Again the coo-ee cut through the air, but Eustace covered his face with his hands and dropped dejectedly back on the ground.
It was a bitter moment. Could anything have been worse than to know help was at hand, and to be unable to take it?
That a search-party was now out he felt certain; it was probably his father's voice, and he dared not answer. He had the sense to see how useless it would be to give one cry, and die for it. But oh! it was hard—cruelly hard.
It seemed to him those coo-ees went on for hours, each with a long listening pause after it, sometimes nearer, gradually fading away and away till they were no louder than the answer he had received on the banks of the creek.
In addition to the keenness of the disappointment and the terror that he was losing his last chance of ever getting home again came the speculation as to what these wild-faced people meant to do with him, and there leaped to his mind a new and very terrible question. Was it possible that Bob had come this way? Had they met him with spears and boomerangs, and dispatched him before he had time to whip out his revolver? But no. There was still that answering coo-ee to be accounted for. Perhaps they had only bound him and made him prisoner till then, undecided what to do with him. It was possible that on hearing Eustace's coo-ee he had dared the blacks, and attempted those three faint answers. If so, they had cost him his life, and the ultimate silence was explained.
Eustace lay shuddering over the thought. He could only keep his teeth from chattering by holding his jaw tightly in both hands.
How long he lay lost in those miserable thoughts he did not know. He was roused from his lethargy by a soft kick, and, starting up, he found the woman who fed him the day before beside him offering him food again. She seemed to treat him as if he were a white pig that had strayed amongst them. He was probably a less intelligible creature in her eyes, but she knew that he must at least eat to live.
It was a messy preparation, but he managed to eat some; and all the driest portions of it he could extract unnoticed he slipped into his pockets, laying in provision for possible starvation next day. Then he lay down again and feigned sleep.
He looked through half-closed lids with longing eyes at the peaceful Bolter. Eustace wondered whether he too had heard those tantalizing coo-ees and ached to respond. What would be poor Bolter's fate here? The blacks make the women of the tribes into their beasts of burden when shifting camp; they do not habitually use horses. The chief was perhaps only keeping Bolter as a valuable addition to the larder when provisions ran short.
Every thought that came to the boy was horrid. He wished he did not have to think, and as dusk fell set his mind to the task of keeping awake after his captors had settled down for the night. It would be fatal to sleep as he had done the night before.