“Oh, my dear Jacky,” cried George, “who’d have thought it was you!  Well, you are a godsend!  Good afternoon.  Oh, Jacky!—­how d’ye do?”

“Jacky not Jacky now, cos um a good deal angry, and paint war.  Kalingalunga berywelltanku” (he always took these four words for one).  “Now I go fetch white fellow;” and he disappeared.

“Who is he going to fetch? is it the one that was following us?”

“No doubt.  Then, Tom, it was not an enemy, after all!”

Jacky came back with Jem, who, at sight of them alive and well, burst into extravagances.  He waved his hat round his head several times and then flung it into a tree; then danced a pas seul consisting of steps not one of them known at the opera house, and chanted a song of triumph the words of which were, Ri tol de riddy iddydol, and the ditty naught; finally he shook hands with both.

“Never say die!”

“Well, that is hearty! and how thoughtful of him to come after us, and above all to bring Jacky!”

“That it was,” replied George.  “Jem,” said he, with feeling, “I don’t know but what you have saved two men’s lives.”

“If I don’t it shan’t be my fault, farmer.”

George.  “Oh, Jacky, I am so hungry!  I have been twenty-four hours without food.”

Kalingalunga.  “You stupid fellow to go widout food, always a good deal food in bush.”

George.  “Is there? then for Heaven’s sake go and get us some of it.”

Kalingalunga.  “No need go, food here.”  He stepped up to the very tree against which George was standing, showed him an excrescence on the bark, made two clean cuts with his tomahawk, pulled out a huge white worm and offered it George.  George turned from it in disgust; the wild chief grinned superior and ate it himself, and smacked his lips with infinite gusto.

Meantime his quick eye had caught sight of something else.  “A good deal dinner in dis tree,” said he, and he made the white men observe some slight scratches on the bark.  “Possum claws go up tree.”  Then he showed them that there were no marks with the claw reversed, a clear proof the animal had not come down.  “Possum in tree.”

The white men looked up into the bare tree with a mixture of wonder and incredulity.  Jacky cut steps with his tomahawk and went up the main stem, which was short, and then up a fork, one out of about twelve; among all these he jumped about like a monkey till he found one that was hollow at the top.

“Throw Kalingalunga a stone, den he find possum a good deal quick.”

They could not find a stone for their lives, so, being hungry, Robinson threw a small nugget of gold he had in his pocket.  Jacky caught it, placed it at the top of the hollow fork and let it drop.  Listening keenly, his fine ear heard the nugget go down the fork, striking the wood first one side then another, and then at a certain part sound no more.  Down he slips to that silent part, makes a deep cut with his