Happily, they found there, neither a formidable wild beast nor a dangerous native, but merely half a dozen mocking and singing birds, known as mountain pheasants.

A few skillful blows from a stick soon put an end to their concert, and procured excellent food for the evening's dinner.
Herbert also discovered some magnificent pigeons with bronzed wings, some superbly crested, others draped in green, like their congeners at Port-Macquarie; but it was impossible to reach them, or the crows and magpies which flew away in flocks.
A charge of small shot would have made great slaughter among these birds, but the hunters were still limited to sticks and stones, and these primitive weapons proved very insufficient.
Their insufficiency was still more clearly shown when a troop of quadrupeds, jumping, bounding, making leaps of thirty feet, regular flying mammiferae, fled over the thickets, so quickly and at such a height, that one would have thought that they passed from one tree to another like squirrels.
"Kangaroos!" cried Herbert.
"Are they good to eat ?" asked Pencroft.
"Stewed," replied the reporter, "their flesh is equal to the best venison!--" Gideon Spilett had not finished this exciting sentence when the sailor, followed by Neb and Herbert, darted on the kangaroos tracks.

Cyrus Harding called them back in vain.

But it was in vain too for the hunters to pursue such agile game, which went bounding away like balls.

After a chase of five minutes, they lost their breath, and at the same time all sight of the creatures, which disappeared in the wood.