e
must be a camp or something."

Peter heard the remark and laughed. "D'you know what that is?" he
asked.

"Why, bushes, of course," replied Sax.

"And what d'you reckon it is?" asked Peter again, turning to Vaughan.

Young Vaughan looked intently at the sand-hill where the smoke was
coming from. He heard a dog bark, and then thought he saw a little
black human figure crawl out of one of the bushes, followed by another
and bigger figure. It was all so far away that he wasn't sure that he
had seen correctly, so he answered with hesitation; "It looks as if
there were people in those bushes. They don't live there, do they,
Peter?"

"They're not bushes," explained the man. "They're what we call
'wurlies'. They're sort of little huts the blacks live in. You'll see
quite enough of them before you've been in this country long, I promise
you."

The boys wanted to go over at once and see, so Peter good-naturedly
went with them.

The wurlies were made from branches pulled from the ragged trees which
grew around, and stuck in the sand with their tops brought together.
This framework was covered with bits of old bag or blanket. The whole
thing was the shape of a pudding-basin turned upside down, and was not
more than three feet high in the middle or four feet wide at the bottom.

"Do they really live in there?" asked Sax.

"Sure thing," said Peter. "They crawl in through that hole and curl
themselves up like dogs."

As he finished speaking, a shaggy head appeared at one of the holes.
The hair was stuck together in greasy plaits and hung down to the man's
shoulders. He looked up at the visitors, half in and half out of the
wurley, and on his hands and knees just like an animal. His face and
body were black and very dirty, and his head and chest were so thickly
covered with hair that the only features which stood out from the
matted tangle were a pair of very bright eyes and a flat, shining nose.

Peter said something which the lads did not understand, and the man
came out and stood upright. He was quite naked and very thin. His
legs seemed to be the same thickness all the way up, and his knees
looked like big swollen knuckles. But his whole appearance gave the
impression that he could move very quickly if he wanted to, with the
graceful speed of a greyhound. The woman and child whom Vaughan had
seen from the distance had run away like startled rabbits as the white
men came up, and the camp of six or sev