"Go on,"
she said, "we're safe now," so Dot made more crying, and her noises and
the others would have frightened anyone who had heard them in that lonely
place, with the wind storming in the trees, and the black clouds flying
over the moon. It frightened the black fellows directly.
They stopped in their headlong speed, shouting all together in their
shrill voices, "The Bunyip! The Bunyip!" and they tumbled over one
another in their hurry to get away from a place haunted, as they thought,
by that wicked demon which they fear so much. At full speed they fled
back to their camp, with the sound of Dot's cries, and the mysterious
bellowing noise, following them on the breeze; and they never stopped
running until they regained the light of their camp fires. There they
told the gins, in awe-struck voices, how it had been no Kangaroo they had
hunted, but the "Bunyip", who had pretended to be one. And the black gins'
eyes grew wider and wider, and they made strange noises and exclamations,
as they listened to the story of how the "Bunyip" had led the huntsmen to
that dreadful place. How it had torn one of the dogs to pieces, and had
leaped over the precipice into Dead Man's Gully, where it had cried like a
picaninny, and bellowed like a bull. No one slept in the camp that night,
and early the next morning the whole tribe went away, being afraid to
remain so near the haunt of the dreaded "Bunyip.
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