Thus some hours of the night were passed, but before morning the rest of the sleepers was rudely broken by one of the most appalling roars they had yet heard. They were up and wide awake instantly, with their guns ready and fingers on the triggers!
“It’s draimin’ we must have—”
A rustling in the branches overhead checked him, and next moment the roar was repeated. Larry, with an irresistible feeling of alarm, echoed it and fired right above his head—doing nothing more serious, however, than accelerating the flight of the already horrified monkey. The shot was followed by another roar, which ended in something like a hideous laugh.
“Sure ’tis a hieena!” exclaimed Larry, reloading in violent haste.
“A hyena!” exclaimed Will—“ay, and a black one, too! Come down, Bunco, you scoundrel, else I’ll put a bullet in your thick skull.”
At this invocation the rustling overhead increased, and Bunco dropped upon the platform, grinning from ear to ear at the success of his practical joke.
“Och, ye blackymoor!” cried Larry, seizing the native by the throat and shaking him; “what d’ye mean be such doin’s, eh?”
“Me mean noting,” said Bunco, still chuckling prodigiously; “but it am most glorus fun for fright de bowld Irishesman.”
“Sit down, ye kangaroo, an’ tell us how ye found us out,” cried Larry.
“You heard our shots, I suppose?” said Will. To this Bunco replied that he had not only heard their shots, but had seen them light their fire, and eat their supper, and prepare their couch, and go to sleep, all of which he enjoyed so intensely, in prospect of the joke he meant to perpetrate, that he was obliged to retire several times during the evening to a convenient distance and roar in imitation of a tiger, merely to relieve his feelings without betraying his presence. He added, that the canoe was about five minutes’ walk from where they sat, and somewhat mollified the indignation of his comrades by saying that he would watch during the remainder of the night while they slept.