At least, that was the arrangement, but Vaughan
found that the drover fell so soundly asleep, and seemed to be so very
tired, that he did not wake him till the morning star was well above
the trees and had turned from fierce red to clear pale silver in a sky
which was rapidly becoming lighter.

CHAPTER VIII

First Sight of the Musgraves

Next day Mick Darby rode with cocked rifle in the lead of the plant.
The white boys were not with him. They rode twenty or thirty yards in
the rear of the mounted blacks, ready to give instant alarm of any
danger. But for nearly a week nothing unusual happened. A few smoke
signals were seen, but were so far away that they seemed to indicate
that the wild blacks had taken warning and were retiring to their bush
fastnesses, having been convinced that it was beyond their power to
trick a watchful white man.

Night after night the horses were hobbled on the best feed that could
be found, and were watched from sunset till dawn. The white boys took
their turn at this work, at first together, but, as night followed
night, and there was no sign of the blacks, Mick allowed them to take
their watches alone. This experience did more than any other to
impress them with Central Australia: its silence, its absolute
loneliness, its vastness and the puny insignificance of man, who dared
to pit his power against it.

As hour after hour went by, and Sax or Vaughan rode round the horses or
squatted on the ground with the quietly breathing saddle-horse standing
near, these lads were slowly but surely changed from school-boys to
men. They felt that they were face to face with the power of untamed
nature--the desert and the savage inhabitants of it--and that even they
were units in an army of progress which was conquering that nature and
making it minister to the needs of civilized man. Of course, these
were not their actual thoughts, but that was certainly the general
effect which night-watching had upon them.

Six days went by in this way and it appeared as if all danger was past.
The party had been making towards a low range of hills on the western
horizon, and on the seventh day the plant passed up a little valley and
halted on the top for midday camp.

Through the clean sun-filled air of Central Australia the view was so
clear that all sense of distance was lost, and objects many days away
seemed no farther off than a few hours' ride. The character of the
country was the same as