“The Red Chief talks to you now. I order you all, listen to him with both ears, for it will do much good to all, and to the tribe.”

As the Red Chief stood up, every warrior struck his shield sharply with his nulla, the ringing blow sweeping out over the bushland. The Red Chief, a towering figure now of polished bronze from the sun streaming upon his red-ochred body, slowly turned completely round, gazing upon all. Stern his face, grim-set his jaw, but he spoke not in anger, yet with an authority that no warrior there, nor any dozen combined dared question. His deep, strong voice rolled out over them.

“You one-, two-, three- and four-year warriors have thoughts only for yourselves—grumbling because you must remain in camp to guard the women and children, without whom there would be no young warriors at all! Your only wish is to boast of your kills, with the added pleasure of the emu hunt and your gorging on its meat for the next seven suns. You would leave the oldest warriors to guard this camp. Are not our wives and piccaninnies, your sisters and your friends’ sisters and all the near-marriageable girls worth fighting for? Would you rather gorge on emu meat out in the bush than stay here and protect your mother, your sister, and your friend’s sister?

“Ah! Yes, yes, you mutter now! But you are ready to leave them to a feeble guard of old men at the mercy of any picked party of enemy warriors who may attack the camp while our strong, fighting warriors would all be away. These seasoned old warriors have done many years of guard work and fighting to protect the women and children of our tribe before you and I were born. Many is the time they have fed us and fought to protect us while we were helpless children, looked after us throughout all the seasons until we became Bora warriors ourselves. And yet you want these few old warriors to remain and guard a camp that holds many more women and children than either you or I ever knew before! What chance would these few old warriors have against a strong party of young enemy warriors sent against them? They would fight to the last. We should return to find their eyes picked out by the crows, find the bodies of all the elderly women, find the young women and children stolen away. And what use would your bellies stuffed full of emu meat be to you then?” He glared towards them, but they could not meet his flashing eyes.

Then he roared, “There are ninety wives in our tribe! Twenty are old women, but sixty can still be mothers of children. And there are twenty young lubras who very soon will be of marriageable age. And there are one hundred and thirty boy and girl children. All these mean much more to the tribe than you twenty-four warrior cubs. The tribe could do without you! But the tribe could not do without the women and children!” He paused a moment, his big chest drew a deep breath as scornfully he gazed down upon the now bowed heads of the young warriors.