Show I 1 BLACK N S C I 1 SHEERS I 1 GOLD t i by g beatrice grinshaw Grima haw by arwin albao S M w I 1 I 1 by hugha ff casole A co K 1 bervic fei y r CHAPTER IX 16 eight days passed and another two to that before I 1 stood again upon the ridge that I 1 hod had topped with so BO light a heart on the morning that saw law the unexpected arrival of jinny I 1 had gone back replaced tny my stores en dured with what patience I 1 might the tha hundred and one delays that always blocked the path of the papuan traveler and got away almost by main force first however I 1 had seen jinny safe aboard a local steamer that was going to port moresby why slie she wanted to go there what she was waa going to do when sho she arrived I 1 could not conc conceit elve anil and in face of her hostile obstinate silence had little chance of finding out I 1 could only say as kindly a goodby good by to jinny as she would allow aud and privately hope with a grudging smarting bind of hope that was entirely illogical but I 1 suppose human that slie she would console herself as speedily as be then being free fj ee I 1 hurried to roy my former turning back point and drove the boys and myself for every ounce that was in us up tip toward what I 1 still hoped might be eventually called the pla ilia laurier ranges there was need tor for haste I 1 was not in the least surprised when I 1 reached the beginning of my cut through the forest to find that others had passed that way since the camp fires of spicer and the skeletons of their teut tent poles pales their empty tins thrown away were marks marka plain enough for the verlest tyro to understand st nd for me who was no tyro there was much more things more mor disturbing because more significant of trouble traces of natives who were clearly spying and following these signs were plain to read and caused me to ginger up my sentries also to cut down my own sleep to tho the very last point comen comestible tible with keeping on the road in the day we had three weeks stores no more since a native cannot carry more than he can eat in about twenty one days I 1 had some stores of beads salt and knives with me and meant to use them when fairly driven to do SO BO trading with thi the cannibal tribes of the unexplored interior Is playing with death but starvation stan ration is death so theres little choice between the two I 1 need not say that I 1 looked tor for traces of party ceaselessly but abut so BO far I 1 had seen no signs of them in the distance stanco dl ahead I 1 was to all appearances as much alone with my boys as aa tf if no other human creature had been left alive upon the island continent of new guinea it WAS here as I 1 had told jinny luckless jinny that the real work began down those appalling ridges down half a day into a gorge abnar as narrow as a railway cutting then up again climbing with feet and hands t this life wax was the day sometimes the river would prove too wide and deep to cross then we would fell a tree as rapidly as a possible and one after another cross it like rope dancers sometimes we ec scram rambled bled painfully along the tb tops of boulders in a river bed sometimes worst of all we had to turn back lose 1 ose the height and the distance gained and find at infinite pains another way across a ridge that had fairly beaten us and all this had to be done not at leisure but at the highest speed which I 1 and the carriers could possibly keep up without leaving any of the party behind I 1 had picked my boys boj they were all mountaineers capable of scrambling up ai a one ln two height with fifty pounds on their backs till further orders yet in sum childlike panicky dependent utterly on the leader if I 1 to tale ke them through these brown bloodthirsty muscular babies of mine if anything happened to me they would never any one of them see home ant anil wife and children again that wax wan sure and if they were to tall fall me run abali awa from roe me mi car biern have done times with outnumber without number it was all port moresby Alo resby to a mango that nobody on the coast would ever catch sight eight or sound of black sheep amory any more we were ere dependent utterly ou on each other what would pla think of it all I 1 asked myself wonderingly if slie she the white rose maiden had been here I 1 tried to picture it ft the sporting spirit in her would have made tier her a charming companion I 1 could faucy fancy her in exactly the right dress tile the right boots shooting fish ing gyp generally but I 1 had never seriously contemplated such an outrage on probability as that 1 I should place the daughter of the Laur lers in a neav GuIn stick house with a hea Lunter for cook and go on an with raj recruiting and trading I 1 knew now and little pleasure the knowledge gave me that there was bwy one girl who would be content it t home in the papuan wilds and thai girl my rose maiden but bui genevieve Genev flener leve Tl 71 eacher gln sling dreams I 1 it was not dreams that lay before me now if I 1 meant to be fit next ce tt daj it was time for sleep 1 I could it if I 1 would write the tale of every hour of that journey relate ini in their order each blow of nature and of rate and every counter that I 1 mude made tell of hunger and of thirst of weariness mace lacerating macerating rating mind and body into one pulp of a midday when I 1 and my boys boya arting rt resting Ing were leaped on OB from the th forest behind and surrounded before you could have hav drawn two breaths by tall brown bron devils whirling clubs clutia and spears and yelping the headhunters head hunters 1 horrible do dog show yelp of how we w fought them tbell fi out one to io he five and 1 firing dring low shot orie one through the belly anc another through the chest before they closed almost ashamed I 1 was a trained soldier against these chwe creatures creature with their savage ift ge weapons and yet numbers are am umbers numbers and since they did not fear our strength they and to k larn karn l arn of how they drew off and came again charging in line pluckier than you would believe so eo that id have spared pared them it if I 1 could but they bridged my two best carriers carrl cre and the other carriers rushed in behind ne clubbing with rifle butts where they could not fire and to eo in five avo minutes it WAS over and tile the tribe off into the bush again with a head taken from one of the corpses while the fighting was too hot for me to notice yes nes I 1 could tell much a volume vollme but I 1 will pass over that journey in I 1 I 1 was waa a trained soldier against AgaIn sti these creature creatura Crea turf with their savage weapons retrospect more baill easily than I 1 passed to in fact and come to the crucial day the morning when I 1 made we were climbing a ridge just like a hundred ridges that we had hade climbed limbed since the start the ground was steep beneath our feet as it had bad been tor for days dais the air was wag thinning nights had bad been colder yet I 1 did not think that we were very near did not guess gues i that the lane of our long journey was reaching its turn at last in front of us the sky eky began to show pale through thinning treetops tree tops I ill halt there I 1 decided I 1 and fall ft a lookout look out come on I 1 said to the carriers double ration tonight I 1 had beena beani holding back a little I 1 could afford that spur they raised a shout and I 1 shouted with them for encouragement and so ab shouting outing plugging upward aldfo and for f ward like the men of when j they came upon the sea we topped the thea ridge found empty air before us and saw the pit by heaven it was a wonderful sight eight I 1 was to see it often after but never once did I 1 come upon it without something of the first thrill I 1 that seized me when I 1 broke out of the forest and viewed lying far below belofi me the enormous slopes end and scalps scarps of the nameless basin in the finding of which two white lives and many manyi dark had already been lost others yet were to be sucked down by that strange earth maelstrom before it was waa done with some undercurrent of prophetic feel feeling ing may have hinted that to me or else I 1 was simply worn worm out I 1 looked at the rocks marked the lie of th the e hills the nature of the whole I 1 place remembered all I 1 had beard of mining lore and struck my band violently upon the nearest tree found I 1 shouted im made im made fo forever reverl I 1 i then aar across oss the visions of gold I 1 gold nod and more gold that chat blazed on oa my inner sight came wonderfully slowly as come lovely things a picture that outshone all other gl glories orles from them the horizon the clouds of early aftem afternoon oon were shredding away slowly stead lly fly the veils were withdrawn bare to my sight eight the far high ice blue peaks of 0 tile diio ilia ila laurier range ive v seen it I 1 thought and as it if a sacrament had wn been celebrated splendidly before roe me its here her I 1 thought and in the same bame moment its herself tho the sun BUO was it was impossible to descend into the pit that day with pity I 1 remembered how bow gro grace ce and jackson marring sick alck at the end of their resources bad ha d stood where I 1 stood now looking like moses over a promised land on which they never were to set net foot if it was wag hard for or me to wait until noall next morning only what must it have been to them to see all this know what it meant and leave it ft behind yet they had bad done right the descent was wag in all of 0 two thousand feet the country rocky and grace and jackson and the wretched remnant of their boys even if they had succeeded in getting down to that distant hole aou would ld certainly never have found streng strength tb to climb clim bup up again the route through the limestone country had been their destruction no one assuredly su ur edly would ever go that way again now that I 1 had bad shown another on this I 1 remembered what tor the moment had entirely escaped my mind the spicer expedition I 1 had thought much of it in the last dinst few days das and wondered where it mia was traces of a party ahead had vanished somo some time before but that was no serious puzzle a very little deviation from the route I 1 followed rolphe explain IL it I 1 I 1 had find been sure however that I 1 should see ee or hear bear something of thorn them when I 1 arrived ot at the pit it seemed they were not there from end to end there was no sign of life I 1 could not understand this it looked like trouble of some kind I 1 thought but even so what business of mine was any trouble of eleand lie and hla his friend handmade had made their own bed lot let them lie le on it for me there the signs of gold wealth too wealth such as no one in papua had ever dreamed of maybe for no one in papua had bad ever seen such a formation in gold bearing country you may be sure there was no lying late abed for anyone next morning I 1 had the boys up at tour four their food was cooked anderten and eaten camp struck and every one ready to start before the first mysterious gray began to show above t the he basins farther rim progress wua was incredibly slow still we kept on at it determined to reach the bottom of the pit before dark no midday halt was waa even thought of through the heat of the day foodless without rest we plunged and struggled on and we had our reward it was not mo more re than half past four by my watch when we topped a ridge of strangely strange lr heaped wild rocks that for jl awhile while had barred our view and saw bonear so near that we could almost have taken a long leap into it the pit I 1 left the carriers there on the rim of the little flat and plunged downward we had bad done a hard bard days work but I 1 took those rocks those stretches clies of sloping sand and gravel as as a fairy tale wearer of seven league boots might have done it if was diving rather than descending I 1 took a toss at ai the very last and came down with hands bonds and feet outspread like a starfish on a bed of gravel that cut my palms and tore the luces knees of my trousers I 1 raised myself up I 1 hurt scratched merely but my hands and my knees were all over blood and gravel and gold the thing was done and won the long fight over two handfuls of golden gravel had bad changed my world 1 I am black sheep no more was the first thought I 1 dan remember it was not entirely pleasurable there are sweet pastures for black wild sheep and for them only this gold discovery I 1 did not doubt or minimize its value valde I 1 knew too much for or that meant no small fortune no quiet comfortable sufficiency clency it meant perhaps millions and what millions brought with them black sheep no more wanderer no more the wild places no more how could a man of 0 millions live in what gln gin sling had termed a hole lu in the bush I 1 went to upper supper and to rest real first however I 1 washed from my hands the dirt and blood and gold that sym bym boll cal inseparable three examined the gold with care as an it seeped to the bottom of the enameled basin and found its amount and quality ing theres been nothing like it ir there never will be again I 1 thought and its that pinch of yellow not anything I 1 am or might be that has made me worthy of the most splendid girl on earth A mad world my mn max tere 1 I 1 the peaks of the pla pin laurier laubler range rang far fairy blue in tile mounting mrion looked down upon me as I 1 slept TO BB CONTINUED |