er.

"You young whipper-snappers!" he shouted, advancing with threatening
gestures. "You young whipper-snappers! I'll teach you to mind your
own business. Get out of my way."

But the exhausted boys stood firm. At all costs they meant to protect
the bound man from the drover's anger. Mick hesitated for a moment.
He looked at the lads who were so new to the back country and who had
played the game so well. They seemed so young and small to him just
then. Because of his man's strength he could easily have killed them
both, but their very weakness made their obstinate resistance and pluck
seem all the greater. His anger began to die slowly, and his clenched
fists fell to his sides and opened. "I can thrash that nigger in the
morning," he said to himself. And then his real manhood, which anger
had hidden for a time, asserted itself, and he felt ashamed. "After
all," he thought again, "a chap shouldn't hit a man when he's down,
nigger or no nigger."

Finally he spoke aloud. "All right, you boys. I won't touch him
to-night. Leave him where he is till morning. I'm going back to bed."

CHAPTER XX

The Bull-roarer

In half an hour the camp was asleep again. Men like Mick, who live in
the desert and who are constantly facing death in many forms, dismiss
an adventure from their minds as soon as it has happened. The black
stockmen were pretty much like animals, scared out of their wits one
minute and forgetting all about it the next. Sax and Vaughan were sure
that the drover would keep his word, and were so utterly tired out when
they lay down again on their swags, that, in spite of what had just
happened, they fell asleep at once. In fact, Sax did not bother to
wipe the blood off his leg where the whip had cut it.

All the men were soon asleep except one. Eagle, the bound and tortured
warragul, was wide awake. For the first time in his life he was
helpless. Those supple limbs of his had never been bound before, and
he tugged and tugged to be free till he cut his skin against the hard,
unyielding bull-hide ropes. It was no good. Mick was too old a
cattle-man to leave a rope so that it could be loosened by pulling.
The black tried to twist his body till he could touch the green-hide
with his teeth and gnaw it through, but he was bound too tightly to
allow him to do this. Finally a he lay still with the fear of a
captured animal in his heart, and bitter hatred against the man who had
brought hi