A. J. Dawson

“ The thing that most impressed Finn in the picture he saw was the figure of the black hound, stretched at ease beside the fire, steadily eyeing its master. Every once in a while the man would break a chunk from his damper, or cut a morsel from his meat and toss it to the kangaroo-hound, who opened and closed its jaws like a steel trap, and gulped the gift with portentous solemnity, and absolutely without visible sign of any emotion whatever. The hound showed only watchfulness. Finn heard its jaws snap, and could almost hear the gulp which disposed of each morsel. ”

“ The fan-shaped line of watching dingoes closed in a little as Lupus remounted the rocky ledge, with a blood-curdling snarl and an awe-inspiring exposure of his gleaming fangs. In another instant the two were at grips, and Finn realized that he was engaged in a fight for life, and a far more serious combat than any he had known before. The mere weight of impact with the wolf-dingo was sufficient to tell Finn this, and for the infinitesimal fraction of an instant he felt a sense of fatality and doom when his opponent's tremendously powerful jaws closed over the upper part of his right fore-leg. ”

“ She sprang off at a tangent and, as she made her seventh or eighth bound, terror filled her heart almost to bursting, as a roaring grey cloud swept upon her from her right quarter, and she felt the burning thrust of Finn's fangs in her neck. She sat up valiantly to fight for her life and the young life in her pouch, and her left hind-leg, with its chisel claws, sawed the air like a pump-handle. The dingoes knew that it would be death, for one or two of them, at all events, to face those out-thrust chisels. ”

“ He knew that Tara was never going to move again; the instant his sensitive nostrils touched her still, warm body he knew that. But there had been no killing. That was what baffled Finn, and struck a kind of terror into his heart, to lend poignancy to his sorrow. One more look he gave at his mother's sightless face, this time where it rested on the crook of the Master's arm, and then he sat down on his haunches, and with muzzle raised high poured out his grief in the long-drawn Irish Wolfhound howl; the most melancholy cry in nature. ”

“ The prancing dance of the Native Companions--these birds mate for life and are deeply and devotedly attached one to another--was drawing to its close, when death came to them both like a bolt from the heavens; such a death as one would have chosen for them, since it left no time for fear or mourning, or grief at separation. Their necks were torn in sunder before they realized that they had been attacked, and within the minute their graceful feathered bodies shared the same fate, as the rest of the pack joined Finn and Warrigal and Black-tip. ”

“ The dingo looked over her mate's wounds once more, giving an occasional lick here and there, and then, with a little grunt of gratified pride and content, she curled herself round, after circling three or four times, and went to sleep under the lee of Finn's mighty hind-quarters, her muzzle tucked under the spreading hair of her tail, and one eye, half opened, resting upon her lord.
Two hours later, Warrigal rose softly and went out to inspect the night. She found the world bathed in a shining glory of silken moonlight; bright as day, but infinitely more alluring and mysteriously beautiful. ”

“ Every one of his hunting trails in the neighbourhood of the encampment he ranged with growing thoroughness and care, without finding so much as a mouse with which to satisfy his appetite. Even Koala and Echidna were nowhere to be found. It was as though a blight had descended upon the countryside, and the only living thing Finn saw that morning, besides the crows, was a laughing jackass on the stump of a blasted stringy-bark tree, who jeered at him hoarsely as he passed. ”

“ It was from some central recess of his own personality that the Master's cry of "Finn, boy!" answered the strange cry with which the Wolfhound came to earth at his feet.
But behind them was the pack, and in the pack's eyes what had happened was that their leader had missed his kill; that fear had broken his spring off short, and that now he was at the mercy of the man who, a moment before, had been mere food. For a dingo, no other task, not even the gnawing off of a limb caught in a trap, could require quite so much sheer courage as the attacking of Man in the open--man erect and unafraid. ”

“ As Finn drew closer to the camp-fire, the savoury smell of the stewed mutton the man by the gunyah was eating came sailing down the breeze into his nostrils, emphasizing his hunger to him, and reminding him strongly of the days in which carefully cooked foods had been his portion every day. But the Wolfhound's desire for food was nothing like so keen a thing as his dread of renewed captivity, and his approach to the camp-fire was an illustration of the extreme of animal caution. His powerful limbs were all the time gathered well under him, prepared for instant flight. ”

“ She never even growled when, after feeding till he could feed no more, the insolent grey whelp would pound and paw at her soft dugs, and tug at them with his sharp teeth in sheer wantonness, till they were a network of red scars and scratches. The most the gentle, plebeian little mother would do would be to lie flat, after a while, to protect her dugs--and that for the puppy's own sake--a movement which always brought Finn galumphing over her shoulder to bite her ears and paw her nose, and otherwise seek to provoke breaches of the peace. ”

“ A mother kangaroo was surprised by the ghostly grey fury, at some distance from the rest of her small mob, and, though she fought with the fury of ten males of her species (bitterly conscious of the young thing glued to the teat in her pouch) , she was left a torn and trampled mass of scarcely recognizable fur and flesh, crushed among scrub-roots. Lesser creatures succumbed under the blinding stabs of Finn's feet; and once he leaped, like a cat, clear into the lower branches of a bastard oak tree, and pinned a 'possum into instant death before swinging back to earth on the limb's far side. ”

“ Finn had greater reasoning power, and greater strength of will, than a wild beast. He was robbed of all restraint by his surroundings and by the Professor's absolute and crushing reversal of all his preconceived notions of the relations between man and hound. The snarl of the tiger in his ears, the smell of his own burnt flesh in his nostrils, the pitilessness of the Professor's wholly unexpected attack, filled him with a tumultuous fury of warring instincts which generations of inherited docility were powerless to overcome. ”

“ His sense of smell, never remarkable for its acuteness in detail, had told Finn nothing, save that his quarry in this strange hunting was man. But the Wolfhound's eyes could not mislead him, and in the instant of his suddenly arrested spring--the spring which it had taken every particle of strength in his great body to check--he had known, with a sudden revulsion of feeling which positively stopped the beating of his heart, that this man the pack had trailed was none other than the Man of all the world for him; the man whose person was as sacred as his will to Finn ”

“ Just as Finn, heavily laden, scaled the rocky ledge immediately below the one which flanked the entrance of the den, a shrill cry of mortal anguish fell upon his ears, and thrilled him to the very marrow. The cry came from the inside of the den above him, and he knew it for the cry of one of his children in extremity. That gave Finn the most piercing thrill of paternity he had felt up till this time. He dropped his kill, and leaped with one mighty bound clear over two boulders and a bare stretch of track to the ledge outside the den. ”

“ This great open wild world was certainly quite unlike the mild, half-domesticated and cared-for little patch of wild that Finn had claimed as his hunting-ground beside the Sussex Downs. Just then a laughing jackass started a hoarse chuckle above Finn's head, and a big white cockatoo, startled by the jackass, flew screaming out from the branches of a grey gum, with the agonized note in its cry which these birds seem to favour at all seasons, and quite irrespective of the nature of their occupations at the moment. ”

“ The Australian bush has many varieties of snakes, and quite a good number of them are deadly; though some of those most formidable in appearance are not. Finn had never even seen a snake; so that, though his ignorance made him run many risks that night, he was at least spared all anxiety regarding the deadly folk, their quick tempers and swift methods of attack.
Dawn was not far off when Finn emerged, with heaving flank and lolling tongue, into the green but stony glade which formed the ridge and crest of the Tinnaburra range. ”

“ Then, when it was quite clear that Black-tip had really gone, having taken all the fight he could stand, Warrigal stepped forward mincingly and fell to licking Finn's wounds, with strongly approving tenderness and assiduity. Her mate had fought valiantly and doughtily for Warrigal, and she was proud of him; proud, too, of her own perspicacity and allurements in having drawn him to herself. A savage creature was Warrigal and a brave and quite relentless enemy, the marks of whose fangs more than one fighting member of her race and more than one powerful kangaroo would carry always. ”

“ In the same instant almost, the fox was on his feet, but before he could leap away, Finn's jaws descended on the back of his neck, gripping him like a vice, and shaking him almost as a terrier shakes a rat. With a desperate squirm the fox wriggled earthward from this terrible grip, and, as Finn drew breath, stabbing at the fox with one fore-paw, as he would have stabbed at a still living rabbit, to hold it, Reynard's fangs cut deeply into the loose skin of his chest. ”

“ In the next instant Warrigal had flown at the man's right shoulder with a fierce snarl which called those of her kind who were not cowards to follow her or be for ever accursed.
Warrigal's white fangs slashed down the man's coat-sleeve, and left lines of skin and blood where the cloth gave. For one moment Finn hesitated. Warrigal was his good mate, the mother of his dead children, his loving companion by day and night, during long months past. She concentrated in her own person all the best of his kinship with the wild. ”

“ Finn would have been delighted, really, to make friends with creatures like the bandicoot people, and to enjoy their society at intervals--when he was well fed. But the bandicoots and their kind could never forget that they were, after all, food in the Wolfhound's eyes, and it was not possible to know for certain exactly when his appetite was likely to rise within him and claim attention--and bandicoots. Therefore, full or empty, hunting or lounging, Finn was a scourge and an enemy in the eyes of these small folk, and, as such, a person to be avoided at all cost, and at all seasons. ”

“ From the point of view of one who regarded him as a wild beast, and was without knowledge of the tragic chance which had made so gallant and docile a creature appear in the guise of a wild beast, Finn did actually present both an awe-inspiring and a magnificent spectacle at this moment. His cage was seven feet high, yet at one moment Finn's fore-paws came within a few inches of touching its roof, as he plunged erect and snarling against the partition which separated him from the growling and spitting tiger. ”

“ Sometimes, when the train jolted, the tiger would roll heavily against the iron-sheathed partition between his abode and Finn's, and then Finn would spring to his feet, against the far side of the compartment, every hair on his body erect, his lips drawn right back from the pearl-white fangs they usually sheltered, his sensitive nostrils deeply serrated, and all the forgotten fierceness of bygone generations of Wolfhound warriors and killers concentrated in his long-drawn snarl of resentment and of warning threat. ”

“ But the distance was too great for bunny by three yards, and Finn's jaws snapped his backbone in sunder within six feet of his own burrow. This was hard on the rabbit; but it was no more than one tiny instance of the outworking of Nature's most inexorable law. Finn had killed many rabbits before this evening; but in the past he had merely obeyed his hunting and killing instinct. Now this instinct in him was sharpened by hunger, by having slept on the open earth, and by being conscious of no human control or protection. ”