Their way lay through a less beautiful part of the country than any Jean had seen before. It was a wild and lonely land, close to the edge of the scrub, beyond them only sand and spinifex. A fire had swept over the wood and left the trees gaunt and bare. They waved and tossed their gray branches like demons, and Jean shuddered, as on every side the ghostly trees seemed to hem her in.
They came to a clearing where the trees had been cut down, and these, bleached and white, lay on the ground in a thousand gnarled and twisted shapes, their interlacing branches seeming like writhing serpents. Many of the gum trees had been killed, for the cuts in the bark had been made too deep, and the bark hung down in long strips.
No friendly animals or piping forest songsters chirruped a cheerful welcome to this scene of desolation. Only the solitary "widow bird" hopped about hunting for insects and piping her mournful little note. Then the sound of a curlew, like the gasp of a dying child, came to them through the dawn, as the sun rose, red and pitiless, over the sands. Beyond these were the mountains, rising straight up against the sky. Huge gray boulders made a wall at the base of the ridge and the whole place seemed so strange and eerie that Jean cried out,
"Oh, Kadok, we don't have to cross these sands, do we? I'm afraid."
"No, Missa," said Kadok wearily. His foot was hurting him cruelly and he felt discouraged. "We go another way, all through the wood. Missa not feel 'fraid. Where Missa's Baiame? Take care of black boy, not take care of white child?"
"Yes, indeed He will," said Jean, feeling ashamed that the black boy should preach to her. "But I can't help being afraid. It seems as if we would never get to mother."
"Little Missa get there some day, but Kadok not know how soon. Think best way now to hunt for road and Missa go long quick for herself. Kadok foot not let him go very fast."
"Well, I think I won't," said Jean indignantly. "Do you suppose I'd do that when you have been so good to me? We'll go as slowly as you have to and I'll take care of your foot. I'm terribly hungry, Kadok, can we eat now?"
"Not eat here," said Kadok, who liked the place as little as she did. "Walk little more round edge of sand, there find water-hole in the woods and eat."
So they trudged on in silence for another hour, gradually leaving behind them the sandy scrub and coming to a pleasant wood where a carpet of maiden-hair and coral fern reached knee-deep in tenderest green. Velvet-brown tree ferns rose in the air, wearing a feathery coronet of fronds, and above them grew the sassafras and the myrtle. A thousand sweet scents were wafted through the air and a bubbling stream surprised them by gushing forth from a clump of bushes.