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They were the foot-tracks of a ruined monument of dark and painful history. More than this might be said of them. They were the blood-drops of a monstrosity chased from its den and hunted down by the people, who shuddered with horror at its sanguinary record of violence and wrong.
The sandstone slabs of Corncockle, lying in their original place with a dip of about 33 degrees to the westward, and separating with great cleanness and smoothness, present impressions of such liveliness, that there is no possibility of doubt as to their being animal foot-tracks, and those of the tortoise family.
He scaled the rocks like a goatherd, and his foot-tracks in the snow were long, like the route of a giant. The ice could not betray the sureness of his stride; the rare, thin atmosphere was no match for his broad, deep chest. He shouted as he went, and tossed great boulders down the mountain, and urged on his flagging comrade by cheer and taunt and invective.
"Some of these facts," answered George, "are new to me. How do you know that the foot-tracks were made by the prisoner?" Panky brought out his note-book and read the details he had noted. "Did you examine the man's boots?" "One of them, the right foot; this, with the measurements, was quite enough." "Hardly. Please to look at both soles of my own boots; you will find that those tracks were mine.
For above an hour we loitered about the lonely and deserted walks, where already the Emperor's foot-tracks had worn a marked pathway, when we grew weary and were about to return, just as one of the party suggested, half in ridicule of the sanctity of the spot, that we should have a game of leap-frog ere we left it. The idea pleased us and was at once adopted.
We'll tie him on a moose sled, an' you start in an hour, whilst the men are still asleep. I'll break a window out of the wangan, an' on this crust there'll be no foot-tracks. It'll be thought he broke out and ran away an' that'll be his own lookout." His voice became low and husky.
Then, as the hours of the night went by, these two discovered the foot-tracks wherewith we had disturbed the holy desert and they troubled over them and covered them up; and then the wind lay down and the sand rested. Or he will invent some incredible sound that will yet call before us the strange sounds of the night, as when he says, 'sometimes some monster of the river coughed. And how he can play upon our fears with that great gate of his carved from a single ivory tusk dropped by some terrible beast; or with his tribe of wanderers that pass about the city telling one another tales that we know to be terrible from the blanched faces of the listeners though they tell them in an unknown tongue; or with his stone gods of the mountain, for 'when we see rock walking it is terrible' 'rock should not walk in the evening.
At 11.30 descended from the table land, and camped at a gum creek at sundown; the bed the same as the last, and no water. There were numerous native foot-tracks here also. I am sorry I could not reach the range to-night, but we had some very bad ground to travel over, and no water. Wednesday, 25th May, Dry Gum Creek. Examined the creek for water, but found none.
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