Page:Outlawandlawmak00praegoog.djvu/272

260 Will you let me have him, Mr. Trant? He shall be well treated, I promise you."

"Pompo would pine and die if he were parted from me," said Trant. "Do you know, Lady Waveryng, that I've got a sort of mesmeric power over that black boy? I believe if I told him to cut off his hand he'd do it."

"Is he as devoted to Mr. Blake?" asked Ina.

"No," said Blake; "it's fear keeps him in subjection, as far as I am concerned—fear and devotion to Trant. I haven't got Trant's knack with the blacks."

The gins pressed closer. The camp odour became objectionable, even in the fresh night air, and Lady Waveryng shuddered. Lord Horace came excitedly towards them. He had been in the scrub dressing-room of the warriors. He confessed to having plied them with rum. " Now look out, Em. They are going to begin."

There was a signal shout—a sort of Banshee cry, ending in a warwhoop. The gins scuttled off to gather up their boomerangs, and squatted in a semicircle in two rows along the line of the fires. Then sounded the music—a queer savage chant in long monotonous cadences, with something at once eerie and exciting in its strains. The gins in the front row sang, those behind swung their boomerangs together, keeping clanking time to the music. From the blackness of the scrub a cohort of grotesque forms came stealing. Suddenly the huge bonfire, which had been made of quickly inflammable material, blazed forth, and the circle of the corroboree was a glow of red light. The gigantic figure in the centre looked like some monstrous idol. It had a rough hewn painted head, gleaming white and dead black, cut out of new peeled bark and with withes of grey-green moss floating down its shoulders. "Baròlin, Baròlin," shouted the half-castes. It was a suggestion of the Waterfall rock, the legend of the great chief. The figure was built up in bark. Its solemn arms were extended as if for prey. Brilliant patterned handkerchiefs in crimson and yellow were drawn about its neck, and a red blanket concealed the lower part of the form. The red flames of the bonfire leaped,