Page:Songs from the Southern Seas and Other Poems (1873).djvu/75

To the next dog's house; right across the Bay
Ran a line that was hideous with horrid sounds
From the hungry throats of two hundred hounds.

So one more year passed, and the brutes on the logs
Had grown more like devils than common dogs.
There was such a hell-chorus by day and night
That the settlers ashore were chilled with fright
When they thought—if that legion should break away,
And come in with the tide some fatal day!

But they 'scaped that chance; for a man came in
From the Bush, one day, with a 'possum's skin
To the throat filled up with large pearls he'd found
To the north, on the shore of the Shark's Bay Sound.
And the settlement blazed with a wild commotion
At sight of the gems from the wealthy ocean.

Then the settlers all began to pack
Their tools and tents, and to ask the track