An hour later three shearers, Bill, Fred, and Ben, riding at a gallop along the high road to Loo, came upon a man with a bundle walking cheerfully in the same direction. The horsemen pulled up.
"Hi, mate, have you seen anythin' of a strange sort of animal on this road?" cried Bill.
"Have I?" answered the man. "My word, I have! A great, big, red, hairy bunyip 'r somethin' charged out o' th' bush 'bout a mile back, bowled me over an' went howlin' down th' road in a cloud o' dust."
"Which way?" gasped Bill.
The pedestrian pointed in the direction of Loo. "That's th' way he went," he said. "Cripes, I'd a' thought I seen a fantod on'y I bin teetotal fer a year."
The shearers whipped up, and rode on at a gallop, and the man grinned after them with exquisite joy. "Well, life's worth living after all." said Nickie the Kid.
Before Sunday night it was known at Loo that the Missing Link, which had been stolen or had escaped, was once more safely bestowed in Professor Thunder's Museum, and when the show opened on Monday there was something like a run on it. With the curious crowd came Bill, Ben, and Fred, Mike having been left to keep camp. At the sight of the shearers before his cage, the Missing Link simulated a paroxysm of ungovernable rage. He bit, glared, roared, and reaching his mighty claws towards Bill, made murderous sweeps in the air, as if desirous of disembowelling that hapless young man.
"That's curious." said Professor Thunder, regarding the shearer sternly. "My Link don't often go on like that, and when he does he has good reason. See here, young gentlemen, what did you have to do with the purloining of my man-monkey Saturday night?"
Bill protested fiercely. "Never put a hand on yer blanky monkey. Wouldn't touch him with er forty-foot pole."
"Well, he as good as says you did."