s' part. At last he came upon a bullock
which was tottering along, hardly able to keep on its feet. It tried
to dash away when it saw the mounted men, but the effort was too much
for it. It fell over, tried to get up but couldn't, and lay in the
sand, panting and moaning with pain.

The point of a spear was sticking in its side just behind the
shoulder-blade.

Yarloo pulled it out and looked at it. The shaft, which had broken off
about a foot from the end was made of lance-wood. The head of the
spear was broad and flat, and was made of red mulga, a hard, tough,
poisonous wood. It was bound to the shaft with kangaroo sinews and
spinifex gum in such a way that the black-boy had no hesitation in
pointing to the mountain range to the left of them. "Musgrave
black-fella," he said. "Me know um this one."

Stobart left the cattle which they had collected in charge of Yarloo
and galloped ahead. He met other cattle, dead or dying, but was not
prepared for what he saw when he topped the rise just above the
water-hole where the camp had been.

A crowd of about fifty blacks squatted round a fire. Their naked
bodies were smeared with red ochre and clay in fantastic designs, and
many of them had feathers or grass or the claws of large birds in their
bunched-up hair. Great bleeding chunks of meat and entrails were
smoking and sizzling in the fire, and all around them were the
carcasses of dead cattle. It seemed incredible that fifty men armed
only with boomerangs and wooden spears should have been able to commit
such a slaughter. The white man took all this in at a glance, and then
his face hardened and he knew that he was nearer death than he had ever
been before, for a little distance away were the bodies of six clothed
black-boys and a white man, laid out in a row. The sun beat down
pitilessly on that terrible scene, but not one of the seven put his
hand up to drive away the flies or to protect his head from the glare.
They were dead!

The feasting natives saw him at once and rose to their feet with a
yell. Stobart did not ride away. Such an act of fear would have made
his death sure, and probably more hideous than it would be if he faced
those shouting, dancing, gesticulating fiends.

He took a fresh grip of the reins and urged his unwilling horse to go
down the hill to meet the blacks. This act of courageous audacity
checked them for a moment. They collected in a bunch and yabbered
excitedly. Stobart un