stream. It was covered with a wonderful growth of ferns, birds' nests, and staghorn with branching antler-like fronds, which so fascinated Elsie that she wanted to get off her horse and clamber up the boulder to gather them. But Pompo stepped gallantly forward. "Ba'al!" he cried. "White Mary plenty gammon. Suppose white missus go up that fellow rock she tumble and break her neck. Then mine dig him hole to put her in."
The creature swung himself up, grinning all the time, and presently came back with an armful, which he slung on to his saddle. They went very slowly now. Pompo first, with the packhorse, all the rest following in single file. The hills closed in on either side, and the gulley was in deep shade. There was a little wind, and the she-oaks by the creeklet made a melancholy sighing. The stream ran over a pebbly bed with big boulders here and there, breaking its course and damming it into a deep black pool. In some places the pool was covered with a strange iridescent film. Now a rocky wall rose ahead. The gulley made a bend, and the creeklet wound between two fantastically-shaped ridges of grey rock. It was impossible to ride further, and they all dismounted, Pompo unsaddling the packhorse and carrying the saddlebags with the tea things down through the rocky heads, whence he led the way into what seemed the heart of the hills, while Jack Nutty, the other half-caste twin, and two black boys drove the horses back and round the ridge to meet the picnickers on the other side of the gorge.
The ladies tucked up their habits, and each with her attendant swain picked her way over the rocks, and across the stepping-stones, and through the tangle of fern and creeper, which choked the entrance to the ravine. It was rough walking. The ravine was a rocky trough. On each side rose a wall of grey volcanic stone hollowed in places at the base, and making tiny caves rich in maiden-hair fern. It was broken in others and overgrown with the red kennedia and the fleshy wax plant, and had tufts of orchids, creeping jasmine and tiny shrubs, with blue-green leaves
