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Updated: June 7, 2025
Coiloo's hand was at Sax's neck. He unfastened the string of the luringa and stood up, still hidden from sight. Slowly he whirled the thin slab of wood round his head, hitting it on the ground once or twice to make it spin. The thing gave out a droning sound. The crowd of yelling fiends around the corpse became suddenly quiet. The droning increased to a loud humming. Every eye was turned.
He had no fear of any evil power which Sax might possess, and when the lad stirred uneasily, the black-fellow went on with his work till he had tied the string quite securely. A flap of Sax's camp-sheet was spread out on the sand, and when Eagle had finished with the luringa, he spread out his mutilated hand on the piece of white canvas and made an imprint.
Two slashes of a sharp knife cut the hair rope which bound the captive white man and he was free. There was no time for thanks or congratulations. Sax had stopped swinging the luringa; the voice of Tumana had ceased. Already the natives were reassembling, and it was only a matter of moments before they would swarm down on the rescue party, outnumbering it by fifteen to one.
With this luringa the white boy could travel unharmed amongst the most savage tribes of the desert, and could even enter the wildest of the Musgrave fastnesses and return, a thing which no white man had ever yet done. Eagle looked long at the piece of wood and muttered certain words over it, and then unfastened the hair string and put it round the neck of the sleeping boy.
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.
Both sides were marked with straight lines cut across the breadth of the wood and with circles inside one another, all filled in with a mixture of grease and red ochre. At one end was a hole through which passed a string made of native women's hair. The thing was a luringa a bull-roarer a sacred charm, the most precious object which Eagle could possibly give to his white friend.
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