Chapter Seventeen.
“Bunyip! Bunyip!”
That same afternoon, soon after dinner, the captain and his fellow-wielders of the axe again went down to carry on their wood-cutting. The boys were not back, nor expected, and in the course of the afternoon the girls proposed that Mrs Bedford and Aunt George should go with them for a walk, and to take some refreshment to the wood-cutters.
They refused, of course, and then gave way, and soon after the little party left the house, and strolled slowly away toward the creek, all enjoying the delightfully fresh breeze which came across the plains and sent the blood dancing in the young girls’ veins.
Hardly had they walked a couple of hundred yards away, when one of the cows in the fenced-in paddock raised her head from grazing, and uttered a deep-toned bellow. She ceased munching the rich grass, and whisked her tail about, as if trying to tie it in knots, for she saw a black approaching the paddock, and that black was one she did not know.
The black came cautiously on, crawling from tree to bush, and from bush to tree, and always getting nearer to the house. Finally, he reached the fence, and along by this he crept like a great black slug, till he was at the end, and within a dozen yards of the store.
Fifty yards away a couple of dozen of his fellows, all spear and club armed, lay hidden among the shrubs and trees which the captain and Uncle Jack were unwilling to cut down, and these men watched intently every movement of their companion, and in perfect silence, till they saw him raise himself very slightly, and then almost run on all fours across the space which divided him from the storehouse, the movement being upon his hands and toes.
Then a low murmur of satisfaction ran through them, and they turned to look in the other direction, where the ladies were all making their way, basket-laden, toward where the captain and Uncle Jack were continuing their attack upon the great tree.
No fear of interruption in that direction; no fear of any one coming in the other, for the boys had been seen to ride right off over the hills, as if on a long expedition.