In the Buffalo Camp

So the shareholders in that valuable concern, the Oriental Mine,
were kept in pleasing suspense for some months longer, while the
mine-manager (whose salary was going on all the time) did nothing
but smoke, and write reports to the effect that "a very valuable
body of stone was at grass, awaiting cartage to the battery, when
a splendid crushing was a certainty." Meanwhile Tommy Prince was
gaily journeying with Hugh down to the buffalo camp.

Prince, a typical moleskin-trousered, cotton-shirted, cabbage-tree-hatted
bushman, soon fixed up all details. He annexed the horses belonging
to the store, sagely remarking that, as Hugh had saved their owner's
life, he could afford to let him have a few horses. He also helped
himself to pack-saddles, camping gear, supplies, and all sorts of
odds and ends--not forgetting a couple of gallons of rum, mosquito-nets
made of cheese cloth, blankets, and a rifle and cartridges. They
fitted out the expedition in fine style, while unconscious Sampson
slept the sleep of the half-drowned. The placid Chinese cook fried
great lumps of goat for them to eat, heedless of all things except
his opium-pipe, to which he had recourse in the evening, the curious
dreamy odour of the opium blending strangely with the aromatic
scent of the bush.

At daylight they started, and for three days rode through the
wilderness, camping out at night, while the horses with bells and
hobbles grazed round the camp. Tommy Prince steered a course by
instinct, guided as unerringly as the Israelites by their pillar
of fire.

By miles of trackless, worthless wilderness, by rolling open plains,
by rocky ranges and stony passes, they pushed out and ever further
out, till at last, one day, Tommy said, "They ought to be hereabouts,
some place." So saying, he dropped a lighted match into a big patch
of grass, and in a few seconds a line of fire half a mile wide was
roaring across the plain; above it rose smoke as of a burning city.