The Foot of Time: A Novel of Australia and the South Seas: (1933)

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250 THE FOOT OF TIME
regarded useless from the canine angle. Presently
the great hound twisted round then held his nose
extended in the air parallel to the ground, pointer
fashion. His ears became erect; he was listening.
But it was not for his master that he was listening;
his keen senses had felt rather than heard in the air
the whirring of wings, or something dangerously
like it. Then an ear-splitting roar went up from
him, and nose to ground he made off at incredible
speed in exactly the opposite direction to that which
Edith had thought Bruce to be lying.
The girl followed him as best she could, but
travelling fully a quarter of a mile through bush
and bare mountain top, Bruno disappeared from
sight.
The dog burst through some wild wattle
bushes, gum suckers and bracken. Lying on the
ground, face to sky, Bruce was fighting off two
prodigious black crows attacking his eyes. One arm
was held rigid covering his face, while the man
blindly hammered the air with the other. The game
amused the vermin beyond measure. They cawed
with chuckling glee at their victim's losing battle,
dodging his blind strokes with derision. So intent
were they with their sport, that completely hidden
in the surrounding bushes they neither saw nor
heard Bruno. A violent stroke jerked Bruce's arm
away from his face as a massive form hurtled
through the air right over him. There was a crunch
of steel trap jaws, and one crow went back to
hell, while the other, hit a stunning blow by the
THE FOOT OF TIME 251
passing body, limped off to die sorely broken, and
Bruno hoped his death might be a slow one.
Perfectly conscious, Bruce was weak to a
degree. Vaguely he imagined a miracle had happened,
but through it all a great wonder came to
him. The sight of Bruno brought to his hazy consciousness
a pulsating sound which the air had held,
it seemed to him, from the beginning of time. He
put two and two together, and a glimmering of
the truth forced itself upon the boy, the while
Bruno had seized him by the coat and was deliberately
dragging him, and succeeding, with the
dead weight, towards the open. "Let go, boy,"
Bruce faintly ordered the dog. Then, "Speak, boy,
speak!" he said.
Now that was a very old trick, nothing clever in
it at all! This was no time for parlour games, stern
business was afoot. Bruno's whole instinct was to
drag the man as far as Edith. He felt her competent
to deal with the situation from then onwards.
However, men were strange creatures.
There was generally method in their madness, which
time invariably disclosed—a hidden bone, or an
evil character; to account for being ordered here,
there and everywhere. So Bruno did as he was ordered,
and the mountains echoed with his deepmouthed
baying.
And so Edith came to Bruce whom she loved, and
Bruno took a back seat on his haunches and looked
on, somewhat disgusted. "Sloppy," that is what
Bruno thought it.
And now his master, lying on his back, his head