"Kadok!" she cried eagerly. The leaves parted and a black face peered through the bushes, fierce black eyes gazed at the child, as she stood speechless with astonishment, gazing at a perfectly strange Black. She did not speak, she was too frightened to scream, and the Black too was silent. With her floating, golden hair, her wide blue eyes, her fair cheek turned to gold by the rays of the setting sun, which shone full upon her, the rest of her body concealed by the branches with which Kadok had filled the mouth of the cave, she looked like a creature of air rather than earth, and so the Black thought her. With a wild cry of "_Kurru! Kurru!_"[16] he let go his hold of the branches, and Jean could hear him crashing through the bushes in mad haste to get away.
[14] Baiame is the chief god of the Blacks.
[15] This story of the poisoning of nearly a whole tribe of Blacks at a Christmas feast is vouched for on good authority.
[16] Kurru-kurru is the Dew Dropper or Mist Gatherer, Goddess of the Blacks and wife of Munuala, the water god.
SHE heard Kadok's voice and called to him excitedly, "Oh, Kadok, come quick! I am so frightened!"
"What matter, little Missa?" asked Kadok as he parted the bushes and looked at her with anxious face.
"Oh, a strange Black looked at me and ran away!" she said, bursting into tears.
"Little Missa not cry," said Kadok. "Brought little Missa meat for supper. What did black man say?"
"A strange word something like curry curry," she said. "He looked frightened too."
"That good," said Kadok. "He think little Missa not real child. Golden child. Think him not come again. Kadok glad, for we must stay here one, two days."
"Oh, Kadok, why? Can't we go to Mother to-morrow?" her voice was full of tears and the boy's face clouded.
"Kadok very sorry for little Missa," he said. "But no can help. Kadok got bad hurt on foot. No can walk one, two days. Little Missa help Kadok get well?"
"Oh, Kadok, how did you hurt yourself?" she asked, as she saw that his foot was covered with blood.
"Hurt in the scrub," said Kadok, who did not want to tell her the truth, that he had met a Black who had thrown his _nulla-nulla_[17] and struck him on the foot, though the boy had managed to get away from him.