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Why mayn't I get across and play there?" "The river is too deep, child, and the Bunyip lives in the water under the stones." "Who are the children that play across there?" "Black children, likely." "No white children?" "Pixies; don't go near 'em child; they'll lure you on, Lord knows where. Don't get trying to cross the river, now, or you'll be drowned."
O'Halloran was kind enough to proffer his hospitality," I replied, pulling the pack-saddle off Bunyip. "By the way, I'm to tell you that he'll be home presently." "Nat a fear but he'll be home at mail-time. An' a purty house he's got fur till ax a sthranger intil." "Now, Mrs. O'Halloran, it's the loveliest situation I've seen within a hundred miles," I replied, as I set Cleopatra at liberty.
Rum won't have no more effect on him than tea would on you and me. You try another idea, sir. What do you say to frightening them black fellows overboard? They're a rum lot; just like a pack o' children. Frightened o' bogies. Show 'em a good scarecrow or tatty dooly, as the Scotch folk call it, and they'd think it was what they call a bunyip." "What's a bunyip?"
"I thought that your good old Bunyip would look in on us before long," said Courtland. "There's no possibility of discussing delicate points in theology without him." "I think we had better go home," said Ella. "We must have some consideration for our host," said Courtland. "We didn't all play the part of Cagliostro to-night."
Billy himself had pushed his cause as bravely as possible, and had in fact visited the Little Black Billabong, where he always maintains he had seen the great Bunyip. But after watching one night, they tried to push on to the Debil-debil Waterhole.
"Much good she'd have been to you with the blacks, and their dogs after you, if we Bitterns hadn't played that old trick of ours of scaring them with our big voices. He! he! he!" it chuckled, "how they did run when we tuned up! They thought the Bunyip had got them this time. Didn't we laugh!"
In many places the gradients are very steep to avoid cuttings. By leaving Melbourne at 6-50 a.m. Sale is reached about 1, and a very tedious and dusty journey it is. Near Bunyip we pass the borders of an enormous swamp of 90,000 acres, called Koo-Wee-Rup, which is about to be drained, and will then form rich agricultural land.
'He had promised his sweetheart, he said, 'that he would bring back enough meat for her father's house to feast on for three days, and though they could not eat the little Bunyip, her brothers and sisters should have it to play with. So, flinging his spear at the mother to keep her back, he threw the little Bunyip on to his shoulders, and set out for the camp, never heeding the poor mother's cries of distress.
The old men were sitting in front, the children were playing, and the women chattering together, when the little Bunyip fell into their midst, and there was scarcely a child among them who did not know that something terrible was upon them. 'The water! the water! gasped one of the young men; and there it was, slowly but steadily mounting the ridge itself.
"Jim-jam, be jiggered!" cried Reynolds. "By ripes, I ought t' kno a jim-jam when I see one, I've met plenty. Tell yeh, I'm ez sober ez a turtle, an' I seen bin with me own naked eyes, not three yards off, jumpin' round on th' road, howlin' somthin' awful an' shakin' a bottle in the air." Peters thought it might be a bunyip. He had heard of a bunyip in Pig Creek.
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