When the boys woke next morning they were as hungry as fox-hunters, but what were they to do for a breakfast? Donald saw a grass tree, and remembered what he had seen the black fellows do with grass trees on his father’s station, which was farther up the country than Wonga-Wonga.
“It looks as if it would come up easy,” said Donald; “let’s loosen the earth round it a bit though. Now then, Harry, lay hold, and pull with a will, as old Tom the sailor says.”
The two boys laid hold of the queer crooked stump, and pulled with _such_ a will that presently flat they tumbled on their backs, with the grass tree between them. The root was rotten, and swarmed with fat grubs. They made a black fellow’s breakfast off these, and then they saddled their horses, and off they rode again.
They had not gone far before they came upon King Dick-a-Dick, admiring himself at a water-hole. He was in full dress, and he seemed very proud of it, as he made a looking-glass of the water, and then tossed up his head again. His Majesty’s crown was a battered white hat, and he wore a pair of light-striped knee-breeches—that was all his dress. He had had the hat and the breeches given him at some of the stations near, and the settlers about there had given him a brass chain too, and a brass plate engraved—
“H.M. Dick-a-Dick, King of the ’Possum Tribe,”
[Illustration: “H.M. DICK-A-DICK, KING OF THE POSSUM TRIBE.”]
with a ’possum engraved underneath. The ’possum was the crest, so to speak, of King Dick-a-Dick’s tribe. Now this was the tribe from which Harry and Donald had had such a narrow escape, and, therefore, they felt rather nervous when they saw King Dick-a-Dick standing by the water-hole with his spear in his hand. But his Majesty was anxious to conciliate. He was fond of tobacco and flour, and he and his people had run short of both since they had been on bad terms with the whites. So, as soon as he saw the boys rein in, he stuck his spear, point downwards, into the ground, and beckoned to them to come on, grinning as if the top of his head was coming off. That was _his_ way of giving “a winning smile.” When he learnt what the boys’ business was, he chuckled greatly at the thought of white fellows trying to find any one in the bush without black trackers, and then proposed that he and the boys should share the credit of finding the little girl. He made sure that he _could_ find her. The direction in which she had left the station was known, so Dick-a-Dick took the boys back to within about a mile and a half of home, and then began to beat about. He went down on his hands and knees, and put his nose to the ground like a dog. Presently he stopped at an ant-hill, peered about for a minute, and then jumped up, and cut a caper. The boys couldn’t make it out, but he had discovered the mark of a tiny little bare heel in a dent on the ant-hill. When he had once found Maggie’s track, he scarcely ever lost it. On he went, walking with his nose almost as low as his toes. He found out little stones that had been moved, and grass-blades that had been scarcely brushed by poor little Maggie’s bare feet. He found out too the blood that had come from a scratch in one of them, got by scrambling over a splintery log.