CHAPTER II.
BROWN EYES.
Our friend Cocky was not given very much time to digest his breakfast. Dismounting from his steed the giant beckoned him forward, and thus addressed him: “You lazy imp! It would suit you very well to do nothing but eat my victuals and take a sleep afterwards, but you shall work. Listen! On the other side of yon mountain there is a wide lagoon fringed with reeds and rushes. There lives the Australian wonder, a Bunyip. You must find him and ask of him three questions—the answers to which you must bring to me before sundown, otherwise your miserable life shall answer for it.” [[351]]
“Oh, that’s quite easy,” replied Cocky, with a dash of his city assurance. “I thought you were going to set me something very difficult. What are the three questions?”
“Why the leaves on the trees grow edgeways to the sun?” said the giant. “Next: What is the reason there is no water in Phantom Hollow? And last but not least: Why figs do not grow on the tree by the hut? Now begone! and bring me the answers before sundown,” cried the Red Giant in a towering rage.
Our hero departed with a great show of bravado, but when he came near the lagoon his assumed swagger quickly evaporated. He had heard there was such a creature as a Bunyip, but he had never met anybody who had seen one. “Never despair,” however, was Cocky’s motto. He would try and find it, for the sake of Brown Eyes. He wandered about and searched in every likely place amongst the rushes, and waded in the water calling for the Bunyip. But there was no response to his call, and the sun began dipping westward.
Hereupon the magpie came upon the scene. “Hello, Jack! Looking for the Bunyip?” he cried.
“I can’t find him. I don’t believe there is such an animal,” cried Cocky. [[352]]
“Oh yes, there is; but he’s neither animal nor fish, Jack—yet a mixture of both. All you have to do is to cut a reed like a whistle, slit it down the middle, then blow upon it twice.”
