The dogs were a sight to look at. They would have puzzled some Englishmen what to make of them. Partly greyhounds, but larger, sturdier, and stronger, as if they had received at one time a cross of mastiff. They looked eminently fit, however, and were with difficulty kept back. Every now and then a distant shout was heard, and at such times the hounds seemed burning to be off.
But soon the kangaroos themselves began to appear thick and fast. They came from one part or another in little groups, meeting and hopping about in wonder and fright. They seemed only looking for a means of escape; and at times, as a few rushing from one direction met others, they appeared to consult. Many stood high up, as if on tiptoe, gazing eagerly around, with a curious mixture of bewilderment and fright displayed on their simple but gentle faces.
They got small time to think now, however, for men and dogs were on them, and the flight and the murder commenced with a vengeance. There were black fellows there, who appeared to spring suddenly from the earth, spear-armed, to deal terrible destruction right and left among the innocent animals. And black women too, who seemed to revel in the bloody sight. If the whites were excited and thirsty for carnage, those aborigines were doubly so.
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."