In the Musgrave Ranges Part 10

When the truth fully dawned upon them, the two boys sat down on the ground and stared hopelessly in front of them. Although they had been in the North only for a brief period, they knew that they were face to face with one of the most terrible things which could have happened to them in the desert. A man can go without food for several days, but water is an absolute daily necessity. The sandstorm had left the white boys weak, and as they had already stinted themselves of water for the last day and a half, they were in no condition to meet this new calamity.

Gradually the sun exerted its old sway over the earth, and the boys were obliged to seek some shade. They helped Yarloo rebuild the old shelter, and sat down under it, with their only possessions--one pannikin, one badly torn camp-sheet, and an empty canteen. Everything else had been blown away or absolutely spoilt.

Towards the middle of the afternoon, when, nearly sixty miles to the west of them, Mick was drawing near Sidcotinga Station, Yarloo went out from the shelter for a few minutes. He had been very thoughtful for the last hour, and had evidently just made up his mind on some important matter. When he returned he was carrying his quart-pot, which was a little more than a quarter full of tea. The boy had jammed the pannikin lid on tight that morning and had hidden it in the sand, and the storm had not done it any harm. He showed the tea to his companions, but did not give the pot into their eager hands till he had explained what he intended to do.

"Me go 'way," he said.

The white boys did not pay any attention to this remark. Here was something to drink, and they were parched with thirst.

"Me go 'way," repeated Yarloo. "Me come back by'm bye.... P'raps me find um water ... p'raps me find um parakelia."

His companions did not reply. What did it matter? Why this "perhaps, perhaps" when here was the certainty of at least a mouthful of tea for each? But Yarloo waited for a moment or two, and then went on patiently:

"Me come back to-morrow 'bout same time.... White boy stay here ... no go 'way. No go 'way, mind.... Sax," he said timidly, using the name for the first time, "Sax, you no go 'way, eh?"

"No. No. Of course we won't go away, Yarloo," was the impatient answer. "But how long are you going to keep hold of that quart-pot?"

"Me come back to-morrow 'bout same time," said Yarloo slowly. "S'pose me give it quart-pot, you no drink um till to-morrow sunrise? ...

to-morrow sunrise, eh?"

His meaning was perfectly clear. He was going to leave them the tea on condition that they didn't touch it till sunrise next day. The boys became angry at what they considered a foolish idea.

"What's the good of that to us?" asked Vaughan hastily.

"Yes," agreed Sax. "Whatever's the good of such a fool idea? ...

Besides, you've got no right to tell us when we're to have a drink and when we're not to have a drink. I'm thirsty. I'm going to have my share now.... Here, Yarloo, give me that quart-pot."

He held out his hand, but Yarloo stepped back. "Quart-pot belonga me,"

he said quietly.

The boy's statement was undoubtedly true. The tea was his, saved from his fair breakfast allowance, and, if he was good enough to part with it for the sake of the white boys, surely he had a right to dictate his own terms. Sax and Vaughan at once saw their mistake and began to feel a little foolish because of the att.i.tude they had tried to take up.

Yarloo was evidently in grim earnest, for he repeated his former question:

"S'pose me gib it quart-pot, you no drink um till to-morrow sunrise, eh?"

"All right, Yarloo," agreed Sax. "We'll not drink it till sunrise to-morrow.... But, look here," he exclaimed suddenly, realizing for the first time the tremendous sacrifice the black-fellow was making.

"Look here! We mustn't take your tea. It's yours, Yarloo. Yours," he repeated, in order to make his meaning clear.

But Yarloo had already begun to sc.r.a.pe a hole in the sand. When it was deep enough, he put the precious quart-pot into it so that it could not be spilt. "You belonga Boss Stobart," he said slowly. "Boss Stobart good fella longa me."

He stood up when he had finished and looked at the two boys.

"Goo-bye," he said, and was turning to go, when something prompted Sax to hold out his hand. Yarloo took it instantly and then shook Vaughan's hand also,[1] and, in another minute, he was almost out of sight amongst the ragged scrub.

[1] Blacks do not shake hands when they are in their wild state, but they quickly pick up the habit from the white man.

CHAPTER XI

Thirst

Sax and Vaughan were very thirsty. For several days they had been compelled to drink sparingly, and for the last two they had taken only enough liquid to keep them just alive. They were now entirely without drink of any kind save for that little drop of tea in a dirty and battered quart-pot, half buried in the sand. Is it any wonder that their longing eyes and thoughts were almost constantly fixed on the pot, which they had promised not to touch till sunrise next day.

While Yarloo had been with them, the white boys had kept up a good appearance of courage, and had pretended that they were not so thirsty as they really were, for no man likes to give in before a member of an inferior race; but when Yarloo went away it became harder and harder for them to keep up their pluck. For thirst is the most terrible of all forms of torture. The pain comes on slowly but surely, and increases till it seems impossible that the human body can stand any more. Yet the body is such a marvellous thing that it does stand even the terrible pain of thirst, till it gets beyond endurance and the man goes mad. The thirst which kills men in the desert is not the same as being thirsty. Down-country, it is quite pleasant to be thirsty, for it makes a drink taste so nice; but desert thirst--or "perishing", as it is called--is caused by the drying up of the moisture of the body till the organs inside actually cease to work, and the blood clogs in the arteries because it is not liquid enough.

It was such terrible thirst that Sax and Vaughan were experiencing. In appearance, Sax was of slighter build than his thick-set friend, Boof, but the drover's son had inherited from his father a natural toughness and an ability to endure privation and hardship which Vaughan, although he was quite as plucky, did not possess. It happened, therefore, that though Sax was just able to keep control of himself throughout the terrible night which followed Yarloo's departure, Vaughan lost consciousness and became delirious about half an hour before sunset.

The first signs which he gave that he was not in his right senses were when he began to undress. Sax was feeling so desperately ill himself that he did not pay much attention to what his friend was doing till he saw him throw his shirt outside, and then start to pull off his trousers. The poor lad's tongue was swollen in his mouth and was starting to stick out from between his teeth. He got his trousers off, and began fumbling at his boots, but was so weak that he couldn't untie the knots. His eyes had a peculiar look in them, something like those of a man who walks in his sleep, and when his friend spoke to him he took absolutely no notice at all.

Both lads had been lying stretched out on the sand all the afternoon, too exhausted to do anything, but, seeing his companion behaving in such a strange way, Sax tried to sit up. But he could not do it at first. As soon as he lifted himself, sharp pains stabbed him in the back and stomach, and his head throbbed so violently that he nearly fainted. He tried again and again, very gradually, till he was able to sit up at last. Vaughan had managed to drag one boot off by this time, and was feverishly busy with the other; the rest of his body was naked.

Sax called out again, but the effort at sitting up had so much exhausted the little strength which remained, that his voice was so weak he hardly heard it himself. Stobart didn't understand the serious state his friend was in, but he knew that something must be done at once, and as there was n.o.body to do it but himself, he prepared for a supreme effort.

After several unsuccessful attempts, he managed to stand up, and when the dizziness in his head had died down a little, he tottered over towards Vaughan. He touched him on the arm. Vaughan took no notice, but wrenched at the second boot, pulling it off at last, and scrambling to his feet like a drunken man. He seemed to have far more strength than Sax had, but when he started to stagger out from under the bough-shelter, his friend suddenly remembered a yarn which Mick had told them one night, about a perishing man who pulled off all his clothes and walked away into the scrub to die a most terrible death.

Sax was afraid that his companion was going to do the same thing, and that he wouldn't have the strength to prevent him.

Sax had to put his feet down very carefully or he would have fallen through sheer weakness, but he caught hold of Vaughan and clung to him.

This forced the delirious lad to look at his companion, but there was no spark of intelligence in his eyes; he did not recognize who it was; he only felt something holding him back from what he had determined to do. With extraordinary strength, considering his condition, he shook himself free, and started to walk away. Sax fell, but as he did so he stretched out his hands. They touched the other's bare legs. Sax clutched the legs and hung on with all his power, and Vaughan tripped and came down with a crash.

The sun sank below the horizon and left two perishing white boys panting in the sand in the fading light.

Sax remembered nothing more for several hours. When he came to himself again he was alone. His fall had rendered him unconscious for a moment, and this state had been immediately followed by a deep sleep.

The night was cool, and though his thirst was still raging, it did not seem so bad as it had done under the blazing sun; his sleep also had refreshed him. On Central Australian nights it is never too dark to see the objects around, for the light of the stars comes through the clear dry air of the desert more brilliantly than it does in any other part of the world. Consequently it needed only a hurried glance to tell Sax that Vaughan was not in the camp. His clothes were still lying where he had thrown them, and the boy soon found the tracks of bare feet leading away from the camp into the scrub.

Vaughan had gone away to die.

Sax listened. The absolute stillness of death was around him on all sides. Not a leaf moved on any of the scraggy mulgas standing near.

Even the star in the deep, deep blue of the night sky seemed to stare down at him with unblinking eyes. What did they care for one white boy dying in delirium in the desert, and another white boy who had to keep tight hold of his mind to save it from slipping out of his control, and who would also die of thirst, if not to-day, then surely to-morrow?

There is nothing so unpitying, so absolutely unconcerned, as the desert is to a perishing man.

Sax was a boy of unusual courage. He was the son of a pioneer, a member of that race of men who have opened up the centre of the Australian continent, and have laid the foundations of the future Australian nation. Though he had been reared in the comfort of cities, the cattle-plains, the scrub, and the desert were his true home, and he now showed the stuff he was made of by determining to follow after his friend. He did not stop to wonder what he would do when he found him; he only knew that he could not bear to leave him out there to die without making an effort to save him.

Suddenly he remembered the quart-pot and its precious contents. He had made up his mind to find Vaughan before he remembered the tea, and now this sudden glad thought seemed to confirm his decision, and filled him with hope. He would have something to give to the perishing lad when he found him. Sax could hardly walk. The whole middle part of his body felt as if it was dried up, and when he moved, such terrible pains shot through him that he could hardly keep from crying out; but he set his teeth and went over to the quart-pot and dug it out.

Only those who have actually been in the same circ.u.mstances as Sax was that night can have any idea of the temptation it was for him to drink some of that tea. The very sound of it swishing about inside the smoke-blackened pot nearly drove him mad with thirst. He dared not open the lid and look in, for, after all, he was so frantically thirsty that the sight of the liquid might make him forget everything but his own desire for it. Never again in his life was he to be called upon to exercise such supreme self-control as he was that night.

Clutching the precious quart-pot to his breast, he staggered off into the night, very slowly because of his weakness, and very slowly also because it was hard for him to read the tracks in the dim light.

Less than half an hour after Sax left the camp to search for his dying friend, a black form stole silently through the scrub and paused within sight of the bough-shelter. If anybody had been lying there awake, he would not have known how near a fellow human being was to him, for the native was absolutely motionless, even to the eyelids. The only part of hint which moved was the chest, which was so thickly covered with black hair that its slow rising and falling could not possibly have attracted attention at night. Even if any man who might have been in the shelter had turned and looked straight at the black-fellow, he would not have distinguished him from the trees, for, with that wonderful power of imitation known only to the scrub natives of Australia, the man was standing in such a way that he looked very much like an old dead mulga stump.

But n.o.body was in the bough-shelter, and when the man had made quite sure of this, he stepped out from his hiding. He was quite naked, and carried a couple of long spears with stone heads, a woomera (spear-thrower), a spiked boomerang, and a wooden shield. His long hair was plastered up into a bunch at the back, and was kept in place by rings of rope made of his mother's hair. He stood for a moment and looked intently at the shelter, then he stooped and examined the marks in the sand, following them this way and that till he knew as much about the tragedy as if he had actually watched it happen. He was particularly interested in Yarloo's tracks, and finally stuck a spear into the middle of one of them and laid his other weapons beside it.

Having rid himself of all enc.u.mbrances, he set out on the tracks of the two white boys. But what a difference between his methods and theirs!

Instead of the hesitating scrutiny of each footprint which Sax had been obliged to make, the native walked quickly with his eyes several yards ahead and did not pause once, though the star-light was dim and treacherous.

He did not have far to go. The burst of strength which delirium had given to Vaughan had not lasted for more than three-quarters of a mile, and he had then fallen at the foot of a dead mulga. Sax had come up on him there, a pitiful object whom the desert was claiming as its own, his naked body showing up plainly in the dark. He had forced the tea, all of it, upon the unconscious lad, with no perceptible result, for most of it had been spilt because Vaughan's tongue was too swollen to allow any but a few drops to go down his throat.