The Dingo Boys: The Squatters of Wallaby Range

by George Manville Fenn

For as the boys sat there almost petrified, but with their horses snorting and fidgeting to gallop off to avoid what they looked upon as an enemy, and to follow the flying herd, they saw Shanter in the act of hurling his spear at a gigantic kangaroo—one of the “old men” of which they had heard stories—and this great animal was evidently making for the black, partly enraged by a blow it had received, partly, perhaps, to cover the flight of the herd.

The spear was thrown, but it was just as the old man was making a bound, and though it struck, its power of penetration was not sufficient, in an oblique blow, to make it pierce the tough skin, and to the boys’ horror they saw the blunt wooden weapon fall to the earth. The next instant the kangaroo was upon Shanter, grasping him with its forepaws and hugging him tightly against its chest, in spite of the black’s desperate struggles and efforts to trip his assailant up. There he looked almost like a child in the grasp of a strong man, and to make matters worse, the black had no weapon left, not even a knife, and he could not reach the ground with his feet.

Poor Shanter had heard the horses coming up, and now in his desperate struggle to free himself, he caught sight of Raphael.

“Boomer—mumkull!” he yelled in a half-suffocated voice. “Mumkull—shoot, shoot.”

The gun was cocked and in the boy’s hands, but to fire was impossible, for fear of hitting the black; while, when Norman rode close up, threw himself off his horse, and advanced to get a close shot, the kangaroo made vicious kicks at him, which fortunately missed, or, struck as he would have been by the animal’s terrible hind-claw, Norman Bedford’s career would, in all probability, have been at an end.

Then, in spite of Shanter’s struggles and yells to the boys to shoot—to “mumkull” his enemy—the kangaroo began to leap as easily as if it were not burdened with the weight of a man; and quickly clearing the distance between them and the water-hole, plunged right in, and with the water flying up at every spring, shuffled at last into deep water.

Here, knowing the fate reserved for him, Shanter made another desperate struggle to escape; but he was wrestling with a creature nearly as heavy as a cow, and so formed by nature that it sat up looking a very pyramid of strength, being supported on the long bones of the feet, and kept in position by its huge tail; while the black, held as he was in that deadly hug, and unable to get his feet down, was completely helpless.

Without a moment’s hesitation, Norman waded in after them to try to get an opportunity to fire; but the kangaroo struck out at him again with all the power of its huge leg, and though it was too far off for the blow to take effect, it drove up such a cataract of water as deluged the lad from head to foot, and sent him staggering back.

The next moment the object of the kangaroo was plain to the boys, for, as if endowed with human instinct, it now bent down to press poor Shanter beneath the water, and hold him there till he was drowned.