The Little Black Princess — Part 7

I was just going to tell her to run and play, when I heard a merry little chuckle from under the verandah. Looking to see what the fun was, I found that Bett-Bett was having a tick-hunt. She had just found an extra big one between Sue’s toes, which she dragged from its hiding-place and threaded on to her needle and cotton. As she held her thread up for me to admire, I saw that she had about a dozen of the horrid creatures, hanging down like a string of beads. I felt quite sick.

“Bett-Bett,” I said, “you have done enough sewing; take some soap, and go and give yourself and Sue a good bath.”

Off they went to the creek like a pair of gay young wallabies, hopping and skipping over everything.

In a few minutes they were both nearly white with soap lather, dancing a wild sort of corrobboree on an old tree trunk. The dance ended suddenly with a leap into “middle water,” as Bett-Bett called the deep holes.

They loved a bath, these two—“bogey,” the blacks call it—but neither of them would have soap on their faces.

“Him”—meaning the soap—“bite eye belonga me,” Bett-Bett explained.

The King we were talking about—Bett-Bett’s uncle, you know—was called by the tribe Ebimel Wooloomool. The white people had nicknamed him “Goggle Eye,” and he was very proud of his “whitefellow name,” as he called it. You see, he didn’t know what it meant.

He didn’t have a golden sceptre. Australian kings never do; but he had what was quite as deadly—a “Magic Death-bone.” If you had been up to mischief, breaking the laws, or doing anything wrong, it was wise to keep out of his way; for every blackfellow knew that if he “sang” this bone and pointed it at you, you would very quickly die.

The white man says you die of fright; but as it is the bone-pointing that gives the fright, it’s the bone-pointing that kills, isn’t it? But I’ll tell you more about this by and bye.

The first time I met Goggle Eye, he was weeding my garden, and I didn’t know he was a King; I thought he was just an ordinary blackfellow. You see he didn’t have a crown, and as he was only wearing a tassel and a belt made from his mother-in-law’s hair, it was no wonder I made the mistake. It takes a good deal of practice to tell a King at a glance—when he’s naked and pulling up weeds.