For two whole minutes Finn glared down at the body of the dingo, while licking the blood from his own lips, and working the torn skin of his body backward and forward as though it tickled him. Then he turned to look to Jess. And then an extraordinary thing happened; the sort of thing which does not happen save in the life of a dingo; the thing, in short, that couldn't happen, but that just is, sometimes. That dingo's glazing eyes opened wide, and looked at Finn's back. Then the slain dingo (Finn had almost torn out its throat) dragged itself to its feet and staggered off like a drunken man toward the bush. A feeble snarl escaped from Jess, whose head faced this way. Finn, who had been licking her, wheeled like a cat, and in that amazing moment saw the dingo he supposed he had killed staggering towards the scrub thirty paces distant. Five seconds later the still living dingo was on its back, and its throat was being scattered over the surrounding ground. In his fury Finn did actually tear out the beast's jugular vein, practically severing the head from the trunk, smashing the vertebrae, and tearing open the chest of the dead creature as well. When Wallaby Bill came to look at that corpse some hours later he said-- "Well, by ghost! If I didn't tell that Wolf this very morning that he was a mighty good sort. Wolf, you can say I said that John L. Sullivan and Peter Jackson, and the Wild Man o' Borneo were suckin' infants in arms to you. My colonial oath, but that blessed dingo has been killed good an' plenty, and a steam-hammer couldn't kill him no more!" There was a wallaby lying beside the fire, Finn having been too busy licking his own wounds and comforting Jess to think of feeding, though common prudence had reminded him to bring in his kill from the edge of the clear patch. Bill gave a deal of time and attention to Jess that night, but Finn was fed royally on roughly cooked wallaby steaks and damper. But even upon this special occasion the Wolfhound, still mindful of his awful circus experience, refused to come within touch of the man. [Illustration] CHAPTER XXII A BREAK-UP IN ARCADIA Jess's struggles on the day of the dingo fight naturally retarded the healing of her wound; but, before the week was out, Bill was able to remove his rude stitches, and the great gash showed every sign of healing cleanly. Yet, in spite of the kangaroo-hound's wonderful hardihood and her advantages in the matter of pure, healing air, almost another week had passed before she was able to move about round the camp, and a full ten days more were gone before she cared to resume her old activities.