from one to the other, each making a grimace, and grinning into it as only Australian natives can grin.
"Oh!" groaned Weevel, growing very pale, "I'm wounded;" and he laid his hand tenderly upon the part;— I remember feeling a stab in the heat of the conflict.—Oh dear!— Oh!"
"Where is he wounded?" said Hugh to Slinger.
"Oh, behind of course:" said Slinger, with a smile: "Weevel will never be hurt anywhere else, excepting by pure accident. I touched him up gently with a spear just now to bring him to his senses." Turning to Weevel, he said, "You are all right: you will never come to any harm as long as you can show such pluck as you have just done."
"Did I?" said Weevel;—"well, I think I did too:—rely upon it, Mr. Slinger, there's nothing like calmness in an emergency—nothing:" and as Weevel recovered from his fright he became proportionably valiant in words:—"I rather astonished them, I think, although single handed and unarmed.
A tribe of savages would have cowed an ordinary man: Eh Mr. Slinger?" But the difficulties of Mr. Weevel's position were not at an end, for although his person had escaped material injury, his trousers had been considerably damaged, and this new calamity disturbed him not a little,—"I can't get out another pair—what am I to do? and where is my hat?" Alas! it had disappeared, and so had the blacks.
Whilst Mr. Weevel was bemoaning his forlorn and helpless condition, a figure emerged from the scrub attired in the faded uniform of a Captain of Marines, its head covered with a hat marvellously like Mr. Weevel's. As it approached nearer, it was discovered to be Benbo the native, who, having been presented by some military colonist with the red rags, always took the earliest opportunity of appearing in them before strangers. He
