derstood several aboriginal languages, but this
one was wild and harsh and quiet strange to him.

Sitting firmly but easily in the saddle, the white man rode quietly up
to the savages. When he was only a horse's length away, he drew rein
and looked at them. Several of the men stepped back, flung their
spear-arms behind their heads, fastened the woomeras, and prepared to
throw. But the long quivering shafts never left their hands. One or
two jumped out from the crowd and swayed back their supple black bodies
to give additional force to a boomerang. But the heavy curved weapon
never started on its death-dealing course. Here and there a man sprang
up in the air and waved his spears wildly over his head, and shouted
words of hatred towards the white man and of encouragement to his
companions. But the result of it all was nothing worse than
threatening and noise.

Stobart sat and looked at them. He was a famous horse-breaker and a
noted man with cattle, and had found, in dealing both with animals and
with men, the power which his eye possessed. It was the focusing-point
of all the force and personality of a remarkable man.

But who can quell and keep on quelling the passions of fifty savages
who have tasted blood? One man broke the spell of the drover's steady
glance. He jumped to one side and hurled a boomerang. Stobart dodged.
It passed him and whizzed on, turning and turning for nearly two
hundred yards, so great had been the force behind it. The man had put
so much energy into the throw that his body was jerked forward till he
was standing beside the horseman.

A great shout went up when the weapon left the hand of the
black-fellow, but it was cut off suddenly to amazed silence when the
boomerang passed on and left the white unharmed. This man must be a
devil. At once every spear was raised, poised in the woomera, and
directed, not at the white man, but at the native who had dared to pit
his strength against a supernatural power. Stobart understood the
situation immediately, and so did the unfortunate black, who hunched
his shoulders ready for death.

Suddenly one of those reckless impulses came to the drover which come
only to great men, and which are often the turning-points of their
lives. He jabbed spurs into his horse's flanks and wheeled it like a
flash between the cringing native and his would-be murderers. At the
same time he raised his hand and shouted:

"Stop!"

Not one of them had ev