lowly
withdrawing my right hand from the sextant, I took hold of my rifle
which lay close alongside. A second of time was of the greatest
importance, for the enemy were all ranged, and just ready balancing
their spears, and in another instant there would have been a hundred
spears thrown into the camp. I suddenly put down the sextant, and
having the rifle almost in position, I grabbed it suddenly with my
left hand and fired into the thickest mob, whereupon a horrible
howling filled the midnight air. Seizing Verney's rifle that was close
by, I fired it and dispersed the foe. All the party were lying fast
asleep on the tarpaulin, but my two shots quickly awoke them. I made
them watch in turns till morning, with orders to fire two rifle
cartridges every half hour, and the agony of suspense in waiting to
hear these go off, kept me awake the whole night, like Carlyle and his
neighbours' fowls.

Our foes did not again appear. At the first dawn of light, over at
some rocky hills south-westward, where, during the night, we saw their
camp fires, a direful moaning chant arose. It was wafted on the hot
morning air across the valley, echoed again by the rocks and hills
above us, and was the most dreadful sound I think I ever heard; it was
no doubt a death-wail. From their camp up in the rocks, the chanters
descended to the lower ground, and seemed to be performing a funereal
march all round the central mass, as the last tones we heard were from
behind the hills, where it first arose.

To resume: we left the almost exhausted channel of the Ferdinand, and
pushed on for the Telegraph Line. In the sandhills and scrub we came
upon an open bit of country, in latitude 27 degrees 35' 34", and found
a shallow well, at which we encamped on the evening of August 11th. In
sixty miles farther, going nearly east by north, the nature of the
country entirely altered; the scrubs fell off, and an open stony
country, having low, flat-topped ridges or table-lands, succeeded.
This was a sure indication of our near approach to the Telegraph Line,
as it is through a region of that kind, that the line runs in this
latitude. I turned more northerly for a waterhole in the Alberga,
called Appatinna, but we found it quite dry. There were two decrepit
old native women, probably left there to starve and die by their
tribe. I gave them some food and water, but they were almost too far
gone to eat. From thence, travelling south-easterly, we came upon the
Neale