till the end of the
rains, buy fresh horses and provisions, and return and prospect some of
the deep gullies and watercourses at the head of the Batavia River.

Scarcely had they completed the raft, and loaded it with their effects,
when they were rushed by a mob of blacks, and in a few seconds two of
the five were gasping out their lives from spear wounds, and all the
others were wounded. Fortunately for the survivors, Grainger had his
revolver in his belt, and this saved them, for he at once opened fire on
the savages, whilst the other men worked the raft out into the middle
of the stream, where they were out of danger from spears and able to use
their rifles.

After a terrible voyage of three days, and suffering both from their
wounds and the bone-racking agonies of fever, they at last reached the
cattle station, where they were kindly received in the rough, hospitable
fashion common to all pioneers in Australia. But, when at the end of a
month one of Grainger's mates died of his wounds, and the other bade him
goodbye and went off in a pearling lugger to Thursday Island, the leader
sickened of Cape York Peninsula, and turned his face southwards once
more, in the hope that fortune would be more kind to him on the new
rushes at the Cloncurry, seven hundred miles away. From the station
owner he bought six horses, and with but one black-boy for a companion,
started off on his long, long journey through country which for the most
part had not yet been traversed even by the explorer.

Travelling slowly, prospecting as he went, and adding a few ounces of
gold here and there to the little bag he carried in his saddle-pouch,
quite three months passed ere he and the black boy reached the
Cloncurry. Here, however, he found nothing to tempt him--the field
was overcrowded, and every day brought fresh arrivals, and so, after a
week's spell, he once more set out, this time to the eastward towards
the alluvial fields near the Burdekin River, of which he had heard.

It was at the close of a long day's ride over grassless, sun-smitten
country, that he came in sight of Chinkie's Flat, and the welcome green
of the she-oaks fringing Connolly's Creek and soughing to the wind. The
quietness and verdancy of the creek pleased him, and he resolved to have
a long, long spell, and try and get rid of the fever which had again
attacked him and made his life a misery.

Riding up to the hotel he found a party of some twenty or more diggers
wh