ng in rows on the ground, beating
boomerangs and spears together, or striking bags of skin with sticks,
to make an accompaniment to the wailing song they sang. Sometimes the
women would cease beating the skin bags, to clap their hands and strike
their sides, yelling the words of the corroboree song as the painted
figures, like fiends and skeletons, danced before the row of fires.

It was a terrifying sight to Dot. "Oh, Kangaroo!" she whispered, "they
are dreadful, horrid creatures."

"They're just Humans," replied the Kangaroo, indulgently.

"But white Humans are not like that," said Dot.

"All Humans are the same underneath, they all kill Kangaroos," said the
Kangaroo. "Look there! They are playing at killing us in their dance."

Dot looked once more at the hideous figures as they left the fire and
behaved like actors in a play. One of the black fellows had come from
a little bower of trees, and wore a few skins so arranged as to make
him look as much like a Kangaroo as possible, whilst he worked a stick
which he pretended was a Kangaroo's tail, and hopped about. The other
painted savages were creeping in and out of the bushes with their
spears and boomerangs as if they were hunting, and the dressed-up
Kangaroo made believe not to see them, but stooped down, nibbling grass.

"What an idea of a Kangaroo!" sniffed Dot's friend, "why, a real
Kangaroo would have smelt or heard those Humans, and have bounded away
far out of sight by now."

"But it's all sham," said Dot; "the black man couldn't be a real
Kangaroo."

"Then it just shows how stupid Humans are to try and be one," said her
friend. Humans think themselves so clever, she continued, "but just
see what bad Kangaroos they make--such a simple thing to do, too! But
their legs bend the wrong way for jumping, and that stick isn't any
good for a tail, and it has to be worked with those big, clumsy arms.
Just see, too, how those skins fit! Why it's enough to make a
Kangaroo's sides split with laughter to see such foolery!" Dot's
friend peeped at the black's acting with the contempt to be expected of
a real Kangaroo, who saw human beings pretending to be one of those
noble animals. Dot thought the Kangaroo had never looked so grand
before. She was so tall, so big, and yet so graceful: a really
beautiful creature.

"Well, that's over!" remarked the Kangaroo, as one of the blacks
pretended to spear the dressed-up black fellow, and all the rest began
t