before us, till all at once he uttered an exclamation, and handed the
glass to me.

"See what you make of that spot where there seems to be a mass of rock
rising out of the plain, and a thin thread of flashing water running by
its side. Yonder!" he continued, pointing. "About ten miles away, I
should say."

I took the glass, and after a good deal of difficulty managed to catch
sight of the lump of rock he had pointed out. There was the gleaming
thread of silver, too, with, plainly seen through the clear atmosphere
and gilded by the sun, quite a tiny cloud of vapour slowly rising in the
air.

"Is that another hot spring, doctor?" I said, as I kept my glass fixed
upon the spot; "or--"

"Our blacks' fire," said the doctor. "It might be either; or in
addition it might be a fire lit by enemies, or at all events savages;
but as it is in the direction in which we are expecting to find our
camp, and there seem to be no enemies near, I am in favour of that being
camp. Come: time is slipping by. Let's start downward now."

I nodded and turned to Jack Penny, who all this while had been resting
his back by lying flat upon the ground, and that he was asleep was
proved by the number of ants and other investigating insects which were
making a tour all over his long body; Gyp meanwhile looking on, and
sniffing at anything large, such as a beetle, with the result of chasing
the visitor away.

We roused Jack and started, having to make a detour so as to secure
Jimmy's kangaroo, which he shouldered manfully, for though it offered us
no temptation we knew that it would delight the men in camp.

The descent was much less laborious than the ascent, but it took a long
time, and the sun was fast sinking lower, while as we approached the
plains every few hundred yards seemed to bring us into a warmer stratum
of air, while we kept missing the pleasant breeze of the higher ground.

If we could have made a bee-line right to where the smoke rose the task
would have been comparatively easy, but we had to avoid this chasm, that
piled-up mass of rocks, and, as we went lower, first thorny patches of
scrub impeded our passage, and lower still there was the impenetrable
forest.

I was getting fearfully tired and Jack Penny had for a long time been
perfectly silent, while Jimmy, who was last, took to uttering a low
groan every now and then, at times making it a sigh as he looked
imploringly at me, evidently expecting me to share his hea