for all the shortness of food, which was thinning the flesh
over Finn's haunches now, it was another cause which led him to
swerve from the north-westerly course in a south-westerly
direction. He paid no particular heed to old Tufter's continuous
growls about the direction taken by the pack under his leadership;
but what he was forced to notice was the fact that for two whole
days no water had been seen, and the lolling tongues of the young
whelps were in consequence so swollen that they could not close
their jaws. Throughout one weary night, the pack loped along in
dogged silence in a south-westerly direction, their eyes blazing in
the keen look out for game; dry, dust-encrusted foam caked upon
their lips, and fierce anxiety in the heart of every one of them.

Then, in the brazen dawning of a day in which the sun seemed to
thrust out great heat upon the baked earth even before it appeared
above the horizon, the pack checked suddenly as Black-tip drew
Finn's attention to a pair of Native Companions seen in the act of
floating down to earth from the lower limbs of a shrivelled red-gum
tree. The bigger of these two great cranes had a stature of
something over five feet, and his fine blue-grey plumage covered an
amount of flesh which would have made a meal for quite a number of
dingoes. Yet it was not so much as food, but rather as a guide and
indication, that Black-tip regarded the cranes. He knew that they
would not be very far from water. The way in which the pack melted
into cover in the dim, misty light of the coming day was very
remarkable. For several miles now they had been travelling through
a country less arid than the plains they had traversed during the
previous two days, and now, while seeming to disappear into the
earth itself--even as Echidna actually could and would, though the
earth were baked hard--the members of the pack actually found cover
by slinking low amongst a sort of wiry scrub growth with which the
ground hereabouts was dotted.

It was thus that Finn saw for the first time the strange dance of
the Native Companion. To and fro, and up and down beneath their
scraggy gum-tree, the two great cranes footed it in a sort of
grotesque minuet. There was a strange sort of angularity about all
their movements, but, withal, a certain grace, bizarre and notable.
And while the Native Companions solemnly paced through what was
really a dance of death for them, Finn and Black-tip and Warrigal
stalked them a