Australian Tales - Setis

“The noise was stunning, and at first positively startling; but we soon
recovered our senses, and began to make our observations, and to
communicate them to each other in unstudied phraseology, plain, though
perhaps not polite — for boys are seldom remarkable for strict attention
to etiquette.
“ ‘Isn't it a big un, Jack?’ remarked my brother, with his eyes full of
wonder. I saw his lips move on full stretch, and his countenance express
awful admiration, as he nodded at the clanging bell, but I could not hear
a word he uttered; so I replied at the top of my voice, ‘I can't hear you,
Bob! you must squall like an upstairs lodger in a house on fire.’
“ ‘Isn't it a big un, Jack?’ repeated Bob, with the utmost emphasis, and
with his hands to his mouth in boatswain's fashion, so that I heard him
plainly above the deafening din.
“ ‘Yes, a regular whopper,’ I replied; and then we commenced a
dialogue (which I need not detail) in the same elevated key, and shrieked
and hooted like a couple of owls, in order to fully satisfy ourselves that
our voices could sound louder than the labouring bell. At the same time,
we were innocently unconscious that we were creating a sensation
beneath us, or we should have certainly chosen some other occasion and
some other place for trying the strength of our lungs. We had no idea of
making a disturbance in a church, above all other places — for, though I
say it, Mr. Boomerang, we were too well-bred to be wilfully guilty of
such ill manners, nay, such gross wickedness, as to desecrate God's Holy
Temple.
“In the meantime, however, there was quite a commotion in the church,
almost amounting to a panic. The minister had ascended to his pulpit,
and the clerk to his desk, when our shrill voices startled them and their
congregation too. The mysterious question, ‘Isn't it a big un, Jack?’ and
the equally mystical reply, ‘Yes, a regular whopper,’ sounded through
the ventilators in the ceiling, almost as plainly as if we had been shouting
in the body of the building itself, while our loud hooting and howling
was heard even more distinctly, and which the trembling old sexton
believed was a break-out among the ghosts in the vaults.
“Some of the congregation looked at each other in amazement while
the extraordinary riot was at its height, and others looked gravely
comical. The parson looked at the clerk, and the clerk looked at the
beadle, who looked as fierce as a Fijian warrior; then grasped his
or rather his cane — as if fairly resolved to wreak vengeance upon the
heads of those enemies to peace and concord as soon as he could find
them, and waddled down the aisle as fast as he could move his ponderous
body. It was some minutes before he could divine from whence the
heathenish yells proceeded — for they were unlike the disturbances
which he was so frequently called upon to quell. He had, alas! to his
sorrow, and to the disgrace of some of the unruly boys of the parish,