This would never do. He was ashamed of himself, though there was no one there to see. Dashing the disgraceful drops aside, he started at a run to go back.
After a time he stopped, in a space fairly clear of reeds, to look about him. He could see in the distance the clump of trees that marked the camping place, but it looked very far off. The low hills confused him; it would not be such an easy matter as he thought to return. He sat down to rest a little, for disappointment and discouragement made him feel suddenly very tired.
But he soon sprang to his feet again with a shout. A familiar sound reached his ear, the long Australian "Coo-ee-en!" which his father had adopted as the most penetrating kind of call. He gave back the cry with all the strength of his lungs, and waved his handkerchief high in the air.
Presently he saw his father coming towards him through the reeds, followed by two of the Arabs. He ran to him in high delight, his sad reflections gone into the vast limbo that engulfs boyish sorrows. "Father! father! I have found Euphrates."
"Yes, my boy, but I had some trouble to find you."
They stood together, son and father, in that great solitude, as in a sense they did also in the greater solitude of the world. The father was one of those men of whom it is impossible to say he belongs to such and such a type, or, he is cast in such and such a mould. Rather was he hand-hewn, as by the Great Artist's own chisel. He was tall, spare, wiry, with a cheek as brown as southern skies could make it, dark hair and beard showing early threads of grey, dark eyes full of fire, and a mouth as sensitive as a woman's. The boy had inherited his mother's blue eyes and fair hair, but he was very like his father, both in expression and in the cast of his features, especially the shape of his forehead and the moulding of his fine mouth and chin. Slight as was the shadow of rebuke conveyed by his father's words, he felt it—it was so rare.
He said simply, "I am sorry."
"Did you think Euphrates worth the trouble when you found it?" asked his father, who had seen the far-famed and disappointing river long ago.
"Very much the reverse, father. An uglier, muddier, blacker kind of a river I never saw."
"I suppose we are quite close to it? I will go on and have a look, as there is no hurry about our start. Stay here, if you are tired, with one of the Arabs."