Page:Native Tribes of South-East Australia.djvu/808

782 carrying the breasts of the girls hanging on his chest. He danced to the onlookers, in the front ranks of whom two young men, the Noas of the girls, were sitting. These immediately recognised the breasts of their Noas, and when the Pinnaru retired, dancing, they stuck their Kandri in the ground before them. When he again danced near to them, each seized his Kandri, and struck him, so that both his legs were broken. Then they split his head open, and at the same time all the people fell upon him, and even the children struck him. Then they buried him, and laying his bag at the head of the grave, they went elsewhere. One day a crow perched itself on the grave of Mandra-mankana. Three times it knocked with its beak on the wood which was lying on the grave, and cried, "Ka! Ka! Ka!" Then the dead man woke up, and came out of the grave, and looked round, but no one was to be seen. Then he looked for footprints, and found that the people had all gone in the same direction, but by three different ways. While the strong and hale ones had gone, some to the right and some to the left, hunting as they went along, the old and the sick had gone straight on, between the two other tracks. These he followed till he came to the neighbourhood of their new camp, and he concealed himself in the bushes near where they were busy in the creek, driving the fish together to catch them. They had pulled up bushes and grass, and with them were driving the fish before them in heaps. Mandra-mankana kept himself concealed in the water, and opening his mouth he sucked in and swallowed the water, fish, grass, and men. Some few who were at a distance, observing that their comrades, and nearly all those who were fishing, had disappeared, and looking round to see where they had gone to, saw with alarm that the monster in the water had surrounded them with his arms. Only a few of them escaped by jumping over them. The Mura-mura Kanta-yulkana, looking after them, gave to each, as he ran, his Murdu name.

Those who ran to the north were—