This all over, once more there was a marching and chanting round the fire, then the boys were taken away and given food for the first time since they left their mothers.
No wonder that the 'supernatural' was mixed up with their impressions of the Boorah: fasting nourishes hallucinations. While the boys were eating, they could hear in the distance other chants, and knew that ceremonies were going on to which they were not yet to be admitted, there being degrees of initiation.
On the fourth day the men took them about ten miles, and camped with them where they could hear faintly in the distance the noise of the main camp; so they knew they were near the place chosen for the Durramunga, or Little Boorah.
Just before dawn next morning each Munthdeegun took his Boorahbayyi, or partially initiated one, to the Durramunga. There was a Boorah ring, but instead of earth grass was heaped all round it. No young women were visible, only the old women, who sang and corroboreed towards the boys. Slowly they came forward, peered at their shoulders, and seeing there the marks, embraced them, shrieking out cries of joy that their boys had borne the tests. They danced round them, then at a sign from the old men embraced them again; and while, the women sang their brumboorah and danced, the boys were taken away by their guardians.
For two moons they remained away, learning much as to sacred things. They were told that the oldest wirreenuns could see in their sacred crystals pictures of the past, pictures of what was happening at a distance in the present, and pictures of the future; some of which last filled their minds with dread, for they said as time went on the colours of the blacks, as seen in these magical stones, seemed to grow paler and paler, until at last only the white faces of the Wundah, or spirits of the dead, and white devils were seen, as if it should mean that some day no more blacks should be on this earth.
The reason of this must surely be that the tribes fell away from the Boorah rites, and in his wrath Byamee stirred from his crystal seat in Bullimah. He had said that as long as the blacks kept his sacred laws, so long should he stay in his crystal seat, and the blacks live on earth; but if they failed to keep up the Boorah rites as he had taught them, then he would move and their end would come, and only Wundah, or white devils, be in their country.
It is said that this prophetic vision was the reason that so many of the first-born half-caste babies were killed, the old wirreenuns seeing in them the beginning of the end.
At the end of two moons they make back towards the place where the Boorah had begun, and where preparations were now being made to receive them.
They camped in the scrub near the old camp of the tribe who had started the Boorah.
That night in the camp the Gayandi was heard again, another ceremony was at hand.