Atondido Stories
have heard voices? See; look round; I am alone." Bewildered, the
stranger would look round and say in a puzzled tone of voice:
"Where are they all gone? As I came I heard babies crying, men
calling, and women laughing; many voices I heard but you only
I see."
"And only I am here. The wind must have stirred the branch-
es of the balah trees, and you must have thought it was the wail-
ing of children, the laughing of the gouggourgahgah you heard,
and thought it the laughter of women and mine must have been
the voice as of men that you heard. Alone in the bush, as the
shadows fall, a man breeds strange fancies. See by the light of
this fire, where are your fancies now? No women laugh, no ba-
bies cry, only I, Weedah, talk." As Weedah was talking he kept
edging the stranger towards the fire; when they were quite close
to it, he turned swiftly, seized him, and threw him right into the
middle of the blaze. This scene was repeated time after time, un-
til at last the ranks of the black fellows living round the camp of
Weedah began to get thin.
Mullyan, the eagle hawk, determined to fathom the mystery,
for as yet the black fellows had no clue as to how or where their
friends had disappeared. Mullyan, when Beeargah, his cousin,
returned to his camp no more, made up his mind to get on his
track and follow it, until at length he solved the mystery. After
following the track of Beeargah, as he had chased the kangaroo
to where he had slain it, on he followed his homeward trail.
Over stony ground he tracked him, and through sand, across
plains, and through scrub. At last in a scrub and still on the track
of Beeargah, he heard the sounds of many voices, babies crying,
women singing, men talking. Peering through the bush, finding
the track took him nearer the spot whence came the sounds, he
saw the grass humpies. "Who can these be?" he thought.
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