Meanwhile the men had dismounted, Archie and Harry among the rest, and were firing away as quickly as possible. There is one thing to be said in favour of the gunners; they took good aim, and there was little after-motion in the body of the kangaroo in which a bullet had found a billet.
After all Archie was neither content with the sport, nor had it come up as yet to his beau ideal of adventure from all he had heard and read of it. The scene was altogether noisy, wild, and confusing. The blacks gloated in the bloodshed, and Archie did not love them any the more for it. It was the first time he had seen those fellows using their spears, and he could guess from the way they handled or hurled them that they would be pretty dangerous enemies to meet face to face in the plain or scrub.
“Harry,” he said after a time, “I’m getting tired of all this; let us go to our horses.”
“I’m tired too. Hallo! where is the chick-a-biddy?”
“You mean Miss Winslow, Harry.”
“Ay, Johnnie.”
“I have not seen her for some time.”
They soon found her though, near a bit of scrub, where their own horses were tied.
She was sitting on her saddle, looking as steady and demure as an equestrian statue. The sunshine was so finding that they did not at first notice her in the shade there until they were close upon her.
“What, Etheldene!” cried Archie; “we hardly expected you here.”