‘It ain’t no bunyip, Steve,’ wailed his wife, as they heard the retreating steps; ‘it’s the “Destryin’ Hangel” as I heerd a parson talk on oncest when I was a kid, an’ that wor the “Last Tramp”—the noise wot shows as the world is comin’ to an ind. It ain’t no use o’ runnin’. We’re all agoin’ to git burnt up wi’ fire an’ bremston! Look out, Steve, an’ see if there’s a big light ennywheres.’
‘Sha’n’t,’ replied Steve. ‘Wot’s the good? If it’s the end o’ the world, wot’s the use o’ lookin’? An’ I b’lieve ’ere’s yer blasted Hangel a-comin’ agen!’
Sure enough, Greg, having had a snack, was returning just to assure the folk that he was doing well; that his belly was half full, and that he was enjoying himself immensely.
So he hrrmped softly round about in the darkness, and scratched his sides against the rough stone fireplace, and took off one of the rafters for a toothpick, and rumbled and gurgled meditatively, feeling that if he could only drop across a couple of quarts of toddy, as in the old Island days, his would be perfect bliss.
All through the hot summer night he passed at intervals from the paddock to the house and back, and all the night those others lay and shivered, and waited for the horror of the Unknown.
Then, a little after sunrise, a long, loud, shrill call was heard, answered on the instant by a sustained hoarse blare, as Greg recognised the cry of his mahout and keeper.
[10]
]And presently Steve, plucking up courage in the light, arose, and, looking out, shouted to his wife triumphantly,—
‘Now, then, Mariar, who’s right about the bunyip! There he goes off home to the waterhole with a black nigger on his back!’
[11]
]DEAD MAN’S CAMP.
One lurid summer, in 1873, I was crossing over from Saint George’s Bridge, on the Balonne, to Mitchell, on the Maranoa. I had been to a rush at Malawal, N.S.W., but as it proved a rank duffer, got up by the local storekeepers in a last effort to keep the township in existence, I made back again by ‘The Bridge,’ on chance of getting a job of droving with some of the mobs of sheep or cattle always passing through the Border town, bound south from the Central and Gulf stations.