when I threw a small piece of dry wood at it, positively refused to budge. I took one last disgusted look at its gleaming, mottled, sinuous coils and flat, repulsive head, from which its black, wicked, basilisk eyes looked dully out, and flopped into the water from my perch, a distance of some ten or twelve feet. At one place the current resembled a mill-race; this was doubtless the creek proper. In ten minutes more I touched bottom with my feet, and soon, to my great joy, I was stepping along on the firm sand again. I soon found the track, but on it I also found what I least desired to see--the tracks of savages going in the same direction as myself. I kept a sharp look-out after that. The sun shone out all through that long, arduous day with a fierce, intense heat, but there was no time for rest. I swam several creeks, which carried me hundreds of yards down stream at a pace which meant certain death if I ran against the business end of a snag; and I waded and swam for many hundreds of yards at a stretch along the track in places where it was flooded. By drinking copiously of the lukewarm water I kept off the cravings of a healthy hunger. My pipe had slipped from my pouch, and, anyhow, my tobacco and matches, which I carried inside my hat, had got wet when I dropped from the tree; and this, to me, was the greatest drawback of the situation. The sun rounded slowly towards the west, and it was fast becoming dark, when suddenly I heard the jabbering of blacks at some little distance. To climb into a thick pine tree and conceal myself in its branches was the work of a few minutes. I had hardly done so before a straggling mob of blacks passed slowly underneath; the bucks, or warriors, went first with spears and boomerangs in their hands, and the gins followed, carrying the piccaninnies and household goods slung in numerous dilly-bags over their backs. A few wretched half-tame dingoes brought up the rear, snarling and fighting with one another. It seemed strange to me that these savages should be journeying along the track, for at other times they were rather anxious to avoid it. Perhaps they did it for the sake of the novelty of the situation, naturally supposing that their enemies, the whites, would not be travelling during the wet season. There might have been fifty or sixty of them altogether in the band. To my intense annoyance they went on about a couple of hundred yards, and halted, to camp for the night, on what was evidently a drier piece of ground than usual. There was no help for it--I should have to pass the night in that tree. It would be folly to wander about in the dark; besides, I was dead tired and could hardly keep my eyes open. [Illustration: "WHEN I THREW A PIECE OF DRY WOOD AT IT, THE REPTILE POSITIVELY REFUSED TO BUDGE."]