For several days after leaving the scene of Bob's adventure the travellers struggled over a most disheartening tract of country. The timber belt amid which they had discovered water proved to be but a narrow strip, extending down from the north-west; it evidently marked the course of an ancient river-bed, for immediately beyond its scope the sullen desert appeared bare of all vegetation, save for occasional clumps of saltbush and tufts of spinifex grass. Over this barren waste they forced their dogged course, starting at sunrise and halting towards noon, when the heat became too terribly oppressive both for man and beast; then in the evening they would continue the journey, sometimes marching late into the night. It was well for them that water had been found so opportunely, for assuredly none promised in the arid sands they were now encountering. The fifth day, however, brought with it the hope of better things. Away to the east the landscape took on a much more broken aspect, a feature which gradually extended right across the line of travel. Great dry gullies, starting from apparent nothingness, tore up the plain in all directions, and giant boulders of desert sandstone outcropped in prodigal profusion. And this drastic change in the land surface cheered the wanderers mightily, for though in itself it offered greater obstacles to progress than the weary sand-flats, it relieved the eyes, which had become so weary of gazing at the seemingly everlasting monotonous desert, and uplifted their hearts strangely.
Another day, and several mouldering ridges surrounded them; mere hillocks of sand they were, yet, rising as they did abruptly from an even expanse, they appeared in the distance as precipitous mountain steeps, and it was hard to believe that their grandeur would fade away at a closer view. Within these guarding barriers, a beautiful white tableland lay spread, so white and pure that it glittered like marble in the sun's rays. The sight was a dazzlingly splendid one, and Jack, who had been the first to climb the gentle elevation hiding the valley from the south, had exclaimed in delight—
"What a huge lake we are coming to; it looks like a great frosted Christmas card!"
"Lake!" Mackay had answered, almost sorrowfully. "Ay, it's a lake that will give us a maist desperate thirst, instead o' quenching what we've got."
And soon the truth of this remark was borne painfully on them all, for the lake was a mass of crusted and crystallized salt, that crushed like tinder beneath their feet and showered over the heads of the voyagers in sparkling clouds of finest dust. It filled their ears and eyes and nostrils; they inhaled the minute grains with every breath; it covered their tattered clothing in a gauzy film of white.
"Well, I'm blest!" ejaculated Emu Bill, "if this ain't the cruellest joke to play on a thirsty sinner, an' nary a drink within hundreds o' miles!"
"Shut up, Bill, an' ye won't swallow so much of it," retorted Never Never Dave, unsympathetically. Then he was moved to further speech. "Bless yer soul! It's a whole brewery we'll want afore we gets through this, I'm thinking."
"I had an idea," observed Mackay, blandly, "that you two had joined the temperance party a week or so before we left, so as to get accustomed to a bit o' a drought."
"Temperance party!" stormed the unusually loquacious Never Never, "I reckon this here circus would break up any anti-thirst campaign in less'n five minutes."