ore we reached my home we were
constantly provided with escorts of natives from the various tribes we
met. These people walked along the high banks or disported themselves in
the water like amphibians, greatly to the delight of the girls. We found
the banks of the Ord very thickly populated, and frequently camped at
night with different parties of natives. Among these we actually came
across some I had fought against many months previously.

As we neared my home, some of our escort sent up smoke-signals to
announce our approach--the old and wonderful "Morse code" of long puffs,
short puffs, spiral puffs, and the rest; the variations being produced by
damping down the fire or fires with green boughs. Yamba also sent up
signals. The result was that crowds of my own people came out in their
catamarans to meet us. My reception, in fact, was like that accorded a
successful Roman General. Needless to say, there was a series of huge
_corroborees_ held in our honour. The first thing I was told was that my
hut had been burnt down in my absence (fires are of quite common
occurrence); and so, for the first few days after our arrival, the girls
were housed in a temporary grass shelter, pending the construction of a
substantial hut built of logs. Now, as logs were very unusual building
material, a word of explanation is necessary.

The girls never conquered their fear of the blacks--even _my_ blacks; and
therefore, in order that they might feel secure from night attack (a
purely fanciful idea, of course), I resolved to build a hut which should
be thoroughly spear-proof. Bark was also used extensively, and there was
a thatch of grass. When finished, our new residence consisted of three
fair-sized rooms--one for the girls to sleep in, one for Yamba and
myself, and a third as a general "living room,"--though, of course, we
lived mainly _en plain air_. I also arranged a kind of veranda in front
of the door, and here we frequently sat in the evening, singing, chatting
about distant friends; the times that were, and the times that were to
be.

Let the truth be told. When these poor young ladies came to my hut their
faces expressed their bitter disappointment, and we all wept together the
greater part of the night. Afterwards they said how sorry they were thus
to have given way; and they begged me not to think them ungrateful.
However, they soon resigned themselves to the inevitable, buoyed up by
the inexhaustible optimism