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In such cases, though, when spoken words were unlike those uttered in Yamba's country, we resorted to a wonderful sign- language which appears to be general among the Australian blacks.
Whether I was wounded by the shot, or whether the girls suddenly stood up, causing me to lose my balance and fall on the side of the canoe and cut my thigh, I do not know. At any rate, I crashed heavily overboard in spite of Yamba's desperate attempt to save me.
I instructed her to tell these blacks that I was in great danger, and, therefore, stood in need of a body of warriors, who ought to be sent off immediately to my assistance. They knew me much better than I did them. They had feasted on the whale. As I concluded my message, I looked into Yamba's eyes and told her the case was desperate.
I was a long time before I could even bring myself to be thankful for Yamba's escape, which was no doubt dreadfully ungrateful of me. I can only ask your pity and sympathy in my terrible affliction.
Then, as decay set in, and the body began to crumble away, the friends and chiefs would come and observe certain mystic signs, which were supposed to give information as to what tribe or individual had caused the death of the deceased. It must have been within a month of my landing on Yamba's country, in Cambridge Gulf, that I witnessed my first cannibal feast.
I knew that alone I could not live a day in the awful wilderness through which we were to pass; nor could any solitary white man. By this time, however, I had had innumerable demonstrations of Yamba's almost miraculous powers in the way of providing food and water when, to the ordinary eye, neither was forthcoming.
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