When she told them she had been afraid of him, they all laughed at her. But her husband, the tall man with the red bone through his nose, was very angry because she had left her 'possum rug behind, and asked her if she thought rugs like that grew on wild cherry-trees. He went off at once to see if he could get it back, telling her as he went that if he failed, she need not think she was going to have his. Of course, Murla had known that already.
Meanwhile, Booran had paddled down to the mud island, and, seeing the form in the 'possum rug, lying under the shelter of the great log, he called to it several times, saying, "Come on, now. It is your turn." But no movement came, and at last he grew angry, and hopped out of the canoe and went on to the island, still calling. There was no answer, and he lost his temper and kicked the figure very hard—with the result that he hurt his foot very much. Then he pulled the rug off roughly, and found only a log underneath.
Booran became furious. He had been made to look a fool. For awhile he stamped about the island, screaming in his rage, and when the blacks got to the opposite bank that is how they saw him. Then Booran made up his mind that he would "look out fight," as the blacks do, and kill the husband of the woman.
So he took some mud and smeared it on himself in long lines, so that he might be striped as the blacks are when they go fighting: for a blackfellow does not consider himself dressed for battle until he has painted himself in long white streaks with pipeclay. He was so busy painting, and planning how he would slay Murla's husband, that he did not see a black shadow in the sky. It was another pelican, and he came nearer, puzzled to know what could be this strange thing, so like a pelican and yet striped like a fighting man. He could not make it out, but he decided it could not be right; and so he drove at Booran and struck him in the throat with his great beak, killing him. Then he flew away.
Now the blacks say, there are no black pelicans any more. They are all black and white, just as Booran was when his Death came to him suddenly out of the sky.
The blacks across the river were very much amazed. But when the great black Pelican had sailed away, Murla's husband swam across and got her 'possum rug, which he brought back, tied on top of his head. He gave it back to Murla, and then beat her with his waddy for having been so careless as to leave it behind. So they lived happily ever after.
But the river took Booran's little canoe and whisked it away. It bobbed upon the brown water like a walnut shell, spinning in the eddies, and sailing proudly where the water was clear and free. At each mile the river grew wider and fuller, and the little canoe sped onwards on its breast. Then ahead came a long line of gleaming silver, and the river sang that it had nearly reached the sea. The light canoe rocked over the waters of the bar, but came safely through them; and then it floated away westward, into the sunset.
But the tide brought it back to shore, and the breakers took it and flung it on the rocks, pounding it on their sharp edges until it was no longer a canoe, but only a twisted bit of bark. The waves went back and left it lying on the beach; and some blacks who came along, hungry and cold, were very glad to find it and use it to start their fire, when it was dry. So Booran's canoe was useful to the blacks until the very end.