Our hearts were heavy as on we went,
For his thin bone arm was softly bent—
Curled round the neck of his big comrade
There, telling us how two friends had laid
Their tired heads under the drought-swept sky.
And still out there the white bones lie.[[9]]
[9]. Reproduced from the author’s Bush Songs and Oversea Voices.
It was a long time before the first influence left on our minds by that sight passed away. As darkness crept over the cloudless skies and the bright Australian stars flashed out, we lay together behind some large boulders and dead scrubwood as nervous as two children, and often my heart leapt as the jewel-like eyes of the big lizards darted up the dead scrub and grass twigs by our heads, as they slipped and squeaked and scampered away. We were only about three or four hundred yards from that spot, and as night wore on and moonrise burst out over the trackless plains, the wind-blown shadows seemed to move to and fro by the steeps and gullies, as though the ghosts of dead men crept from their unknown graves and wailed while the hot night wind cried through the leafless gum clumps. I almost feared to see my tired-out chum’s face in repose, as he lay by me fast asleep, with his mouth open, breathing out God’s sad music of humanity as with each breath his chest heaved up and down, while the moonbeams on his unshaved thin face sea-sawed with his snores.
It was with intense relief that, when still staggering along three days after, we stumbled across a track and following it for some miles came to a homestead, and almost fell down by the verandah as we knocked at the door. The old Irishwoman almost wept over us and ran about with her pots muttering and saying, “Sure and begorra the poor bhoys have suffered.” The dear soul kept pushing broths from her stockpot down our throats with a long wooden spoon till at last I had to beg of her to desist, otherwise I am sure I should have brought the whole gift up again. Her husband was also very kind to us and they gave up their own bed for us to sleep in that night. In two days we were almost fit again. I had devoted all my spare time to bathing my ankle and the swelling soon went down, and when Riley rode off, bound in his shaky old bush cart for a place called Indrapilly, he took us with him, for though we were welcome to stay there at his homestead, we had had quite enough of the bush and both of us longed to get to the town again. Here I will end this short narrative of my experience with that true comrade of mine in the Australian bush and the lonely tramp across solitudes where many men in times gone by have gone and passed away for ever; for often the traveller comes across bleached bones in those wastes, and sometimes lonely graves, with the name cut in the bark of a tree just by or on some roughly extemporised cross.
In the never-never land they sleep,