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The heavens were overcast with dense masses of clouds, and a light breeze blew from the southward, the damp feel of which indicated that the long-expected winter rains would not much longer be withheld from the parched-up country. After pacing up and down in front of the hut for some time, I turned to re-enter it, when all at once I heard one of the horses in the paddock neigh. Under ordinary circumstances this of itself would have signified nothing; but we were obliged to be constantly on the alert against the horse thieves, who often cleared out all the animals on several stations in a single night, and swept away with them over the borders and into the neighbouring colonies by routes known only to themselves, and where pursuit was in general utterly vain. As we had several valuable horses in our lot, I listened for some time, and, after giving a look at my charge, and ascertaining that both still slept soundly, I walked down to where they were grazing.

The paddock extended for nearly a mile up and down the river, and our huts were situated inside its fence and about in the centre. I found most of the animals a few hundred yards off, grazing quietly enough; but as I stood near one of them again neighed, and upon putting my ear to the ground I thought I heard a distant sound, which seemed to come from across the river. I went down to the bank and again listened. Sometimes it would die away, but presently it arose more strongly, until I plainly made it out to be the rushing gallop of either horses or cattle, my bush experience being then too slight to enable me to distinguish which. I concluded it must be the latter, as the sounds came from the island, which was some miles in length, being a broad, rolling plain, everywhere surrounded by deep water, and occupied exclusively by cattle, which, as they could not escape, had no one to look after them. It was not possible that any horsemen could be there by accident; for even our own stockman had to swim his horse over when Stevenson wished to muster the herd. Perhaps (I thought) the blacks who had made that night's murderous onslaught were still there, and the cattle on the island had been startled by them; for cattle have the greatest aversion to blacks, scenting them at a great distance and fleeing from their vicinity. Sometimes they will rush at the natives, charging them with great fury. Poor Leichardt relates, in the account of his most wonderful journey from Brisbane to Port Essington, that, having killed and eaten all their cattle but one, a bullock named Redman, to which they had become much attached for his patience and docility, the party was reduced to the very verge of starvation. For weeks they lived on boiled hide alone, and a very scanty allowance of that. Still, none could endure the thought of killing the faithful Redman, who had travelled with them for fifteen months through the wilderness, led by a rope passed through a ring in his nose. And the party did succeed in taking the animal into their destination, though at the cost of great suffering to themselves. In the last month or two of their journey, the explorers fell in with numerous tribes of blacks, who treated the white men with great kindness. Some of these tribes numbered five or six hundred souls. Whenever Redman, however, caught sight of them, it was with the utmost difficulty that he could be restrained. He would break away from his leader and charge the blacks with the utmost fury. 'Had the natives been hostile,' says Leichardt, 'Redman would have protected us and routed them all. I have seen three hundred men flee from his rush, for they were terribly afraid of him.'