The dingoes gathered round and howled; but to their noises I paid little heed—until someone moved. Then, looking out, I saw one of my hosts kneeling on his bed clothes, and in the act of pointing a rifle towards where a loud-voiced member of the serenading party sat.
The blackboys' sleeping quarters were near the fireplace; and just after I had become fully conscious of what was going on and expected to hear a shot fired, one of the "boys," rising on his elbow, suddenly exclaimed pleadingly, "No shoot that one dingo, mitta! Him my fadder, I thinkit."
At which interruption the one spoken to muttered—was that a curse?—I laughed, and the dingo vanished.
It was not the first time that thus the white man had been robbed of his prey. For to hold the hand in such circumstances is only prudent.
In the morning the hat of the aboriginal who had saved his father's second-life was missing; but after a short search it was recovered some little distance from the camp—or its remains were discovered, in two parts. The brim was torn from the crown, and a strip of about an inch between them had been bitten out all round.
I reckoned nothing would come amiss to that species of wild animal which would chew up a nigger's hat-band, and for ever after was at night time more or less uneasy about my bicycle's tyres.
The natives of these parts hold pretty generally to this doctrine of metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls: your father, dying, may "jump up whitefellow," or be changed into a kangaroo, an emu, an eagle, or a dingo—mayhap even an ant.
One of the natives was named the equivalent for kangaroo, with something tacked to it. Wherefore he must never taste kangaroo flesh.
It has been written somewhere:—"Australian natives are treacherous. You should never in the bush let one walk behind you. Keep him always in front." A bushman told me that was altogether wrong advice. "If you have any cause to be suspicious of a nigger's intentions," he said, "keep him behind you, and well out of sight at that—even if you have to hit him on the head with a waddy to make him stay there."
This authority was rather violently disposed towards the natives, whom, inter alia, he charged with the atrocious crime of having once kidnapped a dog of his. "If anyone of them starts giving you back answers," said he, "to shoot is about the only way to make quite sure about that one. It's fine," and he laughed, "to see the beggar's jump." He assured me he had, on occasion, known 'em to jump as high as seven feet.