After we had gone a few miles I would suddenly call a halt, and pretend to my companions that I had forgotten something.Then Iwould order Bruno to go back and fetch it, with many mysterious whisperings.The dear, sagacious brute always understood what Iwanted him to do, and in the course of perhaps an hour or two he would come and lay the article at my feet, and accept the flattering adulation of my black companions with the utmost calmness and indifference.Bruno never forgot what was required of him when we encountered a new tribe of blacks.He would always look to me for his cue, and when he saw me commence my acrobatic feats, he too would go through his little repertoire, barking and tumbling and rolling about with wonderful energy.
His quaint little ways had so endeared him to me that I could not bear to think of anything happening to him.On one occasion, when going through a burning, sandy desert, both he and I suffered terribly from the hot, loose sand which poured between our toes and caused us great suffering.Poor Bruno protested in the only way he could, which was by stopping from time to time and giving vent to the most mournful howls.Besides, I could tell from the gingerly way he put his feet down that the burning sand would soon make it impossible for him to go any farther.I therefore made him a set of moccasins out of kangaroo skin, and tied them on his feet.
These he always wore afterwards when traversing similar deserts, and eventually he became so accustomed to them that as soon as we reached the sand he would come to me and put up his paws appealingly to have his "boots" put on!
But now age began to tell upon him; he was getting stiff in his limbs, and seldom accompanied me on hunting expeditions.He seemed only to want to sleep and drowse away the day.He had been a splendid kangaroo hunter, and took quite an extraordinary amount of pleasure in this pursuit.He would run down the biggest kangaroo and "bail him up" unerringly under a tree; and whenever the doomed animal tried to get away Bruno would immediately go for his tail, and compel him to stand at bay once more until I came up to give the coup de grace.Of course, Bruno received a nasty kick sometimes and occasionally a bite from a snake, poisonous and otherwise.He was not a young dog when I had him first; and I had now made up my mind that he could not live much longer.He paid but little attention in these days to either Yamba or myself, and in this condition he lingered on for a year or more.
One morning I went into the second hut--which we still called Gibson's, by the way, although he had never lived there--when to my dismay and horror (notwithstanding that I was prepared for the event), I beheld my poor Bruno laid out stiff and stark on the little skin rug that Gibson had originally made for him.I do not think I knew how much I loved him until he was gone.As I stood there, with the tears coursing down my cheeks, all the strange events of my wondrous career seemed to rise before my mind--events in which poor dead Bruno always took an active part.He was with me on the wreck; he was with me on the island; he was with me in all my wanderings and through all my sufferings and triumphs.He got me out of many a scrape, and his curious little eccentricities, likes, and dislikes afforded me never-ending delight.But now he was gone the way of all flesh; and although I had expected this blow for many months, I do not think this mitigated my poignant grief.Yamba, too, was terribly grieved at his death, for she had become most devotedly attached to him and he to her.I rolled the body of the faithful creature in a kind of preservative earth and then in an outer covering of bark.This done I laid him on a shelf in one of the caves where the wild dogs could not get at him, and where the body of Gibson, similarly treated, had also been placed.
