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It went to the tip-top, about forty feet or fifty feet from the ground. I fired, but the range was too long for my shot and ball gun. The firing frightened the panther, which fell in descending when some fifteen feet from the ground. We all tracked on, hoping to get a chance of a further shot. At last we came to a deep and thickly wooded nala, or watercourse, which curved like a horseshoe.
Scarcely were they enjoying the cool rest the water gave their hot, tired limbs, when they were seized and swallowed by two kurreahs. Having swallowed the girls, the kurreahs dived into an opening in the side of the spring, which was the entrance to an underground watercourse leading to the Narran River.
They had started in the grey dawn, passed up a dry watercourse, and proceeded where the vine was queen and there fell a scented filigree of dead blossom from flowering olives.
They could spare their hundred thousand soldiers twice or thrice over, and not miss them; their masses filled the bottoms of the ravines and hollow ways, impeding the traveller as he rode forward on his journey, and trampled by thousands under his horse-hoofs. In vain was all this overthrow and waste by the road-side; in vain their loss in river, pool, and watercourse.
A few miles farther on lay a broad watercourse, dry in the main, but with the centre channel too deep to negotiate, so there was nothing to be done without the help of the artillery horses. The Turks were shelling the vicinity of the crossing, so we drew back a short distance and sent word that we were held up waiting for assistance to get us over.
The camp was pitched at a point where it widened out until there was fully a hundred yards of it between the two stretches of water to right and left, while on the right hand, or northern side of this wide space, the canal-like watercourse had given place to a sort of lagoon, nearly a mile long by about half that width.
This, as described by Wells, is a flat, shallow, and, in places, but ill-defined watercourse. In it are one or two good deep pools, of which one is probably permanent. Fringing the banks is a narrow strip of salt-bush and grass; beyond that mulga and coarse grass. This narrow belt of good country continues down to the lake, and as we saw it just after the rain looked fresh and green.
His searching gaze was taking in every detail of the defences he had set up across the water. When he finally turned it was to observe the watercourse cascading down a great rift in the walls of the gorge. "Guess this is the weak link, Bill," he said. "It's a way down to the water's edge. The only way down in a stretch of two miles on this side. And it's plumb in front of us."
At least we have plenty of material, if we can only use it. Come, then, and, having exhausted the Palmer, let us see what the Dunlop with the patched cover has to offer us." We picked up the track and followed it onwards for some distance; but soon the moor rose into a long, heather-tufted curve, and we left the watercourse behind us. No further help from tracks could be hoped for.
The country travelled through to-day is bad red sandy light soil, covered with spinifex, slightly undulating, and having iron gravel upon it. Scarcely a blade of grass to be seen. Some gum-trees, and a low scrub of different sorts. I seem to have got to the south of the dense forest, but into a poorer country. Not a drop of water or a watercourse have we seen since we left Tomkinson Creek.
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