"We--well! what are we to do now?" enquired Andy, who was the hardest grafter,
but altogether helpless, hopeless, and useless in a crisis like this.

"Grain and varnish the bloomin' culvert!" snapped Bentley.

But Dave's eyes, that had been ruefully following the inspector,
suddenly dilated. The inspector had ridden a short distance along the line,
dismounted, thrown the bridle over a post, laid the chip
(which was too big to go in his pocket) on top of it, got through the fence,
and was now walking back at an angle across the line
in the direction of the fencing party, who had worked up on the other side,
a little more than opposite the culvert.

Dave took in the lay of the country at a glance and thought rapidly.

"Gimme an iron-bark chip!" he said suddenly.

Bentley, who was quick-witted when the track was shown him,
as is a kangaroo dog (Jack ran by sight, not scent),
glanced in the line of Dave's eyes, jumped up, and got a chip
about the same size as that which the inspector had taken.

Now the "lay of the country" sloped generally to the line from both sides,
and the angle between the inspector's horse, the fencing party,
and the culvert was well within a clear concave space;
but a couple of hundred yards back from the line and parallel to it
(on the side on which Dave's party worked their timber)
a fringe of scrub ran to within a few yards of a point
which would be about in line with a single tree on the cleared slope,