As the mystery of this “duck-under” lies under water, it can only be described from hearsay.  Here, so the blacks say, a solid wall of rock runs out into the river, incomplete, though, and complicated, rising and terminating before mid-stream into a large island, which, dividing the stream unequally, sends the main body of water swirling away along its northern borders, while the lesser current glides quietly around the southern side, slipping partly over the submerged wall, and partly through a great side-long cleft on its face—­gliding so quietly that the cleft can be easily blocked and the wall heightened when the waters are needed for the lagoons.  Black-fellow gossip also reports that the island can be reached by a series of subterranean caves that open into daylight away at the Cave Creek, miles away.

Getting nothing better than one miserable shag by our revolvers, we faced damper and “Lot’s wife” about sundown, returning to camp through a dense Leichardt pine forest, where we found myriads of bat-like creatures, inches long, perhaps a foot, hanging head downwards from almost every branch of every tree.  “Flying foxes,” Dan called them, and Sambo helped himself to a few, finding “Lot’s wife” unsatisfying; but the white folk “drew the line at varmints.”

“Had bandicoot once for me Christmas dinner,” Dan informed us, making extra tea “on account of ‘Lot’s wife’” taking a bit of “washing down.”  Then, supper over, the problem of watering the horses had to be solved.  The margins of the lagoons were too boggy for safety, and as the horses, fearing alligators apparently, refused the river, we had a great business persuading them to drink out of the camp mixing dish.

The sun was down before we began; and long before we were through with the tussle, peculiar shrilling cries caught our attention, and, turning to face down stream, we saw a dense cloud approaching—­skimming along and above the river:  a shrilling, moving cloud, keeping all the while to the river, but reaching right across it, and away beyond the tree tops.

Swiftly it came to us and sped on, never ceasing its peculiar cry; and as it swept on, and we found it was made up of innumerable flying creatures, we remembered Dan’s “flying foxes.”  In unbroken continuity the cloud swept out of the pine forest, along the river, and past us, resembling an elongated kaleidoscope, all dark colours in appearance; for as they swept by the shimmering creatures constantly changed places—­gliding downwards as they flew, before dipping for a drink to rise again with swift, glancing movement, shrilling that peculiar cry all the while.  Like clouds of drifting fog they swept by, and in such myriads that, even after the Maluka began to time them, full fifteen minutes passed before they began to straggle out, and twenty before the last few stragglers were gone.  Then, as we turned up stream to look after them, we found that there the dense cloud was rising and fanning out over the tree tops.  The evening drink accomplished, it was time to think of food.