Page:The Aborigines of Victoria and Riverina.djvu/48

43 his finely-developed figure; the muscles down his back stand out as distinctly and hard as though they had been fashioned from straight clean saplings, and the biceps of his legs and arms looking like knotted ropes stretched to their fullest tension.

When he has satisfied himself as to the arena, he stalks majestically into its centre, gives one defiant shout, stoops forward, places his hands on his thighs just above the knees, and in that position remains perfectly still, as though he were merely a bronze statue, instead of a muscular savage full of life, with the excited blood coursing exultantly through his throbbing veins.

His patience is not tested very severely, however, as his challenge of defiance has scarcely ceased, when an equally muscular competitor starts out from the camp at a smart run, which he continues, until within about two yards of his opponent, when he stops as suddenly as though his progress had been stayed by a bullet. The position he assumes when he thus stops, is precisely similar to that of his adversary. For a few moments they remain in this statuesque attitude; then they begin to sway from side to side, glaring at each other the while, as though they were veritable enemies about to begin an encounter which could only terminate in the death of one or both. All at once, and without any signal, they make a simultaneous spring at each other, coiling their sinewy arms and legs round each other as opportunity offers, endeavouring by every ruse to gain the advantage in the first of the struggle. When closed in the struggle, they twist and screw their oily bodies into all kinds of contortions, raising each other from the ground.