The impetuosity of Jack was fast gaining converts, when Cato pulled Dunmore quietly by the sleeve, and said —­

“Marmy, baal you take ’em yarroman like ’it Hinchinbrook; my word, plenty of alligator sit down along of water.  He been parter that fellow like ’it damper.”

“By Jove!  Cato’s right,” said Dunmore; “we forget about the alligators and sharks.  I won’t let the boys take their horses, and shall not take my own.  I lost one horse from an alligator last year, on the Pioneer River, and Government wanted to make me pay for it, and I’ll take care I don’t risk losing ‘three’.  Bring Gossamer, if you like, Clark, but, take my word for it, you’ll never see her again.”

This unexpected contingency; the prophesied fate of Gossamer, which was as the apple of Jack’s eye; and the point-blank and sensible refusal of Dunmore to hazard the Government horses, completely turned the tables.  After a little inward grumbling, Jack consoled himself, saying —­

“Well, at all events, I can ‘think’ of riding!”

And thus it came to pass that we landed on Hinchinbrook, with no means of locomotion beyond those with which nature had endowed us.

And now, headed by Lizzie, and walking in single file and in silence, we struck out for the interior of the island.  The path —­ if path it could be called, for it consisted only of a dim track beaten by the naked feet of the blacks —­ wound in and out among the long grass, which, as we approached the foot of the mountain range, became exchanged for boulders and loose shale, which rendered walking most tedious, and played the very mischief with our boots.  Here even this track seemed, to our eyes, to die out; but Lizzie led the way confidently, and evidently with a thorough knowledge of what she was about.  We had now been walking for more than three hours, and had apparently only got half way up a kind of gorge in the mountains, which seemed to become gradually narrower and narrower, and from all appearances afforded every prospect of terminating in a ‘cul-de-sac’.  A watercourse must at some period have run down this ravine, for the boulders were rounded; but it was now quite dry.  As the sides of the mountains drew nearer, our path led along this watercourse, and the walking became dreadfully fatiguing.  The boulders were sometimes so close as to render walking between impossible, and then it became necessary to clamber over them, which, loaded as we were, was very painful.  If, on the other hand, we attempted to journey on the ‘top’ of the boulders, they were not only of unequal heights, but sometimes so wide apart, that a good spring was requisite to get from one to the other.  Lizzie was the only one of the party who appeared thoroughly at home; her light figure bounded from rock to rock with the greatest ease and rapidity.  Even Cato and Ferdinand, barefooted as they were, seemed to be a long way from enjoying themselves, and for us wretched Europeans, with our thick boots, that obtained scarcely any foothold, we slipped about from the rounded shoulders of the rocks, in a way that was anything but pleasant.