For there across the water lay about and stuck up in all kinds of gnarled and grotesque shapes what seemed to be a large clump of burned-down and blackened tree stumps; broken branches sent off awkward snag-like pieces, others presented bosses and excrescences; and but for the fact that he had seen the party of blacks creeping up, Nic never could have imagined that they were really there, thrown into these strange imitations of what was likely to be found upon the bank of a water-hole.
But there they were, either acting their part to deceive the wild fowl into coming near enough to be speared or knocked down, or trying to hide themselves from the encamping party.
Yes, dim as the light was, there could be no deception, for Nic at last made out the glint of an eye.

It certainly was not a piece of gum gleaming in the dewy morning, but the eye of one of the blacks.

Then it was gone.
What should he do?
They were so clever that Nic knew it would be the hardest of hard work for a white to beat them with their own weapons; but the boy knew that he must act, and at once.
Dropping silently down, he lay on his breast thinking for a few moments, making his plans.
It was quite three hundred yards to the tree where the fire had been made--a long way for him to go if he were seen, for the naked blacks would be swifter of foot than he.

His only course was to crawl from bush to bush; and feeling that for the present he was out of sight, sheltered by the patch of wattle, he began to crawl slowly and as silently as he could toward the waggon.
Nic had never before realised how difficult it was to proceed over wet herbage after the fashion of a caterpillar.

But this was the only way for him to get along, and he did his best, moving slowly forward where a savage would have gone on at a little run.
As he crept along it was with a strange quivering of the muscles of his back and loins, a curious kind of shrinking, in expectation moment by moment of the blacks having crept round the end of the water-pool through the dry bed of the river up the side to send a spear flying into him.
But it did not come; and at last, perspiring profusely, he passed a detached bush, curved round so as to place it between him and the blacks, and then paused to glance back.
He could not see them; but, to his horror, he found that the bush was not in a line between him and the water-hole, and he had to creep back.
Worse still, he realised now how the ground sloped upward, so that at any moment he might be in full view, and he paused, hesitating about going any farther, when only a few yards beyond he saw that there was a hollow into which he could roll, and in it creep along to the first big trees.
Nic felt that he was risking being seen by his impetuosity, but excitement urged him on, and the next moment he was in the little depression, most probably a dry rivulet bed, which ran down toward the water-hole.