THE ADVENTURE
OF
THE BROAD ARROW

THE ADVENTURE OF THE BROAD ARROW

CHAPTER I.

NEW FIND.

"It's possible to be damned without being dead," said Smith, as he drank his nobbler at the Pilbarra Hotel. "And miners are the men who know it, in such a place as this."

He looked out of the reeking bar-room on the light brown glare of waterless desert, with a few thirsty trees scattered over it.

"We're in the pit, so to speak," he continued, "but not the lowest, for there are drinks here still. Fill 'em up again, Bob, and have one yourself. As for me, I feel I could blue my skin and shirt for a last one before I tumble to pieces and rot finger by finger in this hole."

The men in the bar stood and drank with him silently. Yet one who was mad drunk with brandy and sunlight smashed his tumbler on the bar top, and pitched the bottom at a mongrel dog slinking outside in a thin shadow.

"What's the best news, Smith?" asked Bob, who was the only cheerful man in the crowd.

"The best news," answered Smith, "is that we are back, and the water's nearly done here, and the rain is not coming, and the camp is rotting. Tinned meats and fever water are doing for us. I might as well have stayed out yonder and got sun-dried in mulga and spinifex."

And he went off foolishly into the blazing sun, which came down at a slant of ninety degrees, and shone back from the hot dust with a glare that could blister a man under his chin.

The town that he strode through was of boards and canvas and corrugated iron. It stank in the still air, and, as man, or horse, or camel went by, the dust rose thick, and empty cans rang.

But into the stagnant desolation came men perpetually. They came in with gold fever, and went out with typhoid; and still their empty places filled up. The Western Australian papers screamed "no water," and the Eastern papers copied them with jealous additions; but men came in to drink thick mud and rot like silly sheep piled against a windward fence in a dry season, when the creeks and tanks are dry, and grass is not.

From Albany, Perth, and Freemantle, from Kimberley, Murchison, and Coolgardie, men rushed in, till New Find, so greatly boomed, was full of good men and thieves, of workers and loafers, of white men and of Chinamen, and they were all bent on gold, till the fever got them, and they yelled under canvas which was no shelter from the sun. But ants and spiders and scorpions gloried while men died, and the flies were thick on sick men's mouths, and ownerless dogs dug up corpses and died of blood-poisoning.

For the ways of men under ancient stresses are as the ways of ancient instinct, inevitable in unalterable channels. They drift where gold is, or where the thought of its possibility lies; they march like locusts into a ditch which is death. They pour out of the towns like ants from a disturbed ant-hill, they try the absurd, and storm the impossible; they rot and stick in the mire; they perish, and are known no more; they wither like grass, and are of no avail.

Yet each individual man is even there the centre of his world, and thinks that he will do this and do that, and each day he does what the dead day willed, and the night subscribed to, but does no more and does no other. And such as these was Smith, who braved sudden death in a bitter sun as he walked through the hideous town to his mate's hut out west on the plain.

As he went out of the sunlight into shadow, which was thick darkness after the glare of the noonday light, he stumbled across some one.

"Where the devil are you treading?" growled the somnolent man he had disturbed.

"Can't see after being in the sun," said Smith. "Is that you, Tom?"

"Yes," said Tom the water-carter, whose job looked like giving out. For water now was bought by rich men in measured buckets, and by poor ones in mean tin pannikins. "You mean you can't see after soaking in whisky at the Pilbarra, don't you?" he added.

"A little of both," said Smith, lying down on a pile of dirty gunny sacks. "I've been out facing the Earth-destroyer and the Drier-up of water, and I wanted to get blind."

"Why are you back?" asked Tom. "I came in and saw the Baker yonder, and I found Hicks, too, so I just lay down. You had a bad time?"

The men he spoke of were at the far end of the hut; one was in an old bush bed made of stakes and sticks, and stretched sacking, while the other sat at the table, and scraped grease from it with a clasp knife.

"We funked it," said Smith. "There's no other word for it. Oh—blazes! I can't lie still."

He rose and went to the table, and sat opposite to Hicks. Reaching over, he borrowed the other man's knife without ceremony, and scratched his name in big capital letters in the wood. When he had finished SMITH, he jabbed the knife into the I of his name, and went on talking.

"We got sixty miles out across the sand, the mulga, and the porcupine grass; yes, sixty miles into the desert, and we saw its red rim dance, and its scrub crackle, and the water bags looked mean betting against the sun. So we put our tails between our legs, and crawled back sick, and ready to rot here. But when the rain comes, we're there, we're there."

"Why didn't you take camels?" asked Tom.

Smith smiled.

"Why didn't we organise an expedition? Camels and Afghans cost money. And I don't like their ways. Horses are good enough for me. You wait till the rain comes."

But another chipped into the talk.

"It'll never rain no more," said the man who lay on the bed. "I'm going home to my ma, and I'll live where there's water, and make love to the 'alf-a-crown a week slavey, and be a toff in a back street. What did I come out 'ere for? It's better to be a sneak, and be jugged in London, than be 'ere. If they did anythin' 'alf so bad to long timers as make 'em come to such a place as this 'ere, they'd 'ave a bally h'agitation in Hengland, and a meetin' in the Park."

"Dry up, you Cockney baker, you," said Smith, more good-humouredly than he had yet spoken. "It's never home you'll get. You and I will fill a sand-pit here, and I'll dig yours. We'll scrape it out with a broken bottle and a kerosene tin, and we'll write your name on the hide of your dead dog, and plant him with you to keep you faithful company."

But the Cockney took it all in good part, and only pretended to weep at his mate's brutal suggestions.

"Boo-hoo, boo-hoo!" said he, "that I should ever be mates with a man whose name is Smith when mine is Mandeville."

"And that you stole with your passage money," said Hicks, who had not spoken yet. But now he angered Mandeville, who suggested forcibly in the very choicest Australian, that if he didn't dry up he would soon put the kibosh on him.

But Hicks laughed. As he was six feet four in height and five stone the heavier man, he could afford to let the Cockney say what he pleased. And Mandeville said it till Smith interfered.

"Now then, leave each other alone. It's not you that's quarrelling. It's the sun, moon, and stars, the wind and sand and weather you've a fight with. Get out and claw the sand, man. Hurrah, hurrah! Go it, dear boys, against the devil, who is the patron saint of Pilbarra."

He lighted his pipe and smoked, and there was silence for a space in that sweet heaven.

CHAPTER II.

A SPECULATION.

"You'd better come with us, Tom," said Smith, a few days after. "There's not much need for you here now. This rain has done you out of a job which would never make you rich."

They were walking together on the outskirts of the barren town, close by the New Find, which had turned the inside of the earth up to the sky. They were making money there, though every night the men working it had nightmares, and sweated to think the gold was done. Smith waved his hand towards it.

"They've taken out fifty thousand already, Tom," he said.

"And I daresay they'll take out no more," said red-faced Tom, whose natural good-humour and hopefulness were a little off in colour.

"What then? They'll float it," said Smith. "It would do us four. I could show my peeled nose in England again."

He rubbed his aquiline beak, which was badly skinned. His blue eyes were bright and eager and courageous.

"Oh, if you didn't drink such a lot, you'd be a daisy," said Tom, who had spent years in America, and mixed his talk as the other did his drinks.

"Hang it," said Smith, "I give you my word I'm off drink. I tell you honestly that I mean it. And out yonder we sha'n't be able to get it."

Tom looked out across the north-east plain, and shook his head.

"No, perhaps not," he answered.

But Smith grew impatient.

"This rain has filled up the holes," he cried, "and there'll be plenty for a week or two, even if no more falls."

"No more will fall," said Tom. "It's rare luck as this fell."

But, all the same, before they went back, he promised to go with the others upon their expedition.

"It must be out there somewhere," said Hicks that night, when everything was ready for the morning's start. "For Bill Herder, that brought that bit of stuff in, was only gone a fortnight. And if he was off his nut with the fever, I believe he spoke the gospel truth. And, anyhow, that lump of stuff doesn't lie, and where it came from is not more than a week's journey."

For Herder, who had helped to turn their faces to the north-east, had died in the very bed occupied by the Cockney. He dropped off his horse at the door one evening as the chums were at supper, and three days afterwards he collapsed and went out. All he had brought back with him was one lump of quartz and gold, weighing about eight pounds. He looked at them pitifully before he died, but could tell them nothing but that he got it "out yonder." So he was buried, and no one knew if he had a friend to whom news of his death should be sent.

The first expedition made by Hicks, Smith, and Mandeville, was an ill-considered and rash one. For Smith was reckless. He was always ready to take chances that any other man would shirk. He rushed his chums into a violent hurry, and got them a day out on the burning plain before they knew it. Some of the men in town believed they knew where they were going, and followed them from a distance. But when they saw the open dry horror of a flat world before them, those who sneaked behind failed in their hearts and turned back. They spread reports of the country in that quarter, which gave rise at last to circumstantial rumours that the Smith party was already dead of thirst.

But on the fourth day they came in.

Smith had growled even then, for he swore that another few hours would bring them to water. A faint cloud-line on the horizon he described as big trees by a creek. But the water in their big bags was nearly done, and one had leaked.

"This time," said Smith, "I'm going through, if I die like a dog on a wet sack."

"A dry sack," said Hicks.

But early in the dawn, the three faced the plain once more, and with them went Tom.

"I might just as well make a spoon, or spoil a horn," said Tom. "And there is gold in this all-fired rotten country anyhow."

It was still almost dark when they saddled up and struck out north-west upon the endless, mysterious plain, and, by the time the white-hot sun shot up on their right hands, and the light poured across the dead level, the town was ten miles behind them. But they could still see its tin roofs and tin walls gleaming.

"This reminds me that I once went from a ship in a boat," said Tom, "when it was dead calm, and the sea was thick blue oil. It's like being at sea here."

He was riding by the side of the Cockney, who nodded, and whistled.

"It's a blooming rum start, this is," said Mandeville. "To think that two years ago I was never outside London, and now to be on a plain like this 'ere. I was a moke ever to leave the bakery business. And yet I dunno, bakin' wasn't nice work. What was you at 'ome, Tom?"

"A pound a week clerk," said Tom.

"And what fetched you out 'ere?"

"I got sacked, and couldn't get another job, so I came to my brother in Melbourne, and there—"

"And there," cried Mandeville, "it's a sight worse than at 'ome."

"That's where you hit it," said Tom. "So then I went to San Francisco, and there or thereabouts I stayed for two years, and this gold racket fetched me back."

"Do you know who Smith was afore he came out?" asked Mandeville.

Tom shook his head.

"He was a real gent; a clergyman's son, and 'ad a lot of money. Drink done him, and a woman, I daresay. But he's a rare good sort, and a good plucked un. 'E'd fight 'Icks if so be 'e sauced him. I've seed 'im fight till 'e was a red rag, and cryin' because the other licked him. And when 'e's drunk 'e's a terror, an 'oly terror, and it's stand from under when 'e flies 'igh."

For Mandeville adored Smith, and felt that it was a high privilege to be the friend of a clergyman's son. He always spoke as if such a parentage was a kind of profession.

At about ten o'clock they made camp by a thickish bit of mulga scrub, where there was a little grass newly sprung up about a small water-hole. They ate a lunch of mutton and bread.

"No more good bread," said Smith, "our baker will have to come down to Johnny cakes and flap-jacks."

"Never mind us," said the Baker, which was one of Mandeville's names. "I'm thinking of the 'orses. It's little there is to pick. And with this 'ere sun like a h'oven for 'eat, it'll dry it up in two days."

"Don't croak," growled Hicks, whose vast length was stretched under the only bit of shade thereabouts.

"I ain't growling," said the Baker, "I'm only just expressing opinions. And your 'orse will want tucker if 'e's to carry your bloomin' carcass far."

Hicks laughed, and reached out for Mandeville, who rolled a foot further away from him.

"What kind of 'orses do you breed down on the 'Awksbery River, old man?" he asked. "Or does your folks go on foot? Or perhaps you're bigger than most."

"I'm the little un' of the family," said Hicks. And they all laughed.

"Lord save us from your brothers," said Smith. "But let's be getting a bit of a snooze."

So they lay and sweated, and hunted off the infernal ubiquitous flies, and got sticky and bad-tempered, till the sun was two hours past the meridian.

And before them, as they rode on again, was the eternal plain, which ran ahead of them for ever.

But when they camped at night, they were thirty miles, or perhaps more, from the New Find.

CHAPTER III.

GOING IT BLIND.

The second day found all the four men cheerful, but it left them a little apprehensive. For, as the day went on, though it appeared impossible for the morning's heat to be greater, it still grew and grew till noon. That seemed its full flood, and yet they knew it must be worse. And after one o'clock, when they guessed the time intuitively, as bushmen will—for Hicks was their clock—the little breeze that blew from the south-east failed.

They were then pushing across a patch of dense, thick scrub with openings in it, which were partially overgrown with dry spinifex, the colour of ripe wheat straw, and every piece of exposed whitish ground shone with reflected heat which was as intense as the sun. And about two o'clock a breeze came from the north. Hicks shook his head and pulled up his horse, for they took no noon-time that day. It was better to push on even through the spinifex, which murdered the horses.

"What's wrong?" asked Smith, who was riding with both legs on one side like a woman.

"What's wrong?" said Hicks. "Well, and don't get narked about it, I should say a north wind here was nothing to yearn for. It will soak every pool of water up in twenty-four hours, and we shall be done."

"Tut, man," cried Smith, but Hicks went on.

"And now we are almost as far as we were last time, or even further. Where's your creek that you gassed about?"

They wrangled for ten minutes, and then rode on rather sullenly. Tom and Mandeville, who knew least about the country, said little. But the Baker would say "ditto" to Smith if Smith said "die." That was evident.

The north wind blew steadily at about ten miles an hour, and it was in truth like a breath from a furnace; it caught the men on the left cheek, and Tom's skin fairly burnt and blistered. The others grinned and were silent, and rode through the living invisible flame. Their horses were evidently distressed, and their legs streamed with blood from wounds made by the porcupine grass.

At last, about six, when Hicks' big horse was almost done for, they came to a water-hole. Before they could check them, the animals were half up to their knees. They drank till they stretched their girths almost to breaking point.

That night, by their little fire of scrub, there was the usual discussion, which now bore more continually on the thing most to be considered. They did not divagate into common ribaldry, neither did they discuss horse flesh in general. They spoke only of their own horses, of water now and water to-morrow, and the prospects of getting through to some place where they could stay and prospect, or to some rise in the ground which they looked for. For so much they had gathered from Herder's dying delirious gabble.

And now it began to seem to Tom, and to Hicks, who was influenced by the condition of his horse, that they had gone out into the Big Impossible without much chance of doing anything. What had they to go on in estimating their chances? A heavy lump of gold mixed with quartz, a quantity of fevered talk streaked with a possible vein of real consciousness.

"How can we know he had his senses, even when he talked most sensibly?" asked Hicks. "I daresay, the fever invented it for him."

"It didn't h'invent the gold," urged the Baker.

Hicks grinned.

"Yes; but he might have got that anywhere. And, who's to know, now I come to think of it, that he didn't get it and the tip from another chap?"

This damped them a little.

"But it's all the same if he did," said Smith; "and with water and a bit of grass I'm for going on. I'll go by myself."

"Not you," said Mandeville.

"I will, by the Powers," cried Smith; but, recognising what the Baker meant, he reached out his hand to his faithful chum.

"If you go, I go," said the Baker, with tears in his eyes.

"Good old man," murmured Smith.

And they lay down on their spread blankets, and sweated through an intolerable night, while the stars winked hotly in the drying air.

At early dawn Tom filled up all the water-bags, and they ate breakfast in comparative silence. They opened no new discussion, and saddled their horses at the same time. If Hicks was a little behind the others, that was only customary.

"Is it 'go on'?" said he, as Smith mounted. And he saw Smith turn his head to the north-east. There was no more said, and they followed their leader.

But by noon Hicks stopped.

"My horse is nearly done," he said gloomily, and the others paused.

"Give him a mouthful of water in your hat," said Tom.

And Hicks grumbled, but gave it.

"And don't hist your carcass on him again," said the Baker. "Such a man as you should 'ave an elephant."

"Dry up," said Hicks. "That's enough."

And Smith frowned at Mandeville, who rode on a yard or two.

"If we go easy, he can do the rest of the day," said Smith. "And if there's no water, why, we can get back to-morrow."

Against his judgment Hicks went with them. But, as he walked, their pace was slower. And the heat was peculiar and sickening. The wind was no longer quite steady, it came in blasts, as if they were being fanned by a red-hot fan, and its touch was scalding. To make matters worse, they were now on a piece of country, bare even of scrub, and the white ground was like a bright pan on a fire. The haze danced and shimmered until a bit of scrub looked alive against the faint blue of a far, low range to the south. And at last, in the north-west, they saw some trees. They were without visible support, for their thin trunks were not yet to be seen. They might even be a mirage.

"Is there water there?" said Tom to Hicks. And Hicks shook his head.

"It ain't likely."

They camped under those trees that night, and there was no water there—not even a dried water-hole was to be found.

The evening tea was scanty, and the talk was scantier still. The men smoked in silence, and turned in early. But Smith and the Baker, who were close together, talked a little.

"Hicks will go no further," said Smith.

"And you?" asked Mandeville.

"I'm going on," said Smith. "There is a low range out ahead, and if there isn't, it's mighty near as bad going back. That water-hole will be dry to-morrow morning, or pretty near, and if so, how will Hicks get through to the next?"

"What about Tom?" whispered the Cockney.

"I don't know," said Smith. "But I reckon it will be a fair division. He'll go with Hicks."

There was a short silence. But presently Smith was touched.

"And you, Smith, ain't you scared?"

"Scared," said Smith bitterly, "what have I to be scared of? Hell here or there or anywhere? And death—well, what's life here, eh? And how shall I ever get back without money? Ah, you don't know. But for money, young chap, they will pardon the devil."

"Yes," said the Baker; but he couldn't help wondering how a clergyman's son ever got into such a way of talking.

"'E must 'ave run through a 'eap of cash," he said to himself. "But there, it's all one, and I'm with 'im." And he fell asleep.

The others had been talking too, and the result of that talk was seen when Hicks rose about eleven and rolled up his blankets. Tom imitated him in silence. But when they brought the horses up, Hicks roused Smith.

"We're off back, Smith," he said.

"Eh!" said Smith drowsily, "what's up?"

"We're going back, mate. There's nothing but death in this—death of thirst."

Smith rolled over and rested on his elbows, and whistled low.

"I don't know but what you are right, Hicks," he said. "But to me it's a question if it's not better to go on. That water-hole will be dry when you reach it. If it is, can you put it through to the next?"

"If we don't, we don't," said Hicks. "And it's best to travel now while it's cool. I guess we can strike it by the morning. Are you coming?"

Smith rolled over and touched Mandeville, who was a nervous sleeper, and jumped upright in a scare.

"Hicks is going, Baker," said Smith.

"And you?" asked the Cockney.

"I'm going on."

"Then what the blazes did you wake a chap for?" asked the Baker, and he lay down again.

"You mean it, Smith?" asked Tom.

"I guess so," replied Smith.

"So long then, and we wish you well through it," said Hicks. "It seems mean, perhaps, Smith, but I'm not so keen on it as you. I don't know what life's worth to you. But it's worth more than this to me."

Smith reached out his hand.

"Don't apologise, old son. It's my look-out and Mandy's here. If we don't make it we shall do the other thing."

"So long," said Hicks.

"So long," said Smith.

"Baker," cried Tom, half crying.

But the Baker was fast asleep, and didn't answer. And the two who travelled by night rode slowly to the south-west.

CHAPTER IV.

TWO IN A DESERT.

Smith roused Mandeville two hours before dawn, and they boiled a quart-pot of tea, for the water would run to no more. They had to husband it. But before they drank Smith spoke to his chum seriously.

"Do you know the odds are against us, Mandy, old boy? I didn't put it right last night. Though it's bad going back, that chance is much the best."

"I'll do what you do," said the Baker obstinately, brushing away a fly. "It's all one to me, old man."

"I'm going on," said Smith, with a curious, hard determination; "and I'll tell you why. I believe in this; I believe I'm going to strike it. I know there's gold out here. Yes, I know it as if I'd seen it, Mandy."

He drank a little tea, and munched a bit of damper.

"I want it, Mandy, bad. There's the devil to pay in England, and no pitch hot. I half-ruined my folks before I was twenty, and I heard last mail that everything was wrong; the old man crazy, and my mother living as she never lived before. And there's another woman in it, too. I'll tell you about it some day."

"But," asked Mandeville, "suppose you go under, Smith?"

"I sha'n't," said Smith; "and if I do, they'll know I'm dead, and can't help 'em. I've been a bad hat, old man, and if I rot in the sun it will serve me right."

Mandeville stopped rolling up his swag.

"You may be what you like, but you're a blooming good pal," said he, "and if you're to corpse it here, I'll corpse it too. You stuck by me when I wanted a friend bad in Albany and at New Find. And that's enough say. If you're in it, I'm on."

He brought up the horses, which were not in such bad case as they might have been.

"They don't look so bloomin' bad," said the Baker.

"I'll tell you what, Smith, I believe there's a drop o' water round here somewhere. I heard a mosquito this morning, and it's a deal too dry for them if there ain't water."

He went to look, and at the end of the patch of timber, and just under the roots of a tree, he found mud marked with trampling hoofs.

"It's a pity they didn't leave some, and then we could have filled up the bags," said the Baker. He went back and told his chum.

"We're in luck's way," said Smith, who was in a fever of suppressed excitement. "That saves a quart of water. I'd have given the poor devils a pint apiece, if we'd died ourselves."

And an hour before dawn they got away and travelled fast.

For two or three hours their north-east way led them through much the same country as they had passed through before, for it was as flat as a calm sea, and bare of scrub higher than a horse's knee. But when the sun was two hours up they came to a more rolling country, which was here and there broken by a dried creek bed. Yet sign of water was none. It seemed that the heavy rain which had tempted them out had not fallen there. Yet right ahead of them was a low range which looked timbered.

"How far is it?" asked the Baker.

"I should guess thirty miles," said Smith.

"Then it's not for to-day?"

"No," said Smith.

They rode on for an hour.

"If we get no water to-night, it's all up with the gee-gees," said the Baker.

And when they had ridden half a mile, Smith spoke.

"Yes, you're right," said he.

As he rode, his face twitched, and his expression changed a thousand times. For he was wrought up to a strange pitch, and his nerves were tried. His face, which was thin and brown, and very finely cut, showed every thought in his mind, and the poor Baker watched it wonderingly.

"I wonder what's in his 'ead," said he. For just then Smith looked very gloomy.

"What's wrong?" he asked.

Smith turned in his saddle, and smiled an odd, far-away smile.

"I was thinking of champagne with ice in it. Oh, but it's well this moment that I'm not with it," he said.

"You're wonderful h'awkward to deal with when you're blind," said the Baker.

And Smith nodded.

"It's damned hard lines," said he presently.

"What's 'ard?"

"That my father drank," said Smith.

This took Mandeville aback.

"What!" he cried. "But I thort you said your father was a clergyman?"

Smith nodded.

"There's many a parson doing time," said he.

"What for?" asked the Baker in rather contemptuous disbelief.

But Smith did not answer.

"Shall we drink?" he asked.

And they wetted their parched throats. When the horses heard the terrible sound of pouring water, they turned their heads and whinnied pitifully.

"Poor, poor devils," said Smith. But he rode a bit harder.

Yet he gave them their pint at noon. It only aggravated their thirst, and when, after a little rest, they went on, they showed every sign of terrible distress.

That night they camped in a dry gully in a broken country. With all their searching they could find no sign of water. They rose at midnight, and travelled north-east still, having now a little over a quart of water between them.

The next night they were across the first range, and Smith's horse fell and died. They cut the throat of Mandeville's horse in the morning, for they had no water left. But they did not speak, and looked half-askance at each other. It seemed an intolerable and brutal murder.

They now walked straight ahead in a fairly timbered country. Smith kept his eyes open for any sign of a native well; but he saw nothing.

"It's all a dream, Baker," said Smith. "I could believe anything. We are where no white man ever was. No one has been within two hundred miles of this place."

"Where are the others now?" asked the choking Baker.

But Smith spat thickly.

"God knows."

And they walked for hours in bitter anguish.

"It's a country of black enchantment," said Smith. "I daresay it doesn't exist; perhaps we don't exist. Perhaps we are only dreaming. It's devilish hot, Baker."

And Baker nodded painfully.

"What do you talk for?" he murmured.

"Because I must," answered his pal. "And there's gold here; I smell it. but I've brought you to your death, Baker."

Poor Mandeville laid his hand on Smith's arm, and looked at him like a dumb animal in pain.

"Never mind, old man. But my name's Baker, and I'm baked."

He turned blind as he spoke, and stumbled.

"Hold up, damn it," cried Smith, in agony which sounded like anger.

And he could have cried, if his thickening blood had not sucked every tear out of him. He put his arm round Baker, and they stumbled on till they came to a shady tree.

"I'm done," mumbled Mandeville, and he fell on his knees.

Smith got down by him.

"Oh," said the Baker, and he was half-unconscious. But he spoke.

Smith bent down to catch what he said, but heard nothing.

And Smith laughed with a thin, dry laugh, and bending down, he kissed the Baker upon the low forehead, which held a faithful little soul now in the valley of the shadow of a horrible death.

Then Smith shook him.

"Rouse up, Baker."

And Mandeville drew back his mind to the bitter earth.

"Yes, old man."

"There may be water within reach, Baker. Now, listen and get hold of it. I'm going to look for water. If I don't come back, we're done. Do you understand?"

The Baker nodded, looking wistfully at his mate. Smith stooped and kissed him again. And the Baker smiled, as Smith went off towards the thicker timber.

CHAPTER V.

LOOKING FOR WATER.

Smith, whose throat was dry, and whose tongue was half-blackened, stumbled on for a hundred yards before he thought of taking his bearings. For now in a country of scanty timber, which only gradually grew denser, one part was terribly like another. He returned to the tree, and, getting his tomahawk, blazed his way for nearly a mile. And though the trees were thicker, he saw no sign of water, and few signs of life beyond swarms of ants and some native bees.

As he walked, he spoke a little to himself, but it was chiefly of far-away things, and he chuckled now and again with a very frightful sound. Though every once in a while he became half delirious, he was yet able to control his wandering mind. It occurred to him that he felt as he had sometimes done in drink, when it was necessary to have his wits about him. So, as he walked, he stopped sometimes and said to himself, as if he were another man:

"Pull yourself together, old son."

He stumbled on in the intense heat, and sometimes he stayed behind a bigger tree and let the shade cover him. As he slashed at one tree, he noticed the bark was not wholly dry. So, cutting into the sapwood, he got a chip, and sucked it. Why hadn't he done that for the poor Baker?

And as he travelled he was aware of men, or shadows, or ghosts behind every tree. He called to them, but when he came up they were far ahead of him. He believed in them at last, and they terrified him a little. He held his tomahawk as if to defend himself. And then he grew angry, and remembered, with peculiar gusto, the hot taste of the blood of Mandeville's murdered horse.

But the delirium left him when he caught his foot in a root, and went head-long. For he turned about in a blind rage and cut the root through savagely. It was alive, and had done it on purpose. He was no more than a child.

And by some odd and ridiculous notion of his mind, he began to feel angry with the Baker. Why did the man not come himself, why did he send him on such a hideous and futile errand, while he took his ease, lying down in the shade? When he got so far, it struck Smith with terrible distinctness that he did not remember in any way how he came to be with Mandeville in such a position. He could not recollect anything of the yesterday, and though he recalled the New Find, that seemed very far off and vague, and in no way connected with their present trouble. But he said at last, that when he saw the Baker he would ask him about it. Meantime he had to get water, and he held up his water-bag, which was as dry as a last year's bone.

But the trees now became denser, and there were patches of very thick scrub. He remembered that he had not blazed a tree for a good time, and he stupidly blazed every one he came to.

Presently he found himself futilely going round one tree, as though he meant to ring-bark it, and for a moment he could not remember in which direction he should go. But at last he recalled the fact, that the sun was on the right side of the back of his neck, and that his foolish squat shadow should be on his left. He walked fast, and ran.

He had been travelling about an hour, when it occurred to him with a horrible shock, that he neither knew who he was, nor what he was doing. He sat down on a wind-fallen tree, and pondered painfully, sucking his finger in a babyish manner. He knew very well that he was somebody who was thirsty, but he could not remember his own name, nor his own identity, and the frightful catastrophe appalled him. He had a peculiar desolation around him, the desolation of some newly-created being, born full-grown without knowledge of his destiny. He struggled with his brain for what seemed innumerable centuries, and it gave no answer. An intolerable melancholy oppressed him, and he still sucked his finger. And suddenly he noticed that it seemed to taste like milk, and he appeared to smell milk. He bit it, and tongued a little blood, which tasted like milk too. He resumed his fight for his own soul, and he took up his tomahawk; looking at it idly, he saw Mandeville's name on it, and said he knew that name. And then he saw Mandeville, and his own mind came back. He knew who he was. It was an intolerable relief.

But, then, the thirst came on him again, and his aural centre went wrong. He heard frogs; he swore to himself he heard them croaking. But it was all as dry as his throat. What was a frog doing in a dry forest? He rose up suddenly, and began to run again. And then he heard frogs once more; why, there were millions, millions of them, and they deafened him! He dropped his tomahawk, and ran through a bit of blind scrub, and out into sudden silence, which was quite as appalling as the noise he had heard. He ran on again, and stopped, and ran, with his dry tongue between his teeth. He knew he had thirst delusions on him. When he heard a frog next, he shook his head pettishly, and was as angry as a nervous man worried by drumming in his ears. He would be seeing water soon! And the big frog boomed, boomed, and boomed. He went on slowly through the scrub, and came to some saplings. The bit of whitish ground under them looked like water, and he shook his head again, A little more, and he would believe it—believe there was water.

And then the maddening boom of a world of frogs began again. He cursed them without a voice, for now his voice was gone, and he put his fingers in his ears and ran a little, and came right out of the saplings.

He stayed, glaring, and then, turning, sat down on the ground. Oh, these horrible, horrible delusions! What had he done to be so tormented? For that time he had seen water, a deep, deep creek of cool water.

"No, no," he cried to himself, "it's the devil's country, and devil's water, and all of a piece with the frogs."

He turned round again slowly, trembling as he turned. And then he crawled on his hands and knees, and at last he rose and fell again, with his mouth in thick mud, and water on his burning brow. He pushed forward six inches, and drank.

No! it was not a delusion. It was water after all.

He lay and drank like an animal, and then, feeling his brain reel, he twisted round and blindly clawed his way back up the bank. For he felt dimly that, if he became insensible there, he would drown like a thirsty fly. And when he was in safety his senses did leave him for a space.

When he came to, he felt for a long time as weak as a child, but he was sane, quite sane, and the strange and horrible delusions of the thirsty bush had vanished. He remembered that poor Mandeville was dying. Perhaps, he said, he is even now dead. At the thought of that, he sprang to his feet, but went blind, and fell on his knees. When he next rose he could walk, but he filled his water-bag with trembling hands. He turned to go, but, staying, wondered if this was a creek, or only a water-hole. Perhaps there was some motion in the water. He threw in a twig to try, and found it did move slowly to the south. It was a creek, and so would be easier to discover again.

But could he find Mandeville? He almost doubted it.

For when he began to go back over his journey from the tree under which his chum was still lying, it seemed such an incredible one both by time and distance that the sun appeared to lie. By the position of the sun, he could not have been more than three hours. That seemed absurd and ridiculous. Had he then lain insensible twenty-four hours? It occurred to him that he might possibly have been by the creek for a night. It certainly was possible; such a thing, he knew, might happen. But how was he to know? How indeed? And as he asked himself the question, his heart sank. He knew that if he found Mandeville alive, his mad journey had only consumed a few hours. But a day more would certainly kill him, when it was doubtful if a few hours would not do it. And to go back would inevitably take longer than it had taken to come. He began to run, and then he stopped. It would never do to go too hastily; if he missed the blazed way, he might never see Mandeville again. So he tracked himself back through the thicker scrub by some hardly visible footsteps and some broken twigs. He came at last to the spot where he had dropped his tomahawk, and his heart beat more freely. He forgot how insane he had been, for now he was quite himself. He forgot how rarely he had blazed the trees, before he found himself hacking round one single trunk, like a madman. And when he came to that tree, it struck him with the shock which shakes every man, who, believing himself in a lone land, finds evidence of other human beings. For Smith could not, for a long time, believe he had done it himself. It looked purposed; it suggested some end which he thought alien to his own journey. Until he fitted the edge of the tomahawk exactly into a clean wide cut of the ring-barking, he was alarmed; but that reassured him.

"I must have been crazy," he muttered, and, taking his direction, he went on. But he now came to the gap which he had left in his marking, and he found no more slashes in trees for two hundred yards. He examined each carefully, and often went back. Just as he came to the conclusion that he would probably never get through, he saw a whitish mark in a tree fifty yards further south. His heart leapt up, he was once more in the true line.

And now he ran till he came upon the dry creek bed he and Mandeville had crossed. He shouted aloud:

"Mandeville, Mandy!"

And no answer came back to him. He ran like a madman, and at last spied the tree under which he had left his chum. He knew it for the same one, for he could see his own blankets rolled up leaning against it. But when he reached it Mandeville was not there.

"I say, Mandy, where are you?" called Smith in a high, tremulous voice. And there was no answer. The silence seemed a flood; it made Smith shake. For that silence promised to be eternal; the loneliness was complete. He began searching like a madman, and suddenly he remembered that they had gone twenty yards further when he had dropped his swag, for the next tree gave the most shade. The moment after, Smith was kneeling by the Baker, who was breathing very laboriously, and quite unconscious.

Smith's face twitched as he poured a little water between the other's dry lips. For he believed he was back too late. Mandeville seemed in the very act of death; the heavy, slow pulsation of the artery in his neck looked as if it might stop at any moment. His heart strove dreadfully with his thirsty, thickened blood.

But his lips opened, and he drank unconsciously drop by drop. And very slowly life came back to him.

If Smith could have prayed at any time, he would have prayed as his one friend turned hesitatingly from the open door of death, and not even his bitterness against the world and the heaven of brass above could prevent him from breaking down with joy, and sobbing like a child as the Baker opened his weary eyes.

CHAPTER VI.

THE BILLABONG.

The Baker was quite himself by the time the sun went down, and, though Smith lighted the fire, he cooked the supper, such as it was; for what stores they had were chiefly flour, tea, and sugar, and bacon. And most of these lay beside Mandeville's dead horse.

"What are we going to do?" said Smith. For now, having nearly killed him, he thought it a good time to see what Mandeville really thought.

"Do you mean about goin' on or backin' h'out?" asked the Baker.

"That's about it."

The Baker twisted up his mouth and looked north.

"There's water there?"

Smith nodded.

"And plenty of it?"

"Plenty."

Mandeville made a step or two in a northerly direction. When he came back, he shook his fist in the south-west quarter.

"And do you think I'm such a nincompoop as to go back across that blazin' desert till the rains come? Not me! not by a particularly large jugful, Smith."

"And what then? What about tucker?" asked Smith.

Mandy shrugged his shoulders.

"There's what we've 'ere, sonny; and with what we left back yonder there's enough to last us the three weeks we reckoned on."

"It's more than three weeks to the big rains," said Smith.

"One thing at a time, please yer 'ighness," said the Baker, who was sitting by the fire, smoking hard. "I guess there'll be 'possums by your creek. And if there ain't, we must 'unt grubs like the black-fellows does."

And as Smith was quite insane about the gold, they stayed.

Next day they went back and brought in the other stores.

"Poor old man," said the Baker to his dead horse, "you brought me 'ere, and you died thirsty. Do you know, Smith, I sometimes think it's a bloomin' queer world?"

"Do you?" said Smith, with a savage bitterness that made Mandy jump. "Do you? What a big discovery. Have you found out that it's a bit queer for animals to suffer as we make 'em suffer? Yes, you're right, it's a queer world, a particularly damnably, disagreeably queer world. And some folks who will never get to any heaven would actually object to meet the ghost of a vivisected rabbit there, except in a celestial pie."

"I don't tumble," said the puzzled Baker. But Smith didn't explain as he savagely humped stores under a blazing sun.

Their new camp was right on the edge of Smith's creek, in a small clearing, with thick and almost impenetrable scrub around them.

"And it had better be very small fires, Mandy," said Smith. "If there are any black-fellows about, we needn't shout to them with a big blaze."

"D'ye think there are any?" asked Mandy, who had no liking for any black, negro or Papuan or Australian aboriginal. "For if there are, I wish we'd brought more weapons than my revolver and yours. A repeatin' rifle now, Smith; that would make 'em skip."

But Smith did not look for any trouble of that kind.

"We must chance it, and just be careful," said he; "and we'll put in time prospecting. It looks a good country. You might strike anything here."

And they camped down, pulling quietly at their pipes as they lay in the smoke of their fire, damped to keep the mosquitoes off.

The whole of the next week, which was one of unmitigated heat, they spent looking for gold. They tried every gully and every range. Though they got very rich indications of alluvial, they never struck any out-crop of gold in quartz such as Herder's specimen could come from. And Smith, now peculiarly greedy, was after this and this only. He grumbled at any alluvial work with the pan as waste of time, and as the Baker's special leaning was "pay dirt," they sometimes almost quarrelled. But since they loved each other dearly, their rows never amounted to much.

Yet, all the time, in the minds of both was a sense of futility whether they succeeded or did not succeed. The Baker let his mind out one night, and drew out Smith's.

"Say, Smith, old man, what are we a-workin' for? If I get a streak wot went a pound to the pan, or five for the matter of that, what use'd it be? And if you do strike Herder's Find, it won't buy tucker, nor take us 'ome to our blooming pals."

"That's so," said Smith.

"Then why work?"

"Why not?"

"Let's get out instead, old man,"

"Across the way we came?"

Though they were talking by a regular black-fellow's fire of two sticks and a red coal, Smith knew what kind of face the Baker's was, all screwed up in knots and lines indicative of the keenest apprehension.

"Acrost 'ell," said the Baker. "No; what I mean is, let's run the bloomin' creek down till we get's to a river; and then we can scoot down the river. What river is it likely to be?"

Smith grunted, for his geography was little better than that of most miners and tramps, and it was a ten to one chance that he could have drawn a rough outline of Australia, or have even placed Albany, Perth, or Freemantle, on a Westralian map.

"Well, you dunno," said the Baker, "and I dunno, but it's likely there'll be something or other down it. And after my last little try, I ain't goin' to quit no water again. 'Ungry I've bin both at 'ome and 'ere, but thirsty for a thing like water, that I never was. I'd rather croak with the flaps of my stummick glued together, and eating each other, than go two days without water. Any common death's heasy to 'alf-dyin' of thirst."

Smith grunted again.

"That's what I says," said the Baker. "I know'd you agree. And now, do you reelly think as we can foot it back two 'undred mile to New Find with that lot of water, our two bags full?"

"No, I don't," said Smith; "when the horses went that chance went. How much tucker is left?"

"Ten days, I should think," replied the Baker.

"Then we'll go down the creek to-morrow if you like," said Smith. "But it's all risky, and we may get done starved or speared."

"I'll go," said the Baker, and they went to sleep.

In the morning they divided up the stores, and stowed them as well as they could in their blankets. They were in the "wallaby" track by six o'clock.

"Travellers looking for a job," said the Baker. "Can we see the boss, and if not, can we put our horses in the paddock and grub at the men's 'ut? What's your trade, Smith, when you tike to the bush and go for a job?"

"Cattle," answered Smith gloomily, for now he was getting downcast. It hurt him bitterly not to find Herder's reef, for he had got it into his mind that this journey was his luck, and whatever misfortunes overtook him, yet there would be gold in it after all. And gold meant England, and England meant what it can mean to a man who has lived there long and has then gone into the desert.

"'Ah, what wouldn't I give to touch a lady's hand again?'" he sometimes quoted, but not aloud, for the Baker had an unconscious way of jumping on his better side when it came up. The only time he had quoted it in the Baker's hearing, Mandeville told a story of a "lidy in the Mile End Road," which was nothing but a vile variant of an ancient Joe Miller translated into the language of the East End, and brought up to date.

The general trend of Smith's Creek, for so Mandeville named it with great ceremony and the emptying of some tea leaves upon its waters, lay generally north and south. It flowed south, and that made Smith a little uneasy. In spite of his geographical weakness, he had some idea that such a creek should run into a river, and he could think of no river on the coast, now some four hundred miles away, into which it could flow.

On the second day of their tramp south by the slow waters, a notion came to him which he kept to himself for some hours. But when they camped at noon to boil the billy he spoke.

"Which way are we heading now, Mandy?"

"I never give it a thort," answered Mandy.

"Look at the sun."

The Baker looked at the noon-day light, and drawing a few lines on the sand, looked up and shook his head.

"Why, Smith, we're going south-east, and more east nor that."

"Yes, we're going inland," said Smith. "And I don't believe this is a creek at all."

"What do you mean?" asked the Baker, whose colonial knowledge was very small compared with Smith's.

But his chum didn't answer; he rose and stood by the creek bank.

"Do you think there's as much water in it as there was?" he asked, and the Baker rose.

"It may be my bloomin' fancy, but I don't think as there is," he allowed.

"Then this," said Smith, "is a billabong, and we've been fooled."

The Baker, who had not the faintest notion of what a billabong was, or how it differed in its nature from the common creek, looked extremely puzzled.

"What the blue blazes is a billy bong?" he asked. "Water that runs is a creek. At least that's my h'idea. What is a billy bong, or what d'ye call it?"

Smith went back to his tea, and was followed by the Baker.

"A billabong," he said a little didactically, "is a thing I never heard of in any other country but this hot jewel of the beautiful British Empire. It doesn't run into a river at all. What do you think we shall find at the end of this?"

The Baker shook his head.

"A bit of a swamp maybe, or else it will just go on and on till the bed dries out," said Smith. "For a billabong runs out of a river, not into it."

"It's agin the nature of things," said the Baker, who began to think Smith was mad.

"Not Australian things, my son," said Smith. "In some of the rivers here there are natural outlets on to the plains. When the river rises a certain height the water pours down a billabong. I know one out of the Lachlan, in New South Wales, which is full three hundred miles long, and ends in a swamp. There must be a big river to the north of us, and the rain we had at New Find must have been very heavy up at its head waters, wherever they are."

The Baker, after a few explanations, got hold of the main facts, which are just as Smith stated them, but he criticised the premises.

"'Ow can you be sure this is a billabong?" he asked.

Smith shrugged his shoulders.

"There's only one way to be certain, and that's to follow it down to the end. But I think a very little more might settle it."

"Then I reckon as we've come so far we'd better be sure," said the Baker, "though it will be an offul sickener to 'ave to do back tracks."

So that day, and part of the next, they still went south. By noon they found the water dwindling rapidly, as the timber got smaller and scantier, and there was little more beyond it than a boundless dry desert of scrub.

"It must vanish in this wilderness," said Smith; "it will be sucked up in another twenty miles, for dead sure. I think it's right about, Baker."

And turning, they faced the three days' journey back to the first camp, upon the billabong's banks.

They were very silent, and ate sparingly.

CHAPTER VII.

RUNNING UP THE BILLABONG.

As fate now seemed to be closing in on the two wanderers, they did the journey back much faster than they had come. For they had wasted at least six days' food in their futile southern trip. But the heat of the northern journey seemed even more intense than the heat had been before, and there was hardly a breath of air. What did blow came from the north, and scorched them by day and by night; they could not stay in their blankets, and had to camp far from the creek, which was in some parts a hot-bed of mosquitoes.

They came back to the old camp early on the morning of the third day, and passed it in silence. But now the unknown was before them, and possibly the unexpected. For what white man had ever been there? So far as they knew they were the first.

On the second day from the old camp it certainly seemed that the billabong was larger than it had been. On the third day they were sure of it. The timber, too, was larger. But that third day the current of the water to the south had ceased.

"The river that feeds it is falling," said Smith. "I wonder how far it is away."

He was oppressed by all the strange uncertainties of their position; they were cut off from the world: they had seen no sign of life beyond one or two birds, and an opossum, that Baker had extracted from a hole in a tree as it slept its daily sleep.

But the Baker was quite cheerful; nothing seemed to matter to him. He chattered on about everything and nothing, telling stories of London life and London bakeries which might have been useful to a royal commission on sweating in both its senses.

"Lord love you!" said he, "it ain't the 'eat as knocks me. If a London baker can't stand 'eat, what can he stand? The bloomin' old baker up aloft there can't put a crust on me direct. As long as the water 'olds out I'm good. It's want of that does me."

"You're very cheerful, Mandy," said Smith.

"And why not?" asked Mandy. "I'm used to be cheerful when I don't see more than a day or two a'ead. If I'd lied down and died becos I couldn't see grub and a doss three days off, I'd 'ave been corpsed years ago."

"And haven't you anything to make you wish to get back home?" asked Smith.

"Not me," said the Baker; "I'm as good 'ere as anywhere. Give me a job, reg'lar for choice, and a chanst to get married when I'm ready, and I'm all right 'ere or in H'england or Ameriky."

Smith laughed.

"Good old man, and would a black woman suit you?"

"No!" said the Baker seriously, "I bar blacks. I want my kids such as will wash white onst a week anyhow. I knowed a woman in the H'east End, she lived in Dragon Court, Whitechapel, as married a nigger, and the time 'er kids 'ad was 'orrid. The hother women took to washin' their kids twiced a week regular, just out of spite, for they 'ated her bad. Her man was 'ead porter to a music 'all, and got 'eaps of tips." And he took to singing,

"She's my rorty carrotty Sal,
And she comes from Whitechap-al,"

with such an air of intense enjoyment and total disengagement from his surroundings, that Smith gave way, and shouted with laughter.

"What yer laffin' at?" asked the Baker with a grin.

"I was thinking what you would do without me to cheer you up," said Smith.

"Cheer me hup, his it?" said the Baker, winking and contemptuous, "why, you are like a mute at a funeral; when 'e's going, I mean—not when 'e's coming back—jolly on the 'earse. But what would I do without you, in this 'ere 'eat and solitude? What would I do? Why, I'd go stark-starin', ravin', bally mad, and I'd cut my bloomin' throat from ear to ear, and jump in the billabong. That's me."

And he tramped for half an hour in sombre silence.

"What's your name reely, Smith?" said he, when his spirits came back and he could hold his tongue no longer.

"Lord Muck of Barking Creek," said Smith, with a coarseness rare to him.

"I knowed you was a lord," said the Baker, "I seed one from a distance onst. 'E 'ad the same 'aughty air and ways as you 'ave, and 'is nose was quite similar, same shape as a cheese-cutter."

On which Smith felt his nose, to reassure himself on the subject.

"And your christened name, Smith?"

"Archibald," said Smith.

"It don't go with Smith," said the Baker. "It sounds like the name of a master baker I worked for once, Bartholomew Onions. Archibald don't fit Smith reely."

"Oh, dry up," said Smith. "My name is Archibald, and you can call me what you like. When are we going to camp? How much more tucker is there?"

"It should run to three days' if we don't be greedy," said the Baker.

So they camped that night with just three days' food ahead of them. And Smith, as he preferred to be called, was rather cast down.

For they were getting further and further into the unknown, day by day, and as to the mythical river, who knew where it led? It might debouch into the salt sea a thousand miles from any settlement. And how were they to live in a starving country, where they never saw more than a rare 'possum, and had no means of killing a kangaroo further off than fifty yards? And while he had serious doubts of his own revolver shooting, he was quite certain that the Baker could not hit the bad marksman's flying haystack, unless by the greatest good luck.

For now it was a much more serious thing than finding gold. He knew they had left plenty of that behind them, and should they again reach New Find, they could come out to his creek with every prospect of going back fairly rich men. But now they wanted food, and soon would want it badly, and there was every prospect of not getting it.

And when would they get to the river? They had now travelled steadily for six days since leaving the place at which they first struck the creek, and though they were in a more wooded country, there was no particular indication yet of the heavy timber which always lines a big Australian river. In three days more their food would be done, unless they eked it out with another opossum, and these marsupials were not easy to find asleep. They needed a black-fellow to do that.