The Red Chief gazed round restlessly. The morning was warm; all seemed so quiet and dreamy; the “Cark! Cark!” of crows, the warbling of magpies came plainly up from the bushlands below.

The Red Chief nodded to Kerran. “1 must think of something!” he muttered to Burradella and with the young warrior following began walking slowly along the edge of the dense wall of hoop-vine scrub towards the north-westerly side of the Black Hill.

Frowning as he walked, he was thinking as he had never thought before, seeking a plan to defeat time and overwhelming odds. He walked for some little distance, then turned and stood staring back into the scrub as if with unseeing eyes. And actually his eyes, in a way, did not note what they saw.

He was gazing into the Wallaby Trap. Staring into the dense scrub with its gap just there as if a giant had chewed a mouthful straight out of the wall of trees and vine. How often he had taken a delighted part, during those full moon nights, in the driving, then slaughtering of the frantic wallabies trapped deep down within those dense green walls!

Suddenly he was staring hard deep into that narrow gap in the scrub. He wheeled to Kerran and excitement transfigured his face.

“We have them!” he laughed. “Stay here, Kerran! Spy whether any enemy scouts stray along near here, but don’t be seen yourself. I’ll return soon.” He ran swiftly back to Burradella.

“We have them tight as a dingo holds a kangaroo-rat in his jaws! Come with me.” Excitedly he told his plan as they hurried back. “We’ll trap them just as we have often trapped the wallabies,” he explained, “as we trapped them on the night of the great slaughter not long ago. Only instead of hunting skill and rich green grass to coax these wallabies we’ll use cunning! And for bait we’ll plant a sleeping camp! Then, when they rush in to attack, they’ll find spears raining into them from all sides while their escape will be cut off—just as we used to cut off the wallabies’ escape. If only we are cunning enough, patient enough, then if every man, woman, and child, acts his or her best we’ll cut them to pieces, few though our numbers be. We’ll slaughter them,” he added enthusiastically, “just as we did the wallabies! You remember?” He strode in between the walls of trees for about forty yards. “Here is where our camp guards will light their little fires,” he went on excitedly, “a little distance in, but straight across the open mouth, from one wall of trees across to the other. While down along both sides of the Trap, and across the end, we shall place our warriors, and every boy who can throw even a little spear, at even distances apart, waiting invisible with their backs to the wall of scrub. Both lines of warriors will be facing one another, while the men at the end will be looking in between the lines up towards the mouth of the Trap. Down there at the very end we shall build our dummy camp, with the women and children busy in it.