t footed and the keenest
eyed of the young men of the tribe. Ere long, back they came to the
camp with the news of the fate of the Bilbers.

That night was the corrobboree held. The women sat round in a
half-circle, and chanted a monotonous chant, keeping time by hitting,
some of them, two boomerangs together, and others beating their rolled
up opossum rugs.

Big fires were lit on the edge of the scrub, throwing light on the
dancers as they came dancing out from their camps, painted in all
manner of designs, waywahs round their waists, tufts of feathers in
their hair, and carrying in their hands painted wands. Heading the
procession as the men filed out from the scrub into a cleared space in
front of the women, came Narahdarn. The light of the fires lit up the
tree tops, the dark balahs showed out in fantastic shapes, and weird
indeed was the scene as slowly the men danced round; louder clicked the
boomerangs and louder grew the chanting of the women; higher were the
fires piled, until the flames shot their coloured tongues round the
trunks of the trees and high into the air. One fire was bigger than
all, and towards it the dancers edged Narahdarn; then the voice of the
mother of the Bilbers shrieked in the chanting, high above that of the
other women. As Narahdarn turned from the fire to dance back he found a
wall of men confronting him. These quickly seized him and hurled him
into the madly-leaping fire before him, where he perished in the
flames. And so were the Bilbers avenged.

16. MULLYANGAH THE MORNING STAR

Mullyan, the eagle hawk, built himself a home high in a yaraan tree.
There he lived apart from his tribe, with Moodai the opossum, his wife,
and Moodai the opossum, his mother-in-law. With them too was Buttergah,
a daughter of the Buggoo or flying squirrel tribe. Buttergah was a
friend of Moodai, the wife of Mullyan, and a distant cousin to the
Moodai tribe.

Mullyan the eagle hawk was a cannibal. That was the reason of his
living apart from the other blacks. In order to satisfy his cannibal
cravings, he used to sally forth with a big spear, a spear about four
times as big as an ordinary spear. If he found a black fellow hunting
alone, he would kill him and take his body up to the house in the tree.
There the Moodai and Buttergab would cook it, and all of them would eat
the flesh; for the women as well as Mullyan were cannibals. This went
on for some time, until at last so many black fellows we