306 TROPIC DAYS 



From the strained and expectant attitude of the boy, 

 it was apparent that he was hunting. He stepped 

 cautiously out of cover, and, using a wommera of dark 

 wood with oval clutches of white shell, threw a spear 

 into the long grass. A kangaroo, mad with fear and 

 pain, staggered forward, knowing not whence fate had 

 struck it, and, lurching helplessly, sank among the ferns 

 on the margin of the water. Ignoring my presence, 

 the boy, having completed the hunter's office with a 

 blow from a nulla-nulla, called in a thin, shrill voice: 



"Yano-lee 1" (We go this way). 



In a few seconds a young girl of his own race stepped 

 through the leafy screen. She cast casual glances at 

 the dead kangaroo, and without saying a word to her 

 companion came to the pool, stooped down beside me, 

 and drank eagerly and noisily, using a scoop improvised 

 from a leaf. Her back glistened with perspiration, 

 and her coarse, fuzzy, uncleanly hair ceased in tufts 

 on her neck. It was a slim and shapely little figure. 

 The plumes of the orchid, golden and sjTupy, swayed 

 over her heedless head and seemed to caress it. Her 

 eyes, round, large, and brimful of the bewildering eager- 

 ness of youth, relieved the unobtrusive expansiveness 

 of her nose and almost atoned for her savage lips. 

 Though almost touching me, the most shy, wild creature 

 of the bush seemed unconscious of my presence. She 

 was in fact and deed : 



"We have the receipt of fern-seed; we walk invisible." 

 I was the phantom — invisible, intangible. The pair 

 beside, the unembarrassed realities. 



Do phantoms reflect ? That privilege was mine. 

 Let memory treasure every detail of the scene, every 

 vestige of its incidents. 



"Kidj-o-bang" had vanished. There was its cell. 

 A full and stainless stream, in a gurgling cataract, 



