CHAPTER TEN.
HOW WE SAW STRANGE THINGS.
"You rascal!" I exclaimed; "how dare you! Here, doctor, what is to be done?
How am I to punish him ?" "Send him back," said the doctor; "or, no: we'll leave him here at the village." Jimmy leaped up from where he had been squirming, as Jack Penny called it, on the ground, and began to bound about, brandishing his waddy, and killing nothing with blows on the head.
"No, no," he shouted, "no send Jimmy back.

Mass Joe leave Jimmy--Jimmy kill all a black fellow dead." "Now look here, sir," I said, seizing him by the ear and bringing him to his knees, proceedings which, big strong fellow as he was, he submitted to with the greatest of humility, "I'm not going to have you spoil our journey by any of your wild pranks; if ever you touch one of the people again, back you go to the station to eat damper and mutton and mind sheep." "Jimmy no go back mind sheep; set gin mind sheep.

Jimmy go long Mass Joe." "Then behave yourself," I cried, letting him rise; and he jumped to his feet with the satisfaction of a forgiven child.

In fact it always seemed to me that the black fellows of Australia, when they had grown up, were about as old in brains as an English boy of nine or ten.
That morning we had made our start after days of preparation, and the chiefs of the village with a party of warriors came to see us part of the way, those who stayed behind with the women and children joining in a kind of yell to show their sorrow at our departure.

The chief had offered half-a-dozen of his people for guides, and we might have had fifty; but six seemed plenty for our purpose, since, as the doctor said, we must work by diplomacy and not by force.
So this bright morning we had started in high spirits and full of excitement, the great band of glistening-skinned blacks had parted from us, and our journey seemed now to have fairly begun, as we plunged directly into the forest, the six men with us acting as bearers.
We had not gone far before our difficulties began, through the behaviour of Jimmy, who, on the strength of his knowledge of English, his connection with the white men, and above all the possession of clothes, which, for comfort's sake, he had once more confined to a pair of old trousers whose legs were cut off at mid-thigh, had begun to display his conceit and superiority, in his own estimation, over the black bearers by strutting along beside them, frowning and poking at them with his spear.