“Not much the matter with it,” answered his brother, “I reckon they won’t ‘ankor’ us, they were just about scared; but I won’t put five fingers of powder into ‘Old Joe’ again, she’s nearly taken my shoulder off. If we always handle the gun as if ’twere an evil spirit, I expect we’ve more power in it than we think of; it’s very certain they never heard that noise before; besides, she went off like a young cannon.”
By-and-by the blacks stole silently, one by one, into the camp; amongst the first arrivals were two women, who seized the sprawling infants they had left behind, and then retreated quickly into the scrub.
Mat and Tim, peeping out of their hut, to which they had retreated, as became properly behaved wizards, at length saw their friends gathered round one man, who was examining the defunct hawk with trembling fingers, to see what had killed it.
There was a dead silence amongst the tribe that night, not one moved from his fire.
Next morning a native braver than the rest, the chief in fact, asked by signs whether he might approach the gun, which he saw peeping out from the hut; but the brothers, by pantomime, showed that the consequences would be too awful if he awoke the evil spirit, and he was glad to make his escape back again to his mates. No more inquiries were made after this, but both brothers were watched whenever they came out, to see that they had not the evil thing in their hands.
However, the startling incident was gradually forgotten, as the gun was carefully put by, and no more powder used, for they never knew when they might really want it.
CHAPTER VII.
Spearing geese—Killing ducks with boomerangs—’Possum-hunting—How to make fire—The tribe shift camp—The Boorah—Mat and Tim’s journal.
After our boys had been with the tribe for seven months, as near as they could guess, by means of a notched stick on which they nicked off the days, they began to acquire a smattering of the dialect, so that both black and white men could understand each other to a limited extent.
In this way the brothers made out that in four moons many tribes would visit them.