Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 18, 2025
They thirsted for revenge and started in pursuit, not a hundred yards behind the escaping white men. Stobart and his friends reached the clump of timber. Sax looked back. The pursuit had been checked for a few moments. Coiloo was standing in the narrow gap, holding it against a hundred of his fellow tribesmen. Spears whizzed around him on all sides, but for a time he dexterously escaped death.
The club dropped from the murdering warragul's nerveless hand. It missed Stobart's head by a fraction of an inch. Sax picked it up and rushed forward. But death had already come. Arrkroo's tall figure tottered for a moment, then crumpled up and fell to the ground. Mick immediately dashed across the open space, followed by Yarloo and the three other boys. Coiloo was nowhere to be seen.
The man with the mutilated left hand was always one of these, and Stobart gradually made his companions fewer and fewer, till it became quite the recognized thing for him to go off with only this one native. The man's name was a long one, and Stobart shortened it to Coiloo.
Suddenly in the middle of the wildest demonstration of grief Coiloo appeared Coiloo, whom Stobart had saved from death, and whom Mick had treated with such cruelty. He was in a shocking state. The brand-marks had started to fester, and there were burns all over his body. He had come at a critical time. The wailing warraguls looked at his wounds and their excitement got more and more intense.
Coiloo handed the luringa to Sax and disappeared. The boy had seen the effect of the peculiar note which the whirling luringa made. He stepped out into the open, swinging the strangely carved fillet of wood round and round his head. The sound grew louder and louder. It seemed impossible that such a small thing should make so far-carrying a sound. The dancing men stood petrified.
But he too had a more important task to perform just then. He grabbed Sax by the wrist and sprang up the valley with incredible swiftness. The startled white boy was carried along and quickly outdistanced the others. Coiloo gave no explanation of his strange behaviour. He must reach the blacks' camp as soon as possible.
He had already chosen a suitable blazing stick, and was stooping to pick it out of the fire, when he heard Coiloo's name mentioned. He waited for a moment and listened. The men were saying that Coiloo had not come back.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking