“Yes.”
“Then let us bark fifty of these trees for a mark. I have seen that varmint Jacky do that.”
“A capital idea, George; out with our knives—here goes.”
“No breakfast to-day, Tom.”
“No, George, nor dinner, either, till we are out of the wood.”
These two poor fellows walked and ran and crept and struggled all day, sometimes hoping, sometimes desponding. At last, at five o'clock in the afternoon, their bellies gnawed with hunger, their clothes torn to rags, their skin bleeding, they came out upon some trees with the bark stripped. They gave one another a look that words can hardly paint. They were the trees they had barked twelve hours ago!
The men stood silent—neither cared to tell the other all he felt—for now there crept over these two stout bosoms a terrible chill, the sense of a danger new to them in experience, but not new in report. They had heard of settlers and others who had been lost in the fatal labyrinth of the Australian bush, and now they saw how easily it might be true.
“We may as well sit down here and rest; we shall do no good till night. What, are you in pain, George?”
“Yes, Tom, a little.”
“Where?”