Nicholas Crips next lay down amid the ruin he had wrought.
Nickie had not long to wait.

About twenty minutes later he saw an elderly man and a youth coming hurriedly through the trees, looking about them eagerly.

Each carried a gun.

He sat up and beckoned, and they hastened to him, not a little astonished to find a strange man clad only in torn singlet and drawers lying there in the depths of the bush.
"Hullo, mate," said the elder man, "what's amiss ?" Nickie groaned aloud.

"Horrible!" he gasped.