‘Groping along, in a minute or two he felt the water at his feet, when, instead of splashing into it, as you’d naturally think a fellow in such an awful predicament would do, he gave a sort of screech, very bad to hear, and made out again at a great pace, tripped over a stone, and fell headlong. ‘When I got up to him he was as dead as Julius Cæsar, and a great lump of jagged copper was sticking out of the back of his skull. ‘Presently I started off towards the homestead, but hadn’t got more than half-way before I met our two white stockmen—the black boys had cleared on the back track. ‘The buildings, such as they were, and all our things were gone. But we didn’t trouble much about that just then. ‘Taking Neville’s head to him, we buried him and Carstairs, who had been literally chopped to pieces, and then, getting the outside men together, we followed the niggers. ‘They had made for a patch of red ground six miles away. There we found ’em—fifty of ’em; and there we left ’em. How they must have travelled to have beaten the fire! Must have been touch and go, for some of ’em were pretty badly scorched. ‘Well, gentlemen, that’s the story of the Grand Stand, and the first settling of Boorookoorora. “Stone house and garden, and splendid orchard,” eh? Well, well, I suppose it’s only natural. Yet it sounds curiously to me. No; I won’t invest. Shouldn’t care about going back to live there now. That’s the dinner gong, isn’t it? Good old Kamilaroi! Come along.’ TOO FAR SOUTH. The captain of the _Boadicea_—regular London and Australian trader—had long been the owner of a crotchet, or perhaps it would be nearer the mark to call it a theory. He was a comparatively young man, and after a few trips of eighty-nine, ninety, and ninety-six days respectively, he grew impatient; and at last, seeing an opportunity of putting his idea to the test, he determined to make the attempt. It was by no means a new theory; simply an expansion of an old one. Years ago the masters of the _Lightning_, _Red Jacket_, and other clipper ships of renown, had successfully demonstrated that, instead of turning round the Cape of Good Hope as if it were a corner, in the old style, vessels bound to the Australian colonies would, if they kept on southward, be very likely to pick up a current of strong westerly winds which, although twice the distance might have to be sailed over, yet would take them to their destination far more quickly than by the usual route. But the master of the _Boadicea_ contended that none of these early exponents of ‘Great Circular sailing’ had as yet gone far enough south, and that, at a still more distant point, a regular westerly wind-current, strong as a good-sized gale and as steady as a trade, without its fickleness, was to be met with which would shorten the average passage by at least ten days.