WHAT remains to be told will not take long. Hardships naturally
increased as the means of bearing them diminished. I have said the
salmon held out for many days. We cut it in strips, and dried it as well
as we could; but the flies and maggots robbed us of a large portion of
it. At length we were reduced to two small hams; nothing else except a
little tea. Guessing the distance we had yet to go, and taking into
account our slow rate of travelling, I calculated the number of days
which, with the greatest economy, these could be made to last. Allowing
only one meal a day, and that of the scantiest, I scored the hams as a
cook scores a leg of roast pork, determined under no circumstances to
exceed the daily ration.
No little discipline was requisite to adhere to this resolution. Samson
broke down under the exposure and privation; superadded dysentery
rendered him all but helpless, and even affected his mind. The whole
labour of the camp then devolved on me. I never roused him in the
morning till the mules were packed—with all but his blanket and the
pannikin for his tea—and until I had saddled his horse for him. Not till
we halted at night did we get our ration of ham. This he ate, or rather
bolted, raw, like a wild beast. My share I never touched till after I
lay down to sleep. And so tired have I been, that once or twice I woke
in the morning with my hand at my mouth, the unswallowed morsel between
my teeth. For three weeks we went on in this way, never exchanging a
word. I cannot say how I might have behaved had Fred been in Samson’s
place. I hope I should have been at least humane. But I was labouring
for my life, and was not over tender-hearted.
Certainly there was enough to try the patience of a better man. Take an
instance. Unable one morning to find my own horse, I saddled his and
started him off, so as not to waste time, with his spare animal and the
three mules. It so happened that our line of march was rather tortuous,
owing to some hills we had to round. Still, as there were high mountains
in the distance which we were making for, it seemed impossible that
anyone could miss his way. It was twenty minutes, perhaps, before I
found my horse; this would give him about a mile or more start of me. I
hurried on, but failed to overtake him. At the end of an hour I rode to
the top of a hill which commanded a view of the course he should have
taken. Not a moving speck was to be seen. I knew then that he had gone
astray. But in which direction?
My heart sank within me. The provisions and blankets were with him. I
do not think that at any point of my journey I had ever felt fear—panic
that is—till now. Starvation stared me in the face. My wits refused to
suggest a line of action. I was stunned. I felt then what I have often
felt since, what I still feel, that it is possible to wrestle
successfully with every difficulty that man has overcome, but not with
that supreme difficulty—man’s stupidity. It did not then occur to me to
give a name to the impatience that seeks to gather grapes of thorns or
figs of thistles.
I turned back, retraced my steps till I came to the track of the mules.
Luckily the ground retained the footprints, though sometimes these would
be lost for a hundred yards or so. Just as I anticipated—Samson had
wound round the base of the very first hill he came to; then, instead of
correcting the deviation, and steering for the mountains, had simply
followed his nose, and was now travelling due east,—in other words, was
going back over our track of the day before. It was past noon when I
overtook him, so that a precious day’s labour was lost.
I said little, but that little was a sentence of death.
‘After to-day,’ I began, ‘we will travel separately.’
At first he seemed hardly to take in my meaning. I explained it.
‘As well as I can make out, before we get to the Dalles, where we ought
to find the American outposts, we have only about 150 miles to go. This
should not take more than eight or nine days. I can do it in a week
alone, but not with you. I have come to the conclusion that with you I
may not be able to do it at all. We have still those mountains’—pointing
to the Blue Mountain range in the distance—‘to cross. They are covered
with snow, as you see. We may find them troublesome. In any case our
food will only last eight or nine days more, even at the present rate.
You shall have the largest half of what is left, for you require more
than I do. But I cannot, and will not, sacrifice my life for your sake.
I have made up my mind to leave you.’
It must always be a terrible thing for a judge to pass the sentence of
death. But then he is fulfilling a duty, merely carrying out a law which
is not of his making. Moreover, he has no option—the responsibility
rests with the jury; last of all, the sufferer is a criminal. Between
the judge’s case and mine there was no analogy. My act was a purely
selfish one—justifiable I still think, though certainly not magnanimous.
I was quite aware of this at the time, but a starving man is not burdened
with generosity.
I dismounted, and, without unsaddling the mules, took off their packs,
now reduced to a few pounds, which was all the wretched, raw-backed, and
half-dead, animals could stagger under; and, putting my blanket, the
remains of a ham, and a little packet of tea—some eight or ten
tea-spoonfuls—on one mule, I again prepared to mount my horse and depart.
I took, as it were, a sneaking glance at Samson. He was sitting upon the
ground, with his face between his knees, sobbing.
At three-and-twenty the heart of a man, or of a woman—if either has any,
which, of course, may be doubtful—is apt to play the dynamite with his or
her resolves. Water-drops have ever been formidable weapons of the
latter, as we all know; and, not being so accustomed to them then as I
have become since, the sight of the poor devil’s abject woe and
destitution, the thought that illness and suffering were the causes, the
secret whisper that my act was a cowardly one, forced me to follow the
lines of least resistance, and submit to the decrees of destiny.
One more page from my ‘Ride,’ and the reader will, I think, have a fair
conception of its general character. For the last two hours the ascent
of the Blue Mountains had been very steep. We were in a thick pine
forest. There was a track—probably made by Indians. Near the summit we
found a spring of beautiful water. Here we halted for the night. It was
a snug spot. But, alas! there was nothing for the animals to eat except
pine needles. We lighted our fire against the great up-torn roots of a
fallen tree; and, though it was freezing hard, we piled on such masses of
dead boughs that the huge blaze seemed to warm the surrounding
atmosphere.
I must here give the words of my journal, for one exclamation in it has a
sort of schoolboy ring that recalls the buoyancy of youthful spirits, the
spirits indeed to which in early life we owe our enterprise and
perseverance:
‘As I was dozing off, a pack of hungry wolves that had scented us out set
up the most infernal chorus ever heard. In vain I pulled the frozen
buffalo-robe over my head, and tried to get to sleep. The demons drew
nearer and nearer, howling, snarling, fighting, moaning, and making a row
in the perfect stillness which reigned around, as if hell itself were
loose. For some time I bore it with patience. At length, jumping up, I
yelled in a voice that made the valley ring: You devils! will you be
quiet? The appeal was immediately answered by silence; but hearing them
tuning up for a second concert, I threw some wood on the blazing fire and
once more retired to my lair. For a few minutes I lay awake to admire a
brilliant Aurora Borealis shooting out its streams of electric light.
Then, turning over on my side, I never moved again till dawn.’
The first objects that caught my eye were the animals. They were huddled
together within a couple of yards of where we lay. It was a horrible
sight. Two out of the three mules, and Samson’s horse, had been attacked
by the wolves. The flanks of the horse were terribly torn, and the
entrails of both the mules were partially hanging out. Though all three
were still standing with their backs arched, they were rapidly dying from
loss of blood. My dear little ‘Strawberry’—as we called him to match
William’s ‘Cream’ and my mare were both intact.
A few days after this, Samson’s remaining horse gave out. I had to
surrender what remained of my poor beast in order to get my companion
through. The last fifty miles of the journey I performed on foot;
sometimes carrying my rifle to relieve the staggering little mule of a
few pounds extra weight. At long last the Dalles hove in sight. And our
cry, ‘The tents! the tents!’ echoed the joyous ‘Thalassa! Thalassa!’ of
the weary Greeks.