Thirst
Sax and Vaughan were very thirsty. For several days they had been
compelled to drink sparingly, and for the last two they had taken only
enough liquid to keep them just alive. They were now entirely without
drink of any kind save for that little drop of tea in a dirty and
battered quart-pot, half buried in the sand. Is it any wonder that
their longing eyes and thoughts were almost constantly fixed on the
pot, which they had promised not to touch till sunrise next day.
While Yarloo had been with them, the white boys had kept up a good
appearance of courage, and had pretended that they were not so thirsty
as they really were, for no man likes to give in before a member of an
inferior race; but when Yarloo went away it became harder and harder
for them to keep up their pluck. For thirst is the most terrible of
all forms of torture. The pain comes on slowly but surely, and
increases till it seems impossible that the human body can stand any
more. Yet the body is such a marvellous thing that it does stand even
the terrible pain of thirst, till it gets beyond endurance and the man
goes mad. The thirst which kills men in the desert is not the same as
being thirsty. Down-country, it is quite pleasant to be thirsty, for
it makes a drink taste so nice; but desert thirst--or "perishing", as
it is called--is caused by the drying up of the moisture of the body
till the organs inside actually cease to work, and the blood clogs in
the arteries because it is not liquid enough.
It was such terrible thirst that Sax and Vaughan were experiencing. In
appearance, Sax was of slighter build than his thick-set friend, Boof,
but the drover's son had inherited from his father a natural toughness
and an ability to endure privation and hardship which Vaughan, although
he was quite as plucky, did not possess. It happened, therefore, that
though Sax was just able to keep control of himself throughout the
terrible night which followed Yarloo's departure, Vaughan lost
consciousness and became delirious about half an hour before sunset.
The first signs which he gave that he was not in his right senses were
when he began to undress. Sax was feeling so desperately ill himself
that he did not pay much attention to what his friend was doing till he
saw him throw his shirt outside, and then start to pull off his
trousers. The poor lad's tongue was swollen in his mouth and was
starting to stick out from between his teeth. He got his trousers off,
and began fumbling at his boots, but was so weak that he couldn't untie
the knots. His eyes had a peculiar look in them, something like those
of a man who walks in his sleep, and when his friend spoke to him he
took absolutely no notice at all.
Both lads had been lying stretched out on the sand all the afternoon,
too exhausted to do anything, but, seeing his companion behaving in
such a strange way, Sax tried to sit up. But he could not do it at
first. As soon as he lifted himself, sharp pains stabbed him in the
back and stomach, and his head throbbed so violently that he nearly
fainted. He tried again and again, very gradually, till he was able to
sit up at last. Vaughan had managed to drag one boot off by this time,
and was feverishly busy with the other; the rest of his body was naked.
Sax called out again, but the effort at sitting up had so much
exhausted the little strength which remained, that his voice was so
weak he hardly heard it himself. Stobart didn't understand the serious
state his friend was in, but he knew that something must be done at
once, and as there was nobody to do it but himself, he prepared for a
supreme effort.
After several unsuccessful attempts, he managed to stand up, and when
the dizziness in his head had died down a little, he tottered over
towards Vaughan. He touched him on the arm. Vaughan took no notice,
but wrenched at the second boot, pulling it off at last, and scrambling
to his feet like a drunken man. He seemed to have far more strength
than Sax had, but when he started to stagger out from under the
bough-shelter, his friend suddenly remembered a yarn which Mick had
told them one night, about a perishing man who pulled off all his
clothes and walked away into the scrub to die a most terrible death.
Sax was afraid that his companion was going to do the same thing, and
that he wouldn't have the strength to prevent him.
Sax had to put his feet down very carefully or he would have fallen
through sheer weakness, but he caught hold of Vaughan and clung to him.
This forced the delirious lad to look at his companion, but there was
no spark of intelligence in his eyes; he did not recognize who it was;
he only felt something holding him back from what he had determined to
do. With extraordinary strength, considering his condition, he shook
himself free, and started to walk away. Sax fell, but as he did so he
stretched out his hands. They touched the other's bare legs. Sax
clutched the legs and hung on with all his power, and Vaughan tripped
and came down with a crash.
The sun sank below the horizon and left two perishing white boys
panting in the sand in the fading light.
Sax remembered nothing more for several hours. When he came to himself
again he was alone. His fall had rendered him unconscious for a
moment, and this state had been immediately followed by a deep sleep.
The night was cool, and though his thirst was still raging, it did not
seem so bad as it had done under the blazing sun; his sleep also had
refreshed him. On Central Australian nights it is never too dark to
see the objects around, for the light of the stars comes through the
clear dry air of the desert more brilliantly than it does in any other
part of the world. Consequently it needed only a hurried glance to
tell Sax that Vaughan was not in the camp. His clothes were still
lying where he had thrown them, and the boy soon found the tracks of
bare feet leading away from the camp into the scrub.
Vaughan had gone away to die.
Sax listened. The absolute stillness of death was around him on all
sides. Not a leaf moved on any of the scraggy mulgas standing near.
Even the star in the deep, deep blue of the night sky seemed to stare
down at him with unblinking eyes. What did they care for one white boy
dying in delirium in the desert, and another white boy who had to keep
tight hold of his mind to save it from slipping out of his control, and
who would also die of thirst, if not to-day, then surely to-morrow?
There is nothing so unpitying, so absolutely unconcerned, as the desert
is to a perishing man.
Sax was a boy of unusual courage. He was the son of a pioneer, a
member of that race of men who have opened up the centre of the
Australian continent, and have laid the foundations of the future
Australian nation. Though he had been reared in the comfort of cities,
the cattle-plains, the scrub, and the desert were his true home, and he
now showed the stuff he was made of by determining to follow after his
friend. He did not stop to wonder what he would do when he found him;
he only knew that he could not bear to leave him out there to die
without making an effort to save him.
Suddenly he remembered the quart-pot and its precious contents. He had
made up his mind to find Vaughan before he remembered the tea, and now
this sudden glad thought seemed to confirm his decision, and filled him
with hope. He would have something to give to the perishing lad when
he found him. Sax could hardly walk. The whole middle part of his
body felt as if it was dried up, and when he moved, such terrible pains
shot through him that he could hardly keep from crying out; but he set
his teeth and went over to the quart-pot and dug it out.
Only those who have actually been in the same circumstances as Sax was
that night can have any idea of the temptation it was for him to drink
some of that tea. The very sound of it swishing about inside the
smoke-blackened pot nearly drove him mad with thirst. He dared not
open the lid and look in, for, after all, he was so frantically thirsty
that the sight of the liquid might make him forget everything but his
own desire for it. Never again in his life was he to be called upon to
exercise such supreme self-control as he was that night.
Clutching the precious quart-pot to his breast, he staggered off into
the night, very slowly because of his weakness, and very slowly also
because it was hard for him to read the tracks in the dim light.
Less than half an hour after Sax left the camp to search for his dying
friend, a black form stole silently through the scrub and paused within
sight of the bough-shelter. If anybody had been lying there awake, he
would not have known how near a fellow human being was to him, for the
native was absolutely motionless, even to the eyelids. The only part
of hint which moved was the chest, which was so thickly covered with
black hair that its slow rising and falling could not possibly have
attracted attention at night. Even if any man who might have been in
the shelter had turned and looked straight at the black-fellow, he
would not have distinguished him from the trees, for, with that
wonderful power of imitation known only to the scrub natives of
Australia, the man was standing in such a way that he looked very much
like an old dead mulga stump.
But nobody was in the bough-shelter, and when the man had made quite
sure of this, he stepped out from his hiding. He was quite naked, and
carried a couple of long spears with stone heads, a woomera
(spear-thrower), a spiked boomerang, and a wooden shield. His long
hair was plastered up into a bunch at the back, and was kept in place
by rings of rope made of his mother's hair. He stood for a moment and
looked intently at the shelter, then he stooped and examined the marks
in the sand, following them this way and that till he knew as much
about the tragedy as if he had actually watched it happen. He was
particularly interested in Yarloo's tracks, and finally stuck a spear
into the middle of one of them and laid his other weapons beside it.
Having rid himself of all encumbrances, he set out on the tracks of the
two white boys. But what a difference between his methods and theirs!
Instead of the hesitating scrutiny of each footprint which Sax had been
obliged to make, the native walked quickly with his eyes several yards
ahead and did not pause once, though the star-light was dim and
treacherous.
He did not have far to go. The burst of strength which delirium had
given to Vaughan had not lasted for more than three-quarters of a mile,
and he had then fallen at the foot of a dead mulga. Sax had come up on
him there, a pitiful object whom the desert was claiming as its own,
his naked body showing up plainly in the dark. He had forced the tea,
all of it, upon the unconscious lad, with no perceptible result, for
most of it had been spilt because Vaughan's tongue was too swollen to
allow any but a few drops to go down his throat.
It was absolutely certain that, before another sunset, two corpses
would have been lying in the desert scrub if the wild black had not
found the boys when he did. Sax was still conscious, but was too far
gone to take any interest even in such an unusual sight as the sudden
appearance of a strange naked black-fellow. Death was claiming him,
anyhow; it did not matter much to him whether it came by a spear-thrust
or by the more lingering method of thirst.
The savage stooped down and looked intently into the face of first one
boy and then the other. He happened to look at Vaughan first and
grunted his disapproval, but a close scrutiny of Sax's features seemed
to yield him great satisfaction, for he drew himself up straight, and,
with a broad grin of delight, pronounced a word which caught the boy's
dulling ear:
"Bor--s Stoo--bar," he said, in long-drawn tones. "Bor--s Stoo--bar."
A familiar sound will penetrate to an intelligence which has become too
dull to perceive through sight or touch, and Sax heard this word and
looked up, thinking that his imagination must be playing him a trick.
The man was encouraged to try again, this time adding to the name of
the drover the single word "Musgrave ". It was a word he had evidently
used before, for it was pronounced quite clearly.
"Bor--s Stoo--bar.... Mus--grave."
The strange coupling of his father's name with that of the mysterious
range of mountains roused sufficient interest in Sax to make him wish
to reply. He tried to speak, but couldn't. His tongue was too swollen
and his throat too dry. The native watched him, and the boy felt that
the man was friendly, for he continued to stretch out his black arm
towards the distant ranges. Finding that he could not make any sound,
Sax waited till the man again said the words, "Bor--s Stoo--bar," and
then he pointed to himself several times and nodded, and then waved his
hand to the Musgraves. The native grinned his understanding and again
looked very closely into the white boy's face. Sax did not know if he
was like his father or not, but felt that a great deal depended on
whether the black stranger decided that he was indeed the son of the
famous Boss Stobart.
The man was quite satisfied at last. He first of all held his left
hand close to Sax's face; it had been terribly mutilated, and the two
middle fingers were missing. The native evidently wished to impress
that crippled hand on the boy's memory, for he put it on his hairy
chest and then in front of Sax's face again and again. He did not say
anything, for his knowledge of English was apparently limited to the
name of the drover and the name of the mountain range. In spite of his
exhausted condition, Sax could not help remembering that black left
hand, and he had reason to recall it in future days under the most
exciting circumstances. Then the man lifted Vaughan's limp body on his
shoulders and walked away back to the shelter. Stobart was not left
alone for long, before he also was carried back to camp.
By this time the sun was just showing over the eastern rim of the land,
and the few trees were casting long shadows on the sand. The native
gathered up Vaughan's clothes, but did not know how to put them on the
lad; so he covered him over with them. He had been careful not to
leave the quart-pot behind, and as soon as the boys were safely under
the shelter again, the man took the quart-pot and started off.
He was evidently going for water. In a few minutes, however, he came
running back to camp at top speed. He was very excited and only stayed
long enough to put the quart-pot down on the ground, before he grabbed
his weapons and disappeared into the scrub in the opposite direction,
running as hard as he could, yet making no more noise than a cat.
He had not returned the quart-pot exactly as he had found it. When he
took it away, it was empty, but now it contained a sprig of
sharply-pointed leaves.
Yarloo came on the scene almost as soon as the other black was out of
sight, and was probably the cause of the first man's sudden
disappearance, Yarloo was carrying a small bunch of parakelia leaves.
The first things he noticed were the new tracks, and he stopped dead.
From where he stood, he could not see into the bough-shelter, and so he
waited for a couple of minutes to see if the man who had made the
tracks was anywhere about. There was absolute silence; the only things
which moved were the shadows, which got shorter very very slowly as the
sun rose. With minute care Yarloo examined the marks of the stranger.
At first he was upset to find from the tracks that the man was a wild
Musgrave black, but as soon as he came to the place where the warragul
had set up his spear, he smiled and felt no more anxiety, for it is a
sign of perfect goodwill towards a man to dig a spear in his track.
(To find a spear or a boomerang on your track means that the owner of
them likes you so well that he gives you his weapons, because there is
no need for him to carry them when he meets you.)
As soon as Yarloo knew that the stranger native was friendly, he went
over to the shelter. The two white boys were lying on their backs in
the sand, one of them unconscious and gasping, with his tongue swollen
so much that it was too big for his mouth; the other gasping also, but
still in possession of his senses. Sax's eyes opened, and a glimmer of
intelligence showed in them, but he couldn't speak, and was too weak to
move. Yarloo looked down at them, but particularly at Sax, the son of
his master. Then his glance wandered to the quart-pot, and suddenly
everything else was forgotten.
No prospector who has toiled for years without any luck, and then comes
upon a nugget of gold quite unexpectedly, could have been more glad
than Yarloo was at sight of that little sprig of leaves. He took it up
and looked at it with huge satisfaction. The stem was woody and each
leaf was grey, narrow, and not more than half an inch long. The
peculiarity about them was, however, that each little leaf ended in a
spike. The black-fellow felt the spikes and grinned to feel the pricks
of pain, for the leaves had only recently been pulled from the tree.
Then he dropped his handful of parakelia and grabbed the quart-pot and
started to run, tracking the other native to find the tree from which
that sprig of leaves had been picked.
On the discovery of that tree rested the salvation of the white boys'
lives. It was the famous needle-bush.