Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 1, 1890.djvu/71

Rh dugong harpoon, but all the men accompanied the two warriors, contrary to the latter’s wishes.

When close to the Dorgai’s house (probably a hollow rock or cave) one man first looked inside, and made a sign to his companions that the Dorgai was asleep. The two champions inserted the dart into the shaft of the harpoon, and whilst all the men formed a ring round the dwelling, they speared the Dorgai, and the men said, “What he sleep, he dead! look at the bones of our boys!” and all the fathers wept.

Manilbau and Salsalkazi then pulled their darts out of the Dorgai, and all returned to Matu, and fed on turtle, intending to go to Badu on the morrow. Early in the morning they returned home, and said to the assembled crowd, “Dorgai take all boys, take one turtle-shell turtle too; Dorgai eat all, now he dead.” All the mothers and relatives mourned in their houses.

Once upon a time a baby-boy named Upi lived in Badu. One day his mother, wanting to go into the bush to make her garden and not wishing to take Upi with her, put him in a basket, which she hung up in the house near the open door. A strong south-east wind was blowing, and after some time had elapsed a gust of wind blew down the basket and carried it outside the house on to some grass, and Upi rolled out. As the mother was digging she broke the stick used for that purpose, and at once she thought something amiss. “I leave my boy,” she spoke to herself; “good, I go look, perhaps someone he take him.” So she returned home, to find neither basket nor baby in the house. Crying all the while, she searched far and near outside the house, but could not find her boy; for it had so happened that a man and his wife had passed that way and taken the child.

The man, as usual, was walking in front, followed at a