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Updated: May 3, 2025
Nor did we know how long our imprisonment was likely to last. Our poor dog, too, was terribly frightened, and sat whining and trembling in a most pitiable way in spite of reassuring words and caresses from Yamba and myself. I confess that I was very much alarmed, for the monsters would occasionally emit a most peculiar and terrifying sound not unlike the roar of a lion.
As I write these humble lines, so lacking in literary grace, I fancy I can see him lying by my side in that glaring, illimitable wilderness, his poor, dry tongue lolling out, and his piteous brown eyes fixed upon me with an expression of mute appeal that added to my agony. The only thing that kept him from collapsing altogether was the blood of some animal which Yamba might succeed in killing.
She would then climb up like a monkey, and return to the ground with a good-sized opossum, which would be roasted in its skin, with many different varieties of delicious roots. When I had quite recovered, Yamba told me she had walked many miles during the night, and had finally discovered a water-hole in a new country, for which she said we must make as soon as I was sufficiently strong.
Immediately, and by a kind of instinct, it occurred to me that I might make use of this oil as yet another means of impressing the blacks with my magical powers. I told no one of my discovery not even Yamba. First of all I constructed a sort of raft from the branches of trees, thoroughly saturating each branch with the oil.
Steadily and rapidly this great mysterious wave swept along towards us; and seeing that I was both puzzled and alarmed, Yamba gave me to understand that we should presently be surrounded by myriads of rats, stretching away in every direction like a living sea.
The banks narrowed as the rapids were reached, with the result that the water in the middle actually became convex, so tremendous was the rush in that narrow gorge. Yamba cried out to me to lie flat on the catamaran, and hold on as tightly as I could until we reached smooth water again. This she did herself, seizing hold of the dog also.
Utterly at a loss to account for this strange occurrence, and fearing that some danger threatened us, Yamba and I covered in the front of the shelter, and then quietly retired into the bush, where we lay hidden without a fire until morning. When we returned to our shelter it was broad daylight, and, as we half expected, we found three formidable spears buried in the sides of our little hut.
He had travelled to all the strange places of the North, and claimed to have stood on the shores of that half-mythical lake of Yamba Tooh. "It was snowing at the time," he said prosaically; "and I couldn't see anything, except that I'd have to bear to the east to get away from open water. Maybe she wasn't the lake. The Injins said she was, but I was too almighty shy of grub to bother with lakes."
After having remained a fortnight at Port Essington itself, we returned to Raffles Bay, where Yamba and I made a camp among the blacks and took up our residence among them; for Captain Davis had told me that ships called there occasionally, and it was possible that one might call soon from Port Darwin. The vessels, he added, came for buffalo meat of which more hereafter.
All to no purpose, however; and for several days I was even unable to recognise my Yamba. Then the fever subsided somewhat, and I was left as weak and helpless as a little child. It was some time before I quite recovered from the fever; and I was frequently seized with distressing fits of shivering. I also experienced an overwhelming desire for a drink of milk; why, I am unable to say.
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