‘Yes, she is pretty,’ said Merton.
‘Pretty! I have seen the women of the round world—before I went to—well, never mind where, I used to think the Poles the most magnificent, but she—’
‘Whips creation,’ said Merton. ‘But I,’ he went on, ‘am rather more interested in these other extraordinary animals. Do you seriously believe, with your experience, that some extinct species are—not extinct?’
‘To be sure I do. The world is wide. But they are very shy. I once stalked a Bunyip, in Central Australia, in a lagoon. The natives said he was there: I watched for a week, squatting in the reeds, and in the grey of the seventh dawn I saw him.’
‘Did you shoot?’
‘No, I observed him through a field glass first.’
‘What is the beggar like?’
‘Much like some of the Highland water cattle, as described, but it is his ears they take for horns. Australia has no indigenous horned animal. He is, I should say, about nine feet long, marsupial (he rose breast high), and web-footed. I saw that when he dived. Other white men have seen him—Buckley, the convict, for one, when he lived among the blacks.’
‘Buckley was not an accurate observer.’
‘Jones Harvey is.’