o round
the sandy spit before we could head towards the rock, and nearly got on
shore in trying to make too close a shave. We could hear the crack of
the pilot's carbine every few minutes, borne down to us by the
freshening breeze, and the agonising "coo-ehs" of poor Wordsworth,
whose ankles were already hidden by the advancing waters; added to
this, we had only two oars, and the wind, now pretty strong, was dead
in our teeth. I was steering, and Jim was standing up in the bows with
his carbine for a shot, if the shark offered such an opportunity. As
we neared the rock we could distinctly see the black fin within six
feet of the narrow ledge on which the poor fellow was standing, and
only when we approached to within a couple of boats' lengths, did the
ferocious brute sail sullenly out to sea, pursued by a harmless bullet
from Jim's rifle. Poor Wordsworth dropped into the boat fainting from
terror, exhaustion, and loss of blood, for, although he was unconscious
of it all the time, in his convulsive grip, the sharp oyster-shells had
cut his hands to the very bone. A good glass of grog and some hot
tea--the bushman's infallible remedy--soon brought him round, but the
scars on his hands and knees will accompany him to his grave. He
afterwards described the glances that the shark threw at him as
perfectly diabolical, and confessed that he it not been for the cheery
hails of the pilot, he should most certainly have relinquished his
hold, and met with a death too horrible to contemplate.

It was now about three o'clock in the afternoon, and the boat being
launched, we resolved to reach Gould Island before dark. The tent was
soon struck, the provisions stowed away, the priming of the carbines
looked to afresh, and in a few minutes we were sweeping across the
small belt of water that separated the two islands. We approached the
shore with caution, for, as I mentioned before, the sides of Gould
Island are everywhere very steep, and hostile blacks, by simply
dislodging some of the loose masses of rock, could easily have smashed
the boat and its crew to pieces without exposing themselves to the
slightest danger. Noiselessly, and with every faculty painfully alert,
we closed the land, sprang on to the rocks, and at once set about the
tedious task of breasting the hill. Hill climbing, under the vertical
sun of North Australia, is by no means an enjoyable undertaking, more
particularly when the loose shale and rock gives way