"Ay, but it would never have been struck had you not put the axe into my hands," said Inda. "I had forgotten all about it. Our names will live long, brother."
"That will be agreeable, but I wish my nose were not so sore," said Pilla. "And your bruises—how are they?"
"Sore enough—but I had almost forgotten them. Ky, but I am hungry, Pilla!"
"I, too," said Pilla, looking with interest at the great dead body. "Well, at least we have plenty of food—Burkamukk said long ago that Kuperee should be enough for the whole tribe. Let us skin him carefully, for his hide will be a proud trophy to take back to our father—if we can but carry it."
"We shall eat him while it is drying," Inda said. "Then the skin will be lighter, and we shall be exceedingly strong. Come, brother—my hunger grows worse."
They fell to work on the huge carcass with their sharp skinning-knives, made of the thigh-bones of kangaroos. And then befel the most wonderful thing of all.
CHAPTER III
Inda and Pilla took off the black hide of Kuperee, and pegged it out carefully with sharp sticks. Then they came back to the body, and their eyes glistened with satisfaction. Meat is the best thing in the world to a blackfellow, and never before had either seen so much meat. It was almost staggering to think that it was theirs, and to be eaten. All they had feared and suffered became as nothing in the prospect of that tremendous feast.
"Yakai!" mourned Pilla. "We shall never finish it all before it goes bad, not though we eat day and night without ceasing—as I mean to do."
"And I also," agreed Inda. "Let us make ovens before we begin to cut him up—we shall waste less time that way. Some of him will certainly go bad, but we will do our best."