The twinkle and beauty and symmetry of this was admirable, and, strange as it may appear, not only were the savages now wrought up to frenzy at this climax of the dance, but the wonderful magnetic influence these children of Nature have learned to create and launch in the corroboree so stirred the white men's blood, that they went half mad too, and laughed and shouted and danced, and could hardly help flinging themselves among the mad fiends and jumping and yelling with them; and when the jump was at its fiercest and quickest, and the great frenzy boiling over, these cunning artists brought it to a dead stop sharp upon the climax—and all was still.
In another minute they were all snoring; but George and Robinson often started in their slumbers, dreaming they saw the horrid figures—the skeletons, lizards, snakes, tartan shawls, and whitened fiends, the whole lot blazing at the eyes and mouth like white budelights, come bounding one after another out of the black night into the red torchlight, and then go striding and jumping and glaring and raging and bucking and prancing, and scattering battle and song and joy and rage and inspiration and stark-staring frenzy all around.
They awoke at daylight rather cold, and found piles of snow upon their blankets, and the lizards and skeletons and imps and tartan shawls deteriorated. The snow had melted on their bodies, and the colors had all run—some of them away. Quid multa? we all know how beauties look when the sun breaks on them after a ball.
They asked for Jacky. To their great chagrin he was not to be found. They waited, getting crosser and crosser, till nine o'clock, and then out comes my lord from the wood, walking toward them with his head down on his bosom, the picture of woe—the milmeridien movement over again.
“There! don't let us scold him,” said George, “I am sure he has lost a relation, or maybe a dear friend; anyway I hope it is not his sweetheart—poor Jacky. Well, Jacky! I am glad you have washed your face, now I know you again. You can't think how much better you look in your own face than painted up in that unreasonable way, like-like-like-I dono-what-all.”
“Like something between a devil and a rainbow,” suggested Robinson.
“But what is wrong?” asked George, kindly. “I am almost afraid to ask, though!”
Encouraged by the tone of sympathy, the afflicted chief pointed to his face, sighed, and said:
“Kalingalunga paint war, and now Kalingalunga wash um face and not kill anybody first. Kalingalunga Jacky again, and show your white place in um hill a good deal soon.”
And the amiable heathen cleared up a little at the prospect of serving George, whom he loved—aboriginally.