During his absence Burke and King had the following adventure with the blacks (we have copied the account of it from King's narrative):--"A few days after Mr. Wills left, some natives came down the creek to fish at some water-holes near our camp. They were very civil to us at first, and offered us some fish; the second day they came again to fish, and Mr. Burke took down two bags, which they filled for him; the third day they gave us one bag of fish, and afterwards all came to our camp. We used to keep our ammunition and other articles in one hut, and all three of us lived together in another. One of the natives took an oil-cloth out of this hut, and Mr. Burke seeing him run away with it, followed him with his revolver and fired over his head, and upon this the native dropped the oil-cloth. While he was away, the other blacks invited me away to the water-hole to eat fish; but I declined to do so, as Mr. Burke was away, and a number of natives were about who would have taken all our things. When I refused, one took his boomerang and laid it over my shoulder, and then told me, by signs, that if I called out for Mr. Burke as I was doing he would strike me. Upon this I got them all in front of the hut and fired a revolver over their heads, but they did not seem at all afraid until I got out the gun, when they all ran away. Mr. Burke, hearing the report, came back, and we saw no more of them until late that night, when they came with some cooked fish and called out, 'White fellow!' Mr. Burke then went out with his revolver, and found a whole tribe coming down, all painted, and with fish in small nets carried by two men. Mr. Burke went to meet them, and they wished to surround him, but he knocked as many of the nets of fish out of their hands as he could, and shouted out to me to fire. I did so, and they ran off. We collected five small nets of cooked fish. The reason he would not accept the fish from them was that he was afraid of being too friendly, lest they should be always at our camp." While Burke was cooking some of the fish during a strong wind, the flames caught the gunyah, and spread so rapidly that the two men were unable either to extinguish them or to save any of their things, except one revolver and a gun. How the heroic Wills fared on his lonely journey is described in the following extracts taken from his diary:--