LOST IN THE BUSH
Had Naomi seen him then she would have found some difficulty in
recognizing Hermann Engelhardt, the little piano-tuner whom already she
seemed to have known all her life. Yet she had made a singularly shrewd
guess at his whereabouts. Top Scrubby held him fast enough. And when
Naomi stretched her arms toward the sunset, it is a strange fact that
she also stretched them toward the lost young man, who was lying between
it and her, not three miles from the spot on which she stood.
Within a mile of him ran the horse-paddock fence, which he had crossed
by mistake at three o'clock that morning. He had never seen it again.
All day he had wandered without striking track, or fence, or water.
Once indeed his heart had danced at the sudden revelation of footprints
under his very nose. They were crisp and clean and obviously recent. All
at once they took a fatally familiar appearance. Slowly he lifted his
right foot and compared the mark of it with the marks he had discovered.
They were identical. To put the matter beyond a doubt he got both his
feet into a couple of the old footprints. They fitted like pipes in a
case. And then he knew that he was walking in circles, after the manner
of lost men, and that he stood precisely where he had been three hours
before.
That was a bitter moment. There were others and worse before sundown.
The worst of all was about the time when Naomi flung out her arms and
cried aloud in her trouble.
His staggering steps had brought him at last, near sundown, within sight
of a ridge of pines which he seemed to know. The nearer he came to them
the surer did he become that they were the station pines themselves.
Footsore and faint and parched as he was, he plucked up all his
remaining strength to reach those pines alive. If he were to drop down
now it would be shameful, and he deserved to die. So he did not drop
until he gained the ridge, and found the pines merely the outer ranks of
a regular phalanx of mallee scrub. There was no mallee among the station
pines. Nor would it have been possible to get so near to the homestead
without squeezing through the wires of two fences at least. He had made
a hideous and yet a fatuous mistake, and, when he realized it, he flung
himself on his face in the shade of a hop-bush and burst into tears. To
think that he must perish miserably after all, when, not five minutes
since, he had felt the bottle-neck of the water-bag against his
teeth--the smell of the wet canvas in his nostrils--the shrinking and
lightening of the bag between his palms as the deep draught of cold
water brought his dead throat to life.
It was all over now. He turned his face to the sand, and waited sullenly
for the end. And presently a crow flew down from a pine, and hopped
nearer and nearer to the prostrate body, with many a cautious pause, its
wise black head now on one side, now on the other. Was it a dead body or
a man asleep? There would have been no immediate knowing had not the
crow been advancing between the setting sun and the man. Its shadow was
a yard long when it came between Engelhardt's eyes, which were wide
open, and the patch of sand that was warm with his breath. An instant
later the crow was away with a hoarse scream, and Engelhardt was sitting
up with a still hoarser oath upon his lips; indeed, he was inarticulate
even to his own ears; but he found himself shaking his only fist at the
crow, now a mere smut upon the evening sky, and next moment he was
tottering to his feet.
He could hardly stand. His eyes were burning, his tongue swollen, his
lips cracking like earth in a drought. He was aching, too, from head to
foot, but he was not yet food for the crows. He set his teeth, and shook
his head once or twice. Not yet--not yet.
The setting sun made a lane of light through the pines and mallee. The
piano-tuner looked right and left along this lane, wondering which way
to turn. He had no prejudice in the matter. All day he had been making
calculations, and all day his calculations had been working out wrong.
Like the struggles of a fly in a spider's web, each new effort left him
more hopelessly entangled than the last. So now, without thinking, for
thought was of no avail, he turned his face to the sunset, and, after
half an hour's painful stumbling, was a mile farther from the station,
and a mile deeper in the maze of Top Scrubby.
Night had fallen now, and the air was cool and sweet. This slightly
refreshed him, and the continual chewing of leaves also did him some
little good, as indeed it had done all day. But he was becoming troubled
with a growing giddiness in addition to his other sufferings, and he
well knew that the sands of his endurance were almost run. When the
stars came out he once more altered his course, taking a new line by the
Southern Cross; but it could not be for long, he was losing strength
with every step. About this time it occurred to him to cut a branch for
a staff, but when he took out his knife he was too weak to open the
blade. A fatal lassitude was creeping over him. He could no longer think
or even worry. Nothing mattered any more! Naomi--his mother--the plans
and aspirations of his own life--they were all one to him now, and of
little account even in the bulk. It had not been so a few hours earlier,
but body and mind were failing together, and with no more hope there was
but little more regret. His head and his heart grew light together, and
when at last he determined to sit down and be done with it all, his
greatest care was the choice of a soft and sandy place. It was as though
he had been going to lie down for the night instead of for all time. And
yet it was this, the mere fad of a wandering mind, that saved him; for
before he had found what he wanted, suddenly--as by a miracle--he saw a
light.
In a flash the man was alive and electrified. All the nerves in his body
tightened like harp-strings, and the breath of life swept over them,
leaving his heart singing of Naomi and his mother and the deeds to be
done in this world. And the thrill remained; for the light was no
phantom of a rocking brain, but a glorious reality that showed brighter
and lighter every moment.
Yet it was a very long way off. He might never reach it at all. But he
rushed on with never a look right or left, or up or down, as if his one
chance of life lay in keeping his grip of that light steadfast and
unrelaxed. His headlong course brought him twice to his knees with a
thud that shook him to the very marrow. Once he ran his face into a
tangle of small branches, and felt a hot stream flowing over his lips
and chin; he sucked at it as it leapt his lips, and reeled on, thanking
heaven that he could still see out of his eyes. The light had grown into
a camp-fire, and he could hear men's voices around it. Their faces he
could not see--only the leaping, crackling fire. He tried to coo-ee, but
no sound would come. The thought crossed him that even now, within sight
and ear-shot of his fellow-men, he might drop for good. His heart kept
throbbing against his ribs like an egg boiling in a pan, and his every
breath was as a man's last gasp. He passed some horses tethered among
the trees. Then before the fire there stood a stout figure with shaded
eyes and pistols in his belt; another joined him; then a third, with a
rifle; and the three loomed larger with every stride, until Engelhardt
fell sprawling and panting in their midst, his hat gone, his long hair
matted upon his forehead, and the white face beneath all streaming with
sweat and blood.
"By God, he's dying!" said one of the men, flinging away his fire-arm.
"Yank us the water-bag, mate, and give the cuss a chance."
Engelhardt looked up, and saw one of his two enemies, the swagmen,
reaching out his hand for the bag. It was the smaller and quieter of the
pair--the man with the weather-beaten face and the twinkling eye--and
as Engelhardt looked further he saw none other than Simons, the
discharged shearer, handing the dripping bag across. But a third hand
stretched over and snatched it away with a bellowing curse.
"What a blessed soft pair you are! Can't you see who 'e is? It's 'is
bloomin' little nibs with the broke arm, and not a damned drop does he
get from me!"
"Come on, Bill," said the other tramp. "Why not?"
"He knows why not," said Bill, who, of course, was the stout scoundrel
with the squint. "Don't you, sonny?" And he kicked Engelhardt in the
side with his flat foot.
"Easy, mate, easy. The beggar's dying!"
"All the better! If he don't look slippy about it I'll take an' slit his
throat for him!"
"Well, give him a drop o' water first."
"Ay, give 'im a drink, whether or no," put in Simons. "No tortures,
mate! The plain thing's good enough for me."
"And me, too!"
"Why, Bo's'n," cried Bill, "you've got no more spunk than a blessed old
ewe! You sailors and shearers are plucky fine chaps to go mates with in
a job like ours! You wouldn't have done for poor old Tigerskin!"
"To hell with Tigerskin," said Simons, savagely. "We've heard more than
enough of him. Give the beggar a drink, or, by cripes, I'm off it!"
"All right, boys, all right. You needn't get so scotty about it, matey.
But he sha'n't drink more than's good for 'im, and he sha'n't drink much
at a time, or 'e'll burst 'is skin!"
As he spoke Bill uncorked the water-bag, hollowed a filthy palm, flooded
it, and held it out to the piano-tuner, who all this time had been
sitting still and listening without a word.
"Drink out o' my hand," said he, "or not at all."
But Engelhardt could only stare at the great hairy paw thrust under his
nose. It had no little finger. He was trying to remember what this
meant.
"Drink out o' that, you swine," thundered Bill, "and be damned to you!"
Human nature could endure no more. Instead of drinking, Engelhardt
knocked the man's hand up, and made a sudden grab at the water-bag. He
got it, too, and had swallowed a mouthful before it was plucked away
from him. The oaths came pouring out of Bill's mouth like sheep racing
through a gate. But the piano-tuner had tasted what was more to him than
blood, and he made a second dash at the bag, which resulted in a
quantity of water being spilled; so without struggling any more, he fell
upon his face with his lips to the wet sand.
"Let the joker suck," said Bill; "I'll back the sand!"
But Engelhardt rolled over on his left side and moved no more.
Simons knelt over him.
"He's a stiff 'un, mates. My blessed oath he is! That's number two, an'
both on 'em yours, Bill."
Bill laughed.
"That'll be all right," said he. "Where's my pipe got to? I'm weakenin'
for a smoke."