Presently the scrub grew thicker, and, heated more than ever by the exertion of pushing his huge body through an undergrowth of pine and wattle, he hailed with delight the sight of a big waterhole, still and dark, in the very heart of it. Descending the slope at the far side of the thickly-grassed, open glade, Steve Brown, driving a couple of ‘lost’ horses, paused in dismay and astonishment at sight of the immense beast, black, shining wetly, and sending up thick jets of water into the sunlight to an accompaniment of a continuous series of grunts and rumbling noises. ‘_Hrrmp! hrrmp!_’ blared Greg, in friendly greeting, as he caught sight of the figure staring fascinated. And then he laughed to himself as he saw how the loose horses, snorting with terror, galloped off one way, and the horseman another. But it was getting late; so, coming out of the water, and striking a well-beaten pad, he followed it. Supper time was approaching, and he kept his ears open for the shrill cry of Hassan Ali. Meanwhile Steve had made a bee-line on the spur for home, with some vague idea surging through his dull brain of having caught a glimpse of an Avenging Power. It is mostly in this way that anything of the sort strikes the uneducated conscience. ‘What’s the matter now?’ asked his wife as he entered, pale, and with hurried steps. ‘You looks pretty badly scared. Did the traps spot yer a-plantin’ them mokes, or what?’ ‘Traps be hanged!’ replied Steve. ‘I seen somethin’ wuss nor traps. I seen the bunyip down at the big waterhole.’ ‘Gam, yer fool!’ exclaimed his wife, who was tall, thin, sharp-faced, and freckled, like himself. ‘What are you a-givin’ us now? Why, yer gittin’ wuss nor a black fellow wi’ yer bunyips!’ ‘Well,’ said Steve, fanning himself with his old cabbage-tree hat, and glancing nervously out of the door, ‘I’ll tell yer how it was. Ye knows as how I dropped acrost that darkey’s mokes when he was camped at the Ten Mile. Well, o’ course, I takes ’em to the water in the scrub—you knows the shop—intendin’ to hobble ’em out till such time as inquiries come this road. Well, jist as I gets in sight o’ the water I seen, right in the middle of it, I seen—I seen—’ but here he paused dead for want of a vocabulary. ‘Well, thick-head, an’ wot was it ye seed—yer own hugly shadder, I s’pose?’ said Mrs Brown, as she caught up and slapped the baby playing with a pumpkin on the floor. ‘Look better on yer, it would, to wind me up a turn o’ water, an’ it washin’ day to-morrer, ’stead o’ comin’ pitchin’ fairy stories.’ ‘It warn’t,’ replied Steve, taking no notice of the latter part of her speech. ‘But it was as big—ay, an’ a lot bigger’n this hut. All black, an’ no hair it was; an’ ’t’ad two white tushes’s, long as my leg, only crookt, an’ a snout like a big snake, an’ it were a-spoutin’ water forty foot high, and soon’s it seen me it bellered agin and agin.’