Ease after warre,
Death after life,
Doth greatly please.”
Spenser’s “Faërie Queene.”
T was there he fell, boss. He struck right on top of them gibbers (stones). I caught at him, and fell too,—there’s the mark where I struck the mud by the broken stem of that cooliebar there.”
It is Billy who is speaking, as, with tears in his eyes, and his affectionate heart overflowing with genuine grief, he looks up at the rugged cliffs and points out to Claude and Williams the place where Dyesart met with his fatal fall.
On the ninth day out from Murdaro the expedition has reached the long blue line of gum-trees, towards which it has been toiling since daybreak across the desert plain. And here, at no great distance from the little water-hole, near which the horses are now being unsaddled by the rest of the party, Claude pays a first visit to the lonely mound where, beneath a protecting cairn of stones and tree-stems, his explorer-uncle has begun his long, well-earned rest. As the young man stands there in the scanty shade of she-oaks and box-trees, a thousand solemn thoughts gather around him. What strange power is it that has seemed to guard and guide his footsteps so far in the fulfilment of his appointed task? Will it pilot him to the end? And what is to be the climax of this journey? By Claude’s side is Don, who has filled out wonderfully since our hero found him a little waif upon the Sydney streets. The boy, not having been enlightened as to his parentage, still bears his old name, and Angland making more of a companion of him since Billy’s discovery, has noticed with delight that the youth, who by a strange procession of circumstances seems likely to become his brother-in-law some day, is developing a kindly disposition and an engaging manner.
Billy now arrives and unearths a small tin box, the contents of which Claude feels much tempted to investigate forthwith; but, acting on Williams’s advice, he postpones the operation, and determines to make the most of what remains of the day in searching for the supposed mine at the “Golden Cliffs,”—which our readers will remember as being set down upon the secret map discovered by Angland on the back of his uncle’s posthumous communication. About two miles from the grave there rises, white and weird against the violet sky, a barren, isolated mountain, or rather a collection of rugged peaks. And thither, across the red, rock-strewn plain,—bounded by a phantom sea of desert mirage,—the white men and Billy proceed, and, having traversed the gentle slope that rises from the dried-up course of the river to the hill, they now stand beneath the shadow of the rocks.
“And you carried my uncle all the way to the water, over those gibbers, without once putting him down!” Claude exclaims, as he stands wiping the moisture from his forehead at the summit of the boulder-strewn glacis that surrounds the mount, and hears once more the story of the accident. “Why, you were hurt yourself!”