ilent night, a yell such as no earthly parrot ever uttered or
whale conceived. The very blood in the veins of all stood still. Their
limbs refused to move. Away over the rolling plain went the horrid
sound till it gained the mountain where, after being buffeted from cliff
to crag, it finally died out far up among the rocky heights.

"A device of the Ratura dogs to frighten us," growled Ongoloo to those
nearest him. "Come, follow me, and remember, not a sound till I shout."

The whole party sprang up and followed their chief at full gallop down
the pass. The still petrified Raturans heard the sound of rushing feet.
When Wapoota saw the dark forms of his comrades appear, he filled his
chest and opened his mouth, and the awful skirl arose once again, as if
to pollute the night-air. Then Ongoloo roared. With mingled surprise
and ferocity his men took up the strain, as they rushed towards the now
dimly visible foe.

Savage nerves could stand no more. The Raturans turned and fled as one
man. They descended the pass as they had never before descended it;
they coursed over the plains like grey-hounds; they passed through their
own villages like a whirlwind; drew most of the inhabitants after them
like the living tail of a mad comet, and only stopped when they fell
exhausted on the damp ground in the remotest depths of their own dismal
swamps.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

Strange to say, the anger of the Raturans was not assuaged by the rebuff
which they received at that time. They took counsel again, and resolved
to wait till the suspicions of the Mountain-men had been allayed, and
then attack them when off their guard.

Meanwhile Zeppa, who did not at all concern himself with these matters,
took it into his head one day that he would teach his little favourite,
Lippy, to sing. Being a religious man he naturally selected hymns as
the foundation of his teaching. At first he found it rather up-hill
work, for Lippy happened to be gifted with a strong sense of the
ludicrous, so that when he took her on his knee--the day on which the
idea occurred to him--opened his mouth, and gave forth the first notes
of a hymn in a fine sonorous bass voice, the child gazed at him for a
few moments in open-eyed wonder, and then burst into an uncontrollable
fit of open-mouthed laughter.

Poor Zeppa! till that day, since his mental break-down, the idea of
singing had never once occurred to him, and this reception of his first
attempt to