“Please let them know at Yerlo,” and signed his name, “James Anderson.”
“There’s my last will and testament,” he said. “Come on now.”
Helm went up to the horses.
“It’s no go,” he said. “My poor old beggar’s done.”
“I expected it, old chap. We’ll have to foot it; mine’s only a shade
better than yours. Clearly we’ll have to leave yours behind. Mine can
carry the pack a little farther, but I really don’t think he can carry
me.”
It was still very hot, but the shadows of the boxwood trees had grown
longer, and there was just a promise of the coming night in the air.
They must walk, for they had only the one horse now, and it did not
seem likely he could hold out long. The other had lain down to die, and
whether this one could crawl on under the slender pack was a question
Anderson asked himself more than once. That he could carry either of
them was out of the question. They put a blanket or two on his back,
their pistols, and the empty waterbags, and then it seemed cruelty
to force the poor beast to move, but necessity knows no law, and they
started slowly on their hopeless journey round the salt-pan, Anderson
leading the way, Helm following with the horse. So slowly they went,
and their only hope lay in speed. Helm looked back a little sadly at
the dying horse, which had made an effort to rise, as if in mute protest
against being left.
“Poor old beggar,” he said, “wouldn’t it be kinder to put him out of his
misery?”
“Oh, give him a chance for his life,” said Anderson. “I ‘ve known horses
to recover in the most wonderful way. After he ‘s had a spell he may
find water for himself; anyhow, we ‘ll give him the chance.”
It was a blessed relief when the sun sank beneath the horizon; the night
was still and hot, but the wind dropped at sundown, and the men found
it easier to walk in the dark. The crows had followed them as long as
it was day, but they, too, left as soon as the darkness fell. They were
unaccustomed to walking, and it would have been hard work under the most
favourable circumstances; as it was, it was cruel. They did not talk
much, for what had they to say? An hour or two, and the moon rose,
a full moon, red and fiery, and as she rose slowly to the zenith,
silvering as she rose, the plain grew light as day. Every little stick
and stone, every little grass blade, was clearly outlined, the low ridge
which they were leaving behind, the ridge where they had found their
worst fears realized, loomed large behind them, while the salt-pan to
their left stretched away one great lake of glittering white, which it
seemed to Helm they could never round.
“How long, Anderson,” he asked, “before we can hope to reach the other
side?”
“Not before morning, man. I don’t see we can do it before morning.”
Then they plodded on a little further, neither liking to be the first
to give in, though their mouths were parched, and burning thirst was
consuming them. But still they walked steadily on till more than half
the night was gone; at last Helm flung himself down on the ground.
“I must rest,” he said, “if I die for it;” and Anderson sat down quietly
beside him.
Then sleep, merciful sleep, came to them in their weariness, and they
slept till the first faint streaks of dawn began to appear in the
eastern sky. It was a dreary, hopeless waking, the salt lake was behind
them now, and all around was the plain, bare hard earth in some places,
patches of grass in others, not a living thing visible, even the crows
had gone, and, though the foul birds had filled Helm with a shrinking
horror, their absence was still more terrible, for did it not show that
they were plunging farther and farther into the desert, farther and
farther from the water without which they could not live out another
day. The sun rose higher and higher, till the full force of his rays
seemed more than they could bear, and yet the nearest shade was miles
away, a line of trees or scrub dim on the horizon.
Neither mentioned the significance of the absence of the crows, though
both were thinking of it, but at last Helm said,
“The trees, let’s go for the trees. This is past bearing.”
But Anderson shook his head.
“They ‘re clean out of the way, man,” he said sadly. “Try to hold out a
little longer. The old horse is keeping up wonderfully. I never thought
he ‘d hold out so long.”
“He’s very nearly at his last gasp,” said Helm, and they relapsed into
silence again.
On, and on, and on, the thirst was so bad now they could hardly speak to
one another, still they pushed on under the burning rays of the almost
vertical sun, every step it seemed must be their last. Was it really
only last night they discovered they were lost, only last night? Another
mile, and another, and the heat grew unbearable, and Helm, without a
word, turned to the left, and made for the trees. Anderson paused
a moment, and then followed him, though to him it was giving up the
struggle. If they turned out of the path which led to the only water
they knew of, turned into this pathless wilderness, what possible chance
was there for them, and yet how could they stand this terrible heat any
longer?
“I tell you I shall go mad,” moaned Helm. “I didn’t think I was a
coward, but I can’t stand this. Old chap, don’t let me go mad; shoot me
if you see I ‘m going mad.”
“Mad,” said the other bravely, “nonsense, man, you’re all right. You’ll
feel better presently when you’ve had a spell.”
The lines of trees resolved itself on closer inspection into
close-growing gidya scrub, and long before they reached it the crows had
again made their appearance. A little flock kept them company, waiting
on in front, rushing up behind as if perchance they might be late,
wheeling round on either side.
“There must be water there,” said Helm eagerly, “look at the crows
again.”
“Don’t build on it, old chap,” said the other. “The scrub is too thick
for us to find it.”
But Helm was not to be dissuaded, and he wasted his energies in a
frantic search for water. His mate looked more soberly, because more
hopelessly, but the result was the same, and finally they lay down in the
shade and slept again, slept soundly too, in spite of the crows, which
were more confident, more impudent, than ever. Night fell, and with the
darkness grew in Helm an intense desire to be on the way again.
“We ‘re wasting time,” he kept saying hoarsely, for his tongue was so
swollen he could hardly speak at all, “wasting time. Don’t you see they
‘ll be expecting us in to supper at Gerring Gerring, and I shouldn’t
like the crows to get there first. They might frighten her, you know,
she’s only a girl and she hasn’t seen so much of them as you and me.
Those knowing old crows! they ‘re not here now. Don’t you see that’s why
they want to get there first?”
“Be quiet, man. You ‘re dreaming.”
“Dreaming, was I? Anderson, Anderson, mate, I ‘m not going mad. For
God’s sake, don’t let me go mad.”
“No, no, old man, it’s all right. We ‘re on the right track now. Here, I
‘ll take the horse and you give me your arm. There, now then, if we ‘ve
luck we may hit Gerring Gerring before morning.”
They walked on in silence, but Helm kept stumbling, and but for his
companion’s supporting arm would have fallen more than once. The moon
rose up, and as it grew light as day again he stopped short and looked
solemnly in his companion’s face. It was worn and haggard and weary, but
not so wild, he felt instinctively, as his own.
“Anderson,” he said, “I know I ‘m done for. My head’s all wrong. It ‘s
cooler now, but what’ll it be to-morrow? If--if--if I do anything mad
before I die, don’t tell her, I ‘d like her to think well of me. Just
say I died, don’t say how it hurt.”
“All right, mate,” said the other, for he had no comfort to give.
And then they walked on again in silence till the moon declined before
the coming day, the cruel day, which brought the heat and the following
crows again. Dawn brought them to a patch of “dead finish,” as the
settlers call a dense and thorny scrub with pretty green leaves, through
which it is well nigh impossible to force a way even under the most
favourable circumstances; and which presented an utterly impassable
barrier to men in their condition. They turned aside once more, and
Anderson thought to himself that they must indeed have given up hope,
to be stopped by an impassable barrier and yet to make no moan. It was
surely the very depths of hopelessness when all ways were alike to them.
He looked back on their tracks and dismay filled his heart; they were
not firm and straight, but wavering and wandering like those of men in
the last extremity. He had followed tracks like these before now, and
they always led to the same thing. He wondered dully would any one ever
follow those tracks. A little further on Helm let go his arm and ran on
ahead.
“We’ll never do any good at this rate,” he gasped, “never--never;” and
he pulled at the collar of his shirt till he tore it away. “We must
have something to drink. We ‘ll die else, and I mean to have a fight for
life. There’s the old horse, he can’t stagger a step further; what’s the
good of keeping him? Let’s shoot him--and--and--There’s enough blood in
him to--to--”
“No, no, man, no. I tell you that’s the beginning of the end--more than
the beginning--the end in fact.”
“I don’t care. I can’t stand this;” and before Anderson could stop him,
Helm had drawn his pistol and shot the horse in the head.
The poor beast was at his last gasp, and for the last hour Anderson had
been meditating the advisibility of leaving him behind, so it was no
material loss; his only care now was to prevent his mate from drinking
the blood, which, according to the faith of the bushmen, is worse than
drinking salt water.
“Poor old beggar,” he said, taking his pistols and cartridges from the
saddle, where they had been wrapped among the blankets, “I suppose it
was about the kindest thing we could do for him. Come on, mate, we must
leave him to the crows now,” and he caught Helm’s arm and would have led
him on.
But the other resisted and breaking free ran back, and before he could
stop him, had drawn his knife across the horse’s throat and taken a long
draught of blood.
Does it sound ghastly? But such things are, and his lips were dry and
parched, and his throat so swollen that he could only speak in hoarse
whispers, and so great was the temptation that Anderson, looking away at
the bare pitiless plain, with the mocking mirage in the distance, felt
that he too might as well drink and die; only the thought of the cripple
boy who would be alone in the world but for him, made him make one more
desperate effort for self-control.
He took the younger man’s arm and dragged him on, skirting slowly round
the “dead finish” till at length, late in the afternoon, it gave place
to boree. His own senses were clear enough, but Helm was muttering
wildly, and he listened with unheeding ears to his babble of home and
mother and sweetheart. They could not go far, and soon they forced their
way in among the scrub, and though the burning thirst was worse than
ever, the shade was grateful. The crows stopped too, and settled on
the low trees, turning their evil blue-black heads on one side to get a
better view of their prey.
“I can’t keep my head,” moaned Helm, “I can’t. I have been mad all day.
I know I have. It has stretched out into ages this long day and it’s not
over yet. When were we lost? Yesterday? The day before? It feels like
years.”
“Never mind,” said Anderson, not unkindly, “it can’t be much longer now.
Try to sleep, old man.”
“Sleep! with a thousand devils tearing at me!”
But they did sleep after all, a wearied, troubled sleep, a broken sleep
full of frightful dreams, or still more cruel ones of cooling streams
and rippling waters. Night came, and Anderson awoke from what seemed to
him a doze of a moment to find his companion gone from his side. For a
second the thought came to him that it was not worth while to look for
him. He was mad--mad, and where was the use of troubling about him any
further; and then his better feelings, and perhaps that longing for
human companionship which we all must feel, made him rise up and look
for him. Up and down, he was staggering up and down, a hundred feet one
way and then back again on his own tracks.
“We must get on, old chap,” he muttered when he saw Anderson, “we must
get on. You rest if you like though; there isn’t anybody waiting for
you; but Mabel, she ‘s waiting for me and I must try and get back. She
would be disappointed else. Grieve! of course she’ll grieve if I’m lost.
All the world isn’t a cynic like you.”
Anderson took his arm again.
“We’ll go together,” he said. “If you do care a straw about seeing her
again, come on quietly with me.”
He yielded for the moment, but it required one continuous effort on
Anderson’s part to keep him up to it. Plainly his reason was gone, and
the other man, growing weaker and weaker, found by the time the sun was
high in the heavens that the effort was more than he could make. It was
the end, or so close that he could only hope and pray the end would come
quickly. The young fellow had struggled on so bravely, so hopefully,
and now it had come to this. They had left the scrub behind them and
Anderson made his way to a tree, the only specimen of its kind in all
the wide plain, and lay down beneath its branches--to rest? No, he felt
in his heart it was to die. Helm he could not persuade to lie down. He
kept staggering on hopelessly round and round the tree, struggling to
keep in the shade, fancying, as many a lost man has done before him,
that he was “pushing on.”
It was the same old story. Anderson had heard it told hundreds of times
over the camp fire, one man will lie down to die quietly, and the
other will go raving mad. So Helm had gone mad, poor chap; and then he
remembered his passionate prayer to him, not to let him go mad, to shoot
him if he saw he was going mad, and he lay and looked up at the hard
blue sky through the leaves, and at the watching crows, and knew that he
was only waiting for death, knew that he was too utterly weary to aid in
any way his mate. He listened to him muttering to himself for a little,
watched him as he went monotonously round and round. It was not so hard
after all--not near so hard for him as for Helm. If only the boy were
dead, he thought wearily, if only the boy were dead he would be glad
that this should end it, his life was never worth much, he had failed
all through, he would be glad to be at rest--if only the boy were there
before him; but the boy--the poor little helpless thing, he must make
another effort for the boy’s sake, and he struggled to his feet again.
But the burning landscape was a blood-red blur before his eyes, and
then, quite suddenly it seemed to him, sight and hearing left him. He
was dying--was this death? How merciful death was--if only the boy--
*****
Very wearily he opened his eyes. Could it be that some one was pouring
water down his throat? Some one was bathing his face.
“He’s coming to,” said a voice in his ear. “By Jove, it was a narrow
shave. The other poor chap’s done for, isn’t he, Ned?”
“Quite dead. He went mad evidently, clean off his head. Why, the poor
chap had begun on his own grave.”
When Anderson came to himself he found he had been picked up by the
other exploring party.
“We picked up your tracks away by the ‘dead finish’ there,” said the
leader, “and I thought it must be pretty near up with you. You ‘ve had
the devil’s own luck, mate. Why, you were within five miles of Gerring
Gerring Water, and over by the ‘dead finish’ you passed within three
miles of a very decent waterhole, quite good enough to have kept life
within you. You shot the horse?”
“My mate did. He was mad, poor fellow.”
“Poor beggar, he seems to have had a bad time, but it’s all over now.”
It was indeed all over now. They had wrapped him in a blanket and were
digging a shallow grave. He had begun it himself, they said, and had
been digging with his long knife, though whether it was for water, or
whether it was really intended for a grave, no one could now say. His
sufferings were ended.
They left him there in the desert, the young fellow who had fought so
hard for his life and set so much store by it, and as soon as Anderson
was a little recovered, set out for Yerlo again.
It was over a week before he reached the station, so far had he wandered
out of the track, and as he rode up to the house a stable boy lounged up
to him.
“What a while you ‘ve been away, Boss,” he said. “We ‘d most given you
up for lost. The mail’s in and there’s a pile of letters for Mr. Helm.
None for you though.”
“Is everything all right?” asked Anderson, feeling like a man who had
come back from the grave.
“N-o-o, there’s mighty bad news. I don’t like to tell though.”
“Out with it, man, don’t keep me waiting.”
The lad looked away and turned his pipe from side of his mouth to the
other.
“It ‘s your youngster,” he said. “He had convulsions last Sunday. Mrs.
Brook--she said as nothing couldn’t have saved him. ‘It was a blessed
release,’ she said.”
Anderson flung the reins to the lad and walked quietly into the house.
It was a mistake, he clearly saw, coming back from the grave. He wished
he had died within five miles of Gerring Gerring Water.