"I've been thinking that we may be as safe here as farther away,"
continued the doctor; "so let them rest still, for we have a tremendous
task before us to get down to the coast."
Just then Jimmy leaped up staring, his hand on his waddy and his eyes
wandering in search of danger.
This being absent, his next idea was regarding food.
"Much hungry," he said, "want mutton, want damper, want eatums."
The rest were aroused, and, water being close at hand in a little
stream, we soon had our simple store of food brought out and made a
refreshing meal, of which my father, as he lay, partook mechanically,
but without a word.
The doctor then bathed and dressed his ankles, which were in a fearfully
swollen and injured state. Like Mr Francis, he seemed as if his long
captivity had made him think like the savages among whom he had been;
while the terrible mental anxiety he had suffered along with his bodily
anguish had resulted in complete prostration. He ate what was given to
him or drank with his eyes closed, and when he opened them once or twice
it was not to let them wander round upon us who attended to him, but to
gaze straight up in a vague manner and mutter a few of the native words
before sinking back into a stupor-like sleep.
I gazed at the doctor with my misery speaking in my eyes, for it was so
different a meeting from that which I had imagined. There was no
delight, no anguished tears, no pressing to a loving father's heart. We
had found him a mere hopeless wreck, apparently, like Mr Francis, and
the pain I suffered seemed more than I could bear.
"Patience!" the doctor said to me, with a smile. "Yes, I know what you
want to ask me. Let's wait and see. He was dying slowly, Joe, and we
have come in time to save his life."
"You are sure?" I said.
"No," he answered, "not sure, but I shall hope. Now let's get on again
till dark, and then we'll have a good rest in the safest place we can
find."
In the exertion and toil that followed I found some relief. My
interest, too, was excited by seeing how much Mr Francis seemed to
change hour by hour, and how well he knew the country which he led us
through.
He found for us a capital resting-place in a rocky gorge, where, unless
tracked step by step, there was no fear of our being surprised. Here
there was water and fruit, and, short a distance as we had come, the
darkness made it necessary that we should wait for day.
Then followed days and weeks of slow travel through a beautiful country,
always south and west. We did not go many miles some days, for the
burden we carried made our passage very slow. Sometimes, too, our black
scouts came back to announce that we were travelling towards some black
village, or that a hunting party was in our neighbourhood, and though
these people might have been friendly, we took the advice of our black
companions and avoided them, either by making a detour or by waiting in
hiding till they had passed.
Water was plentiful, and Jimmy and Ti-hi never let us want for fruit,
fish, or some animal for food. Now it would be a wild pig or a small
deer, more often birds, for these literally swarmed in some of the lakes
and marshes round which we made our way.
The country was so thinly inhabited that we could always light a fire in
some shut-in part of the forest without fear, and so we got on, running
risks at times, but on the whole meeting with but few adventures.
After getting over the exertion and a little return of fever from too
early leaving his sick-bed of boughs, Mr Francis mended rapidly, his
wound healing well and his mind daily growing clearer. Every now and
then, when excited, he had relapses, and looked at us hopelessly,
talking quickly in the savages' tongue; but these grew less frequent,
and there would be days during which he would be quite free. He grew so
much better that at the end of a month he insisted upon taking his place
at one of the bamboos, proving himself to be a tender nurse to our
invalid in his turn.
And all this time my father seemed to alter but little. The doctor was
indefatigable in his endeavours; but though he soon wrought a change in
his patient's bodily infirmities to such an extent, that at last my
father could walk first a mile, then a couple, and then ease the bearers
of half their toil, his mind seemed gone, and he went on in a strangely
vacant way.
As time went on and our long journey continued he would walk slowly by
my side, resting on my shoulder, and with his eyes always fixed upon the
earth. If he was spoken to he did not seem to hear, and he never opened
his lips save to utter a few words in the savage tongue.