just begun to eat when we heard a shot from Verney’s revolver.  I did not take very much notice, as he was always firing at wallaby, or birds, or anything; but on another shot following we all jumped up, and ran towards him.  As we did so we heard Verney calling and firing again; Perkins seized my cartridge pouch in his excitement, and I had to get more cartridges from my saddle.  In the meantime shots were going off, howls and yells rent the air, and when I got up the enemy had just formed in line.  Another discharge decided the conflict, and drove them off.

When Verney left the camp he found a bushy tree, as I had told him, stuck full of spears, and while he was deliberating as to which of those weapons he should choose, being on the west side of the bush, he suddenly found himself surrounded by a host of stealthy wretches, most of whom were already armed, all running down towards the camp.  Some ran to this bush for their weapons, and were in the act of rushing down on to the camp, and would have speared us as we sat at supper, at their ease, from behind the thick fig-trees’ shelter.  Verney was so astounded at seeing them, and they were so astounded at seeing him, that it completely upset their tactics; for they naturally thought we were all there, and when Verney fired, it so far checked the advance column, that they paused for a second, while the rear guard ran up.  Then some from behind threw spears through the bush at Verney.  He fired again, and called to us, and we arrived in time to send the enemy off, as fast as, if not faster, than they had come.  It was a very singular circumstance that turned these wretches away; if Verney hadn’t gone for the spears, they could have sneaked upon, and killed us, without any chance of our escape.  We must have risen a good deal in their estimation as strategists, for they were fairly out-generalled by chance, while they must have thought it was design.  After the dispersion, they reappeared on the top of the rocks some distance away, and threw spears down; but they were too far off; and when we let them see how far our rifle bullets could be sent, they gave several parting howls and disappeared.

I decided to keep watch to-night; there was a star passing the meridian soon after eleven, and I wished to take an observation by it.  I told the others to turn in, as I would watch till then.  Nearly at the time just mentioned, I was seated cross-legged on my rugs facing the north, taking my observation with the sextant and artificial horizon, when I thought I saw something faintly quivering at the corner of my left eye.  I kept the sextant still elevated, and turned my head very slowly half way round, and there I saw the enemy, creeping out of the mulga timber on the west side of the little creek channel, and ranging themselves in lines.  It was a very dusky, cloudy, but moonlight night.  I dared not make any quick movement, but slowly withdrawing my right hand from the sextant, I took hold of my rifle which