der,
who in some mysterious manner had become an enemy, to the fallen
man who was now, clearly, a kill. Mere hunger, desperate hunger,
was uppermost in the minds of the three. They quested flesh and
blood from the kill that lay helpless before them.

It was then that Finn outdid himself; it was then that he called
into sudden and violent action every particle of reserve strength
that was left in him. It was then that his magnificent upbringing
stood by him, and the gift of a thousand years of unstained lineage
lent him more than a Wolfhound's strength and quickness; so that,
almost within the passage of as many seconds, he slew three
full-grown dingoes, precisely as a game terrier will slay three rats,
with one crushing snap and one tremendous shake to each. Starved
though they were, these dingoes weighed over forty pounds apiece;
yet when they met with their death between Finn's mighty jaws,
their bodies were flung from him, in the killing shake, to a
distance of as much as five yards.

And then there fell a sudden and complete stillness in that desert
spot, which had seen the end of six lives in as many minutes;
besides the final falling of the Master, which implied, Finn knew
not what.

Finn fell to licking the Master's white, blood-flecked face where
it lay on the ground. And at that, the waiting crows settled down
upon the bodies of the outlying dingoes; so that their dead,
sightless eyes were made doubly sightless in a moment. After long
licking, or licking which seemed to him long, Finn pointed his nose
to the brazen sky, and lifted up his voice in the true Wolfhound
howl, which is perhaps the most penetratingly saddening cry in
Nature.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXXIII

BACK FROM THE WILD

Four men were riding together through the low, burnt-up scrub, and
in front of them, holding their horses at a smart amble to be even
with his jog trot, a naked aboriginal was leading the way on his
own bare feet.

[Illustration: Four men were riding together through the low
burnt-up scrub]

"Blurry big warrigal 'e bin run here!" said the black-fellow
suddenly, as he stooped to examine a footprint in the trail they
were following. He counted the different footprints, and announced
to the horsemen that seven dingoes had followed the trail they were
following at that moment. "Five and two," the black-fellow called
it, ticking the number off on the fingers of one hand. He explained
that these dingoes, led b