Page:More Australian legendary tales.djvu/65

 alive. Leaving the bodies to the hawks and crows, Tirita and his tribe went back to the Callawatta.

The next season they determined to hunt on the hunting grounds of their dead enemies. But when they, reached them they camped some distance away from the scene of the slaughter, lest the spirits of the dead should molest them.

At night they saw strange lights moving on that spot, then they knew that the spirits were indeed abroad.

The next morning they went for water to the Boulka, or lake. How it glistened in the sun! But was it water? They paused and looked. No water was that before them. On they went and then saw that the large lake had been turned to salt. Then the tribe were frightened, and turned back to their own hunting grounds, for no man likes to dare the spirits. Tirita said he would follow them, but first would he go to where bleached the bones of his enemies, it would give him joy, he said, to see them. With hatred still strong in his heart he went. But surely, he thought, must his eyes be dazzled with the glare from the salt lake before him, for he saw no bones in the place where his enemies had been, only masses of brilliant red flowers spreading all over the scene of the massacre, flowers such as he had never seen before.

As he was gazing with a dazed expression at them, there stretched down from the sky a spear with a barb that caught him in the side and lifted him from his feet. As he hung in mid air he heard a voice, though he saw nothing, say: "Cowardly murderer of children and women, how dare you set foot on the spot made sacred for ever by the blood that you spilt, the blood of the Little Chief, his mother and