Page:The Native Tribes of South Australia (1879).djvu/212

 138 POWERS OF ENDURANCE AND PRESENCE OF MIND. The Narrinyeri are not destitute of powers of endurance and some presence of mind. One day two men were coming in two bark canoes from Point Sturt. The water in the channel is twentyfive feet deep, and consequently the swell is very heavy in a strong wind. They started on a calm day, propelling themselves with fishing spears. Suddenly a heavy squall came up from the north-west. Immediately their frail vessels were swept from beneath them, and they were left struggling in the waves. It was impossible to return; so they bravely set themselves to swim acrossabout four miles. They laboured on, until at last one of them struck down his fishing spear (which they had both retained) and felt the bottom about ten feet below. They swam a little further and then stuck their spears into the ground and rested on the tops of them. When refreshed they again swam on, and after three or four such rests reached the shore of Point Macleay. No doubt as they were swimming they would all the while be in dread lest Multyewanki, the lake demon, should seize them. There is a legend that once upon a time a man’s child was playing on the shore, and he was seized and carried to the bottom of the lake by a Multyewanki. The father tied a line round his waist, got his friends to hold it, and dived in after his boy; but first he performed certain incantations. When he got to the bottom he saw Multyewankis lying asleep in various places, and discovered his child amongst them; so he seized his son, and, giving the signal to his friends, was dragged out, and he and his boy both recovered. One night Peter, the chief of the Point Malcolm tribe, was sleeping in a native hut, with a lot of other people. As he lay dozing he felt a large snake crawl up his naked body under his opossum-rug. Now, he knew that if he jumped up he would most likely get bitten; so he carefully put his hand down and seized the reptile by the back of the neck and held him at arm’s length. And now he felt that it would not do to throw the venomous creature from him, lest it should fall on some of the surrounding sleepers and bite them; and yet he felt that it would soon writhe itself from his grasp, so he brought the snake’s head