I sat in my tent one day in Cooktown, while the rain was pouring down outside, when my attention was attracted by four men who stood in a desolate sort of way in the road. They seemed to me to have such a pitiful, aimless, vacant way about them as they stood there while the rain ran down their backs in bucketsful! But I do not suppose that I for that reason alone should have given them a second thought, because misery and want were such common sights in Cooktown. What, however, riveted my interest in them was that I could see they were Danes by their clothes, and also that they had only been a very short time in Queensland. So I thought I would have a lark with them at my own expense if, as I guessed, it should prove true that they could not speak English. I therefore called to them in English, and invited them to come into my tent out of the rain. They came quickly enough. My point was to let them think me an Englishman and to prove the old proverb that he "who hears himself spoken of seldom hears praise." So I questioned them from what country they came, how long they had been in Cooktown, where they were going, how long they had been in Queensland, and all such matters. It appeared then that they had arrived in Rockhampton a few months before, had taken a contract there to burn off a piece of scrub, by which they had saved a few pounds, and having heard of the Palmer, had bought tickets for Cooktown in the _Lord Ashley_, that steamer we met in the storm. All their swags had been washed overboard, and since they arrived in Cooktown they had not only spent their money long ago, but had since been unsuccessful in all they undertook. They subsisted on scraps and odd pickings among the tents--but they did not mind so much now that they had got used to it! They liked Rockhampton and the job of scrub-burning, "that being a lively game," but Cooktown they did not like; anyhow, as soon as they could get a job and save enough to buy some rations, they would go to the Palmer. What aggrieved them most was that they had a Danish five-dollar note (worth about ten shillings), but they could not get it changed because the Englishmen said it was a false one. This they told me in a sort of English a great deal more broken than my own, but yet they had not the slightest suspicion about my not being myself a thoroughbred Britisher. Indeed, the conversation was full of interjections in Danish from the one to the other, such as: "I wonder if the beggar is going to give us some grub when he has done questioning?" or, "He has got nothing himself to eat; let us get out of this;" or, "Wait a minute, I will ask him for some flour." When I had carried my game as far as I cared, we had some tea and a real good meal, after which, as it began to get dark, I invited them all to stay in my tent until I left Cooktown, because I was only waiting for a steamer. In the night, as we all lay as close as we could in the little tent, I had