One was on the boom, the other on the foot-rope. The topmost man seemed to be hitting rapidly at the one below him, who strove with uplifted arm to shield himself. Perhaps for half a minute this lasted. Then the ship gave her headlong plunge, the crest of a great wave met the descending bows, and when the bitter spray cleared out of our eyes again the lower figure was missing. From the other, overhanging us, a black streak against the sullen sky, came what sounded like a faint cheer. There was a rapid throwing motion of the arm released from the supporting stay, followed by a clink of steel on the roof of the galley. Then came once more the roaring plunge, and slow upheaval as of a creature mortally wounded. But, this time, the booms were vacant, and a man beside me was curiously examining a sheath-knife, bloody from point of blade to tip of wooden handle. Louder shrieked the gale through the strained rigging, and more heavily beat the thundrous seas against the _Dido’s_ sides, as, breathless, drenched and horrified, I staggered into the captain’s state-room. ‘I think I’ve got it now,’ said he, smiling, and holding up a thing like a tin saucepan. THE END. Transcriber’s Note The text contains a lot of dialect spelling, which has been left as printed. Punctuation has been amended where required to clarify the sense of the text. A small number of errors that appear to be typographical rather than authorial have been corrected; otherwise inconsistent spelling and hyphenation (agoin’/a-goin’, anigh/a-nigh, apiece/a-piece, ashen grey/ashen-grey, befel/befell, black fellow/black-fellow, bulkhead/bulk-head, close hauled/close-hauled, dark blue/dark-blue, doorposts/door-posts, enquiries/inquiries, far inland/far-inland, fo’c’sle/fo’c’stle, greenhide/green-hide, half way/half-way, head sea/head-sea, highly connected/highly-connected, lifelike/life-like, lookout/look-out, main deck/main-deck, middle age/middle-age, mopoke/mo-poke, native born/native-born, new chum/new-chum, newcomer/new-comer, out an’ out/out-an’-out, p’raps/p’r’aps, rain water/rain-water, remarkable looking/remarkable-looking, rope coils/rope-coils, saddlestraps/saddle-straps, soger/sojur, sojur ants/sojur-ants, such like/such-like, thundrous/thunderous, topsail/top-sail, upturned/up-turned, viâ/via) have been retained as printed. End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Steve Brown's Bunyip and other Stories, by James Arthur Barry and Rudyard Kipling