which got shorter very very slowly as the
sun rose. With minute care Yarloo examined the marks of the stranger.
At first he was upset to find from the tracks that the man was a wild
Musgrave black, but as soon as he came to the place where the warragul
had set up his spear, he smiled and felt no more anxiety, for it is a
sign of perfect goodwill towards a man to dig a spear in his track.
(To find a spear or a boomerang on your track means that the owner of
them likes you so well that he gives you his weapons, because there is
no need for him to carry them when he meets you.)

As soon as Yarloo knew that the stranger native was friendly, he went
over to the shelter. The two white boys were lying on their backs in
the sand, one of them unconscious and gasping, with his tongue swollen
so much that it was too big for his mouth; the other gasping also, but
still in possession of his senses. Sax's eyes opened, and a glimmer of
intelligence showed in them, but he couldn't speak, and was too weak to
move. Yarloo looked down at them, but particularly at Sax, the son of
his master. Then his glance wandered to the quart-pot, and suddenly
everything else was forgotten.

No prospector who has toiled for years without any luck, and then comes
upon a nugget of gold quite unexpectedly, could have been more glad
than Yarloo was at sight of that little sprig of leaves. He took it up
and looked at it with huge satisfaction. The stem was woody and each
leaf was grey, narrow, and not more than half an inch long. The
peculiarity about them was, however, that each little leaf ended in a
spike. The black-fellow felt the spikes and grinned to feel the pricks
of pain, for the leaves had only recently been pulled from the tree.
Then he dropped his handful of parakelia and grabbed the quart-pot and
started to run, tracking the other native to find the tree from which
that sprig of leaves had been picked.

On the discovery of that tree rested the salvation of the white boys'
lives. It was the famous needle-bush.

CHAPTER XII

The Rescue

Yarloo followed the Musgrave native's tracks for about half a mile in a
nearly south direction, and then came upon a stony plain with a few
large bushes growing at one end of it. He gave a yell of delight.
They were needle-bushes. The party was saved. Here was water, stored
by nature right in the middle of an arid desert.

The trees were all about five or six feet high, though some were m