headed 'em off, like the oldest hand. But however clever a bushman he may have been, it was plainly his own personality that effected the greatest good; for directly the mob saw him, they turned tail and stampeded back on to the plain like beasts possessed.
At last, however, we got them rounded up together, and then Spicer rode over to where I stood and said,—
"Give an eye to 'em, will you, while I slip back to the camp? I want to get something."
I had not time to protest, for next minute he was gone, and I was left alone with that awful stranger whom I could still see dodging about in the mist. When he got back, Jim reined up alongside me and said,—
"This is getting a little too monotonous to my thinking."
"What are you going to do?" I gasped, my teeth chattering in my head like a pair of castanets.
"Try the effect of this on him," he answered, and as he spoke he pulled a revolver from his pocket. "I don't care if it sends every beast across the river."
At that moment, on his constant round, the phantom came into view again. On either side of him the cattle were sniffing and snorting at him, plainly showing that they were still wild with terror. This behaviour puzzled us completely, for we both knew that a mob would never treat an ordinary flesh-and-blood stockman in that way. When he got within twenty paces of us Spicer cried,—