RUNNING UP THE BILLABONG.
As fate now seemed to be closing in on the two wanderers, they did
the journey back much faster than they had come. For they had wasted
at least six days' food in their futile southern trip. But the heat
of the northern journey seemed even more intense than the heat had
been before, and there was hardly a breath of air. What did blow
came from the north, and scorched them by day and by night; they
could not stay in their blankets, and had to camp far from the creek,
which was in some parts a hot-bed of mosquitoes.
They came back to the old camp early on the morning of the third day,
and passed it in silence. But now the unknown was before them, and
possibly the unexpected. For what white man had ever been there? So
far as they knew they were the first.
On the second day from the old camp it certainly seemed that the
billabong was larger than it had been. On the third day they were
sure of it. The timber, too, was larger. But that third day the
current of the water to the south had ceased.
"The river that feeds it is falling," said Smith. "I wonder how far
it is away."
He was oppressed by all the strange uncertainties of their position;
they were cut off from the world: they had seen no sign of life
beyond one or two birds, and an opossum, that Baker had extracted
from a hole in a tree as it slept its daily sleep.
But the Baker was quite cheerful; nothing seemed to matter to him.
He chattered on about everything and nothing, telling stories of
London life and London bakeries which might have been useful to a
royal commission on sweating in both its senses.
"Lord love you!" said he, "it ain't the 'eat as knocks me. If a
London baker can't stand 'eat, what can he stand? The bloomin' old
baker up aloft there can't put a crust on me direct. As long as the
water 'olds out I'm good. It's want of that does me."
"You're very cheerful, Mandy," said Smith.
"And why not?" asked Mandy. "I'm used to be cheerful when I don't
see more than a day or two a'ead. If I'd lied down and died becos I
couldn't see grub and a doss three days off, I'd 'ave been corpsed
years ago."
"And haven't you anything to make you wish to get back home?" asked
Smith.
"Not me," said the Baker; "I'm as good 'ere as anywhere. Give me a
job, reg'lar for choice, and a chanst to get married when I'm ready,
and I'm all right 'ere or in H'england or Ameriky."
Smith laughed.
"Good old man, and would a black woman suit you?"
"No!" said the Baker seriously, "I bar blacks. I want my kids such
as will wash white onst a week anyhow. I knowed a woman in the
H'east End, she lived in Dragon Court, Whitechapel, as married a
nigger, and the time 'er kids 'ad was 'orrid. The hother women took
to washin' their kids twiced a week regular, just out of spite, for
they 'ated her bad. Her man was 'ead porter to a music 'all, and got
'eaps of tips." And he took to singing,
"She's my rorty carrotty Sal,
And she comes from Whitechap-al,"
with such an air of intense enjoyment and total disengagement from
his surroundings, that Smith gave way, and shouted with laughter.
"What yer laffin' at?" asked the Baker with a grin.
"I was thinking what you would do without me to cheer you up," said
Smith.
"Cheer me hup, his it?" said the Baker, winking and contemptuous,
"why, you are like a mute at a funeral; when 'e's going, I mean--not
when 'e's coming back--jolly on the 'earse. But what would I do
without you, in this 'ere 'eat and solitude? What would I do? Why,
I'd go stark-starin', ravin', bally mad, and I'd cut my bloomin'
throat from ear to ear, and jump in the billabong. That's me."
And he tramped for half an hour in sombre silence.
"What's your name reely, Smith?" said he, when his spirits came back
and he could hold his tongue no longer.
"Lord Muck of Barking Creek," said Smith, with a coarseness rare to
him.
"I knowed you was a lord," said the Baker, "I seed one from a
distance onst. 'E 'ad the same 'aughty air and ways as you 'ave, and
'is nose was quite similar, same shape as a cheese-cutter."
On which Smith felt his nose, to reassure himself on the subject.
"And your christened name, Smith?"
"Archibald," said Smith.
"It don't go with Smith," said the Baker. "It sounds like the name
of a master baker I worked for once, Bartholomew Onions. Archibald
don't fit Smith reely."
"Oh, dry up," said Smith. "My name is Archibald, and you can call me
what you like. When are we going to camp? How much more tucker is
there?"
"It should run to three days' if we don't be greedy," said the Baker.
So they camped that night with just three days' food ahead of them.
And Smith, as he preferred to be called, was rather cast down.
For they were getting further and further into the unknown, day by
day, and as to the mythical river, who knew where it led? It might
debouch into the salt sea a thousand miles from any settlement. And
how were they to live in a starving country, where they never saw
more than a rare 'possum, and had no means of killing a kangaroo
further off than fifty yards? And while he had serious doubts of his
own revolver shooting, he was quite certain that the Baker could not
hit the bad marksman's flying haystack, unless by the greatest good
luck.
For now it was a much more serious thing than finding gold. He knew
they had left plenty of that behind them, and should they again reach
New Find, they could come out to his creek with every prospect of
going back fairly rich men. But now they wanted food, and soon would
want it badly, and there was every prospect of not getting it.
And when would they get to the river? They had now travelled
steadily for six days since leaving the place at which they first
struck the creek, and though they were in a more wooded country,
there was no particular indication yet of the heavy timber which
always lines a big Australian river. In three days more their food
would be done, unless they eked it out with another opossum, and
these marsupials were not easy to find asleep. They needed a
black-fellow to do that.
And when the food was done, what then? They could in desperation and
misery perhaps go on for three or four days. He had heard of some
starving for much longer, but to walk in hopeless misery was a
fearful drain on a man's strength and courage. If nothing turned up,
he saw little prospect of more than a week's life.
And now he began to hope they might come across some wandering
black-fellows. If they were savage and cannibal it would be a spear
thrust or two, and the farce would be played out. If they were
amiable and not themselves hungry, they might help two wandering
white men. If they were not accustomed to the whites, their
revolvers would stand them in good stead. And the weapons might be
useful, if they met with neither friend nor foe, to put an end to
unnecessary waiting.
And so one more day passed, as they tramped through the mysterious,
endless, thin forest, upon the banks of the sullen, quiet billabong.
But the continued oppression of a vast and awful sameness began to
get overwhelming. It was scrub and open timber, open timber and
scrub. They passed jarrah forests and sullen casuarinas melancholy
to see, and scrambled through sharp scrub which tore their flesh.
And what they did one hour was done the next, and one day was
dreadfully like another.
So the second day was done, and one more day's food remained.
And now the solemn trees seemed personal and cruel to Smith, whose
mind was the easiest affected. The Baker tramped, and whistled, and
talked, but his companion only smiled his answer, and the smile was
often melancholy and far away.
These tall trees, with their motionless metallic blue-green leaves,
seemed to look down on him, and take the same notice that mountains
far aloof take of a solitary traveller. A rustle in their sombre
foliage was a whisper, and the cries of the birds were human, too.
But they all said that these two white ants could never, never get
out, that they would presently lie down and stay until they died.
"This is my luck," said Smith, after a long, long hour of silence.
"I said that this journey would be my luck. I felt assured it would
be luck for me. And I'm humping my swag through endless hell with
starvation at the end of it."
"You never know," said Mandeville eagerly. "Come now, Smith, old
son, cheer up. It's a long lane--"
"No proverbs, for God's sake," cried Smith irritably. "Give me
platitudes in your own language, but spare me the futile and
concentrated optimism of the proverb."
"That's very fine jaw," said the chop-fallen Baker, "but if you'd
speak H'english I'd understand it a deal h'easier. Of course I know
a nobleman, such as Tichborne, or you, must talk different from
common ordinary folk. But you've bin 'ere long enough to learn the
language."
And he chattered desperately, trying to encourage his mate, while
Smith stalked on in silence.
That night no more food was left than would make a scanty morning
meal, and all the Baker's 'possum hunting was futile.
And the next hungry day was even as the last. They went on and on to
the north, sometimes going a little to the east, through the same
sombre and melancholy nightmare of a forest. Their evening meal was
a little weak tea and a chew of tobacco, and an earlier camp than
usual.
That night Smith was easier in his mind and more communicative. He
was resigning himself to the inevitable.
"You're quite right, Baker," he said suddenly, as they lay by the
fire, "you're quite right in thinking my name's not Smith. I took
that name when I left England, seven years ago."
"Yes," said Mandeville; "and what's your real name and title?"
Smith laughed.
"My name is Archibald Hildegarde Osbaldistone Gore," he said.
"Holy Moses!" cried the Baker, "and to think I've been mates with a
name like that. If it wasn't that I 'ad a name myself as looks like
an 'igh 'at on a boot-black, I'd be fair ashamed. My name is William
'Enery Mandeville, that's what it is, and it's always bin a damn
noosance ever since I went to school. And, Smith, what did you do to
get out 'ere?"
"I got through a lot more money than I'm ever likely to pick up
again," said Smith, "and I made a particular fool of myself."
The Baker pondered.
"Was you ever in the h'army, Smith?" he asked, "for there was a bloke
in New Find as said 'e knew you was a cavalry man by the way you sat
an 'orse."
"I was," said Smith. "And why I should tell you anything, I don't
know. But just now you are all the world, old man, and I don't think
it will matter any way. I was in the Dragoons, and when I left, I
left most of what I cared for, except a woman who went and married
the wrong chap."
Baker squirmed uneasily, and looked as sympathetic as he dared, for
Smith was talking in a cold, hard, dry way.
"Good old man," he murmured. "Then you never did nothing as you
can't go back for?" he added.
"My only crime is not having money, and not having the wits to take
others' in a legal way."
"Then I'll see you back 'ome yet, riding an 'orse down Piccadilly.
And if I goes back p'r'aps you'll give me your custom. You knows my
bread."
And they talked idly till the night fell.
"I'm pretty 'ungry," said the Baker before he fell asleep.
And he dreamt of fried fish.