explicable contrasts that give stress to silence.

Anxious to escape thoughts so little comprehended, King hurried on, and
essayed a feeble 'cooee' when a few yards from the sleeper. No answering
sound or gesture greeted him.

Wills had fallen peacefully asleep for ever.

Footprints on the sand showed that the blacks had already been there,
and after King had buried the corpse with sand and rushes as well as he
was able, he started to follow their tracks.

Feeling desperately lonely and ill, he went on, and as he went he shot
some more crows. The blacks, hearing the report of the gun, came to meet
him, and taking him to their camp gave him food.

The next day they talked to him by signs, putting one finger in the
ground and covering it with sand, at the same time pointing up the
Creek, saying 'White fellow.'

By this they meant that one white man was dead.

King, by putting two fingers in the sand and covering them, made them
understand that his second companion was also dead.

Finding he was now quite alone, they seemed very sorry for him, and gave
him plenty to eat. However, in a few days they became tired of him, and
by signs told him they meant to go up the Creek, pointing in the
opposite direction to show that that must be his way. But when he shot
some more crows for them they were very pleased. One woman to whom he
gave a part of a crow gave him a ball of nardoo, and, showing him a
wound on her arm, intimated that she would give him more, but she was
unable to pound it. When King saw the wound he boiled some water in his
billy and bathed it. While the whole tribe sat round, watching and
yabbering excitedly, he touched it with some lunar caustic; she shrieked
and ran off, crying 'mokow! mokow!' (fire! fire!) She was, however, very
grateful for his kindness, and from that time she and her husband
provided him with food.

* * * * *

About two months later the relief party reached the depot, where they
found the letters and journals the explorers had placed in the cache.
They at once set off down the Creek, in the hope still of finding Burke
and Wills. They met a black who directed them to the native camp. Here
they found King sitting alone in the mia-mia the natives had made for
him, wasted and worn to a shadow, almost imbecile from the terrible
hardships he had suffered.

He turned his hopeless face upon the new-comers, staring vacantly at
them, muttering indistinctly wor