Warrigal's friendly warning to Finn was not needed. In the same instant that Lupus's hoarse cry fell upon his ears he was awake and alert, and perfectly conscious as to the source of the cry. He knew that it came from the great wolf-dingo, whose passage he had challenged in the dawning of that day. He recognized the voice, and read clearly enough the meaning of the cry. He knew that this was a more considerable enemy than any he had faced as yet, and there was time in the moment of his waking for regret to flash through his mind that the challenge should have come now, while his whole body was scarred with unhealed wounds, and his left thigh was stiff from the punishing slash of the kangaroo's mailed foot. In the next moment he was outside the mouth of the den, his deep, fierce bark rending the silence of the night. The eight dingoes who followed in Lupus's trail heard the bark, and glanced one at another in meaning comment thereon. Never was a leader of men or beasts more cordially hated than Lupus. There was not a dingo who could call his leadership into question; even the young and daring members of the pack who pretended to scoff at the traditional awe in which Tasman was held, admitted the tyrannical mastership of Lupus as something ever-present and unavoidable; but that by no manner of means lessened their cordial hatred of the fierce half-breed, with his massive neck and shoulders that fangs seemed powerless to hurt, his jaws which were as swift as they were mighty to rend, and his claws which were as terrible as those of an old-man kangaroo, and more deadly in action because he had four sets of them. Black-tip experienced a generous sensation of sympathy and pity for Finn, and so did the two friends of his who had fed that night upon good fresh kangaroo flesh. But they, like all the others, were keen to see the coming fight, and--to act accordingly. The question of what was to become of Warrigal had occurred with interest to each one of them, for she was eminently desirable just then to all her kind.