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One of the draught-horses cropped the couch-grass round about them. Now and again a flying-fox circled noiselessly overhead, and "MOPOKE! MOPOKE!" came dismally from the ridge and from out the lonely-looking gully. A star fell, lighting up a portion of the sky, but Dad did not remark it. In a while he said: "How old are you, Dave?" Dave made a mental calculation before answering.
Dave said, and, half-anxious, half-afraid, we gazed into the fire and thought and thought. Then we stared, nervously, into the night, and listened for Dad's return, but heard only the wind and the mopoke. At dawn he appeared again, with a broad smile on his face, and told us that mother had got another baby a fine little chap. Then we knew why Mrs. Brown had been staying at our place.
I can picture his satisfaction on hearing it." "Golly, Dick, that's no mopoke!" was Purdy's comment as they emerged into the rain-swept street. "A crafty devil, if ever I see'd one." "Henry Ocock seems to me to be a singularly able man," replied Mahony drily.
Then, just as I thought daybreak was near, a great mopoke flits close over our heads without any rustling or noise, like the ghost of a bird, and begins to hoot in a big, bare, hollow tree just ahead of us. Hoo-hoo! hoo-hoo! The last time I heard it, it made me shiver a bit. Now I didn't care. I was a desperate man that had done bad things, and was likely to do worse.
We couldn't do better than we're doing now. It's rather slow, but we'll have a good cheque by Christmas. 'I'm half a mind to tell Warrigal to go back and say we're not on, I said. 'Lots of other chaps would join without making any bones about it. 'Hoo hoo hoo hoo, sounded once more the night-bird from the black tree outside. 'D the bird! I believe he's the devil in the shape of a mopoke!
I don't expect he'll ride straight up to the door. He was right. The horse hoofs stopped just inside a thick bit of scrub, just outside the open ground on which the hut stood. After a few seconds we heard the cry of the mopoke. It's not a cheerful sound at the dead of night, and now, for some reason or other, it affected Jim and me in much the same manner.
I rose fully three feet into the air without conscious effort, and thenceforth pursued my difficult way with a subjective discontent which, I fear, did little honour to my philosophy; thinking, to confess the truth, what an advantage it would be if man, figuratively a mopoke, could become one in reality when all the advantage lay in that direction; also, feeling prepared to wager my official dignity against a pair of that Longfellow would never have apostrophised the welcome, the thrice-prayed-for, the most fair, the best-beloved Night, if he had known what it was to work his passage through pitch-black purgatory, in a state of paradise nudity, with the incongruity of the association pressing on his mind.
And never again did his wives see him though every night they heard his cry of "Mooregoo, mooregoo." But though they never saw their husband, they saw a night hawk, the Mopoke, and as that cried always, "Mooregoo, moregoo," as their husband had cried in his agony, they knew that he must have turned into the bird. After a time the women were changed into Mooninguggahgul, or mosquito birds.
And never again did he see or hear of his wives or his children. Mooregoo the Mopoke had been camped away by himself for a long time. While alone he had made a great number of boomerangs, nullah-nullahs, spears, neilahmans, and opossum rugs.
Bibbil POPULAR-LEAVED GUM Bumble CAPPARIS MITCHELLIANNI Birah WHITEWOOD Beebuyer YELLOW FLOWERING BROOM Illay HOP BUSH Mirrie WILD CURRANT BUSH Mooregoo SWAMP OAK BELAH Mungoongarlee LARGEST IGUANA Mouyi WHITE COCKATOO Beeleer BLACK COCKATOO Wungghee WHITE NIGHT OWL Mooregoo MOPOKE Narahdarn BAT Bahloo MOON Euloowirrie RAINBOW Bibbee WOODPECKER Billai CRIMSON WING PARROT Durrahgeegin GREEN FROG.
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