execute a swift vengeance. In order to do so, out they sallied well
armed. A detachment went on to entrap the dogs and Bougoodoogahdah.
Then just when the usual massacre of the blacks was to begin and the
dogs were closing in round them for the purpose, out rushed over two
hundred black fellows, and so effectual was their attack that every dog
was killed, as well as Bougoodoogahdah and her two little dogs.

The old woman lay where she had been slain, but as the blacks went away
they heard her cry "Bougoodoogahdah." So back they went and broke her
bones, first they broke her legs and then left her. But again as they
went they heard her cry "Bougoodoogahdah." Then back again they came,
and again, until at last every bone in her body was broken, but still
she cried "Bougoodoogahdah." So one man waited beside her to see whence
came the sound, for surely, they thought, she must be dead. He saw her
heart move and cry again "Bougoodoogahdah" and as it cried, out came a
little bird from it. This little bird runs on the moorillahs and calls
at night "Bougoodoogahdah." All day it stays in one place, and only at
night comes out. It is a little greyish bird, something like a weedah.
The blacks call it a rain-maker, for if any one steals its eggs it
cries out incessantly "Bougoodoogahdah" until in answer to its call the
rain falls. And when the country is stricken with a drought, the blacks
loook for one of these little birds, and finding it, chase it, until it
cries aloud "Bougoodoogahdah, Bougoodoogahdah" and when they hear its
cry in the daytime they know the rain will soon fall.

As the little bird flew from the heart of the woman, all the dead
dingoes were changed into snakes, many different kinds, all poisonous.
The two little dogs were changed into dayall minyah, a very small kind
of carpet snake, non-poisonous, for these two little dogs had never
bitten the blacks as the other dogs had done. At the points of the