reconnoitre secretly, before we venture into these mazes."

"Choose a narrow pass, Arthur," cried Gerald. “It will suit best for our manœuvres, if we come to a battle. Halloo! what wild beast can that be I hear roaring. No Australian animal that we have met with yet has such a sonorous voice."

"Oh, Jack!" cried Ruth, clinging to her brother. behind whom she was mounted. "Jack, honey, stop a bit, hear ye; yon's a bear, and I'se feared of my life; it's a bear like them 'at dances about at t' fairs!"

"A bear growls," said Hugh; "but that is decidedly a roar; it is more like the voice of the royal lion, and we shall have some sport at last. To arms! to arms!"

Jack and Ruth were some yards in advance of the rest, when suddenly from a thicket just before them, a wild bull rushed furiously upon their path, tossing his head, as if enraged that his solitude had been invaded, or probably expecting to encounter the powerful opponent which had banished him in disgrace from his own herd. He was a huge, dark-red animal, with short sharp horns and broad forehead, and his fierce and fiery eye, and loud threatening bellow, denoted him to be a dangerous antagonist.

He stopped for a moment and eyed the horse, then tore round and round, throwing up the earth with his horns, and uttering continually a deep sullen roar. Jack was turning round to avoid the unpleasant meeting, when suddenly the infuriated animal arrested his whirling course, and before Jack could extricate himself from Ruth's arms, to use his spear, the beast had rushed impetuously on the horse, and gored it frightfully. The terrified horse immediately reared, and flung both his riders off.

A DANGEROUS ANTAGONIST.

401

Jack, though considerably bruised, sprang up, dragged the senseless Ruth out of the path of the mad creature, and placed her under the bushes, and then returned with his spear ready to defend himself; but he found to his great grief his poor horse thrown down, trampled on, and gored by the frenzied animal, which continued to repeat its merciless attacks, regardless of the many wounds inflicted by Wilkins and Hugh, who had galloped up in haste to aid Jack.

At length, tired with goring the horse, the bull turned on Jack, who faced him with his uplifted spear; but before he could strike Arthur called out to them all to draw back, and, riding up himself, he shot the beast through the head. It fell heavily, and Wilkins dismounted, drew out his knife, and went up to finish the execution; but he was too early, for the powerful animal rose again to his legs, caught the man on his strong brow, and flung him over his head to a considerable distance.

A second shot, however, despatched the bull, and then all went up to Wilkins, whom they found insensible; but, though much bruised and stunned by the fall, he was providentially unwounded by the horns of the formidable animal. The exertions of his distressed friends soon restored the poor man to his senses, and he was able to take little Nakinna, to look at the "big dingo" which astonished her so much, and even Baldabella deigned to express some interest at the sight of an animal so much larger than any she had ever beheld. Wilkins declared it was a shame to leave so much good meat lying to waste on the high road; but they were now in a land of plenty; besides, the dark coarse flesh of the bull was not of a tempting quality, and it was agreed that it might as well be abandoned.