When he had time to collect his thoughts, Eyre judged from the position of the body, that Baxter must have been disturbed by the boys plundering the camp, and getting up to stop them, had been immediately shot. His next care was to put his rifle in serviceable condition, and then as morning broke they hastened away from the fatal camp. It was impossible even to bury the body of his murdered companion; one vast unbroken surface of sheet rock extended for miles in every direction. Well might Eyre exclaim:—
"Though years have now passed away since the enactment of this tragedy, the dreadful horrors of that time and scene are recalled before me with frightful vividness, and make me shudder even now when I think of them. A lifetime was crowded into those few short hours, and death alone may blot out the impressions they produced."
That evening the two murderers re-appeared in the scrub, following the white man and boy. Eyre attempted to get close to them, but they would not come near, remaining at a distance, calling out to the remaining boy (Wylie), who, however, refused to go to them. Finding himself unable to get to close quarters with them, Eyre proceeded on his journey, and the two boys were never seen again, and, without doubt, they soon perished miserably of hunger and thirst.
At last, after being again seven days without water for the horses, they reached the end of the long line of cliffs, and amongst the sand dunes came again to a native well, and got their poor tortured horses a drink.
Moving on now in easier stages, and getting water by digging at the foot of the different sand hills he encountered, Eyre proceeded on with better hopes for the future; he felt confident that he was past the great belt of and country, and that with every day the travelling would improve.
On the 8th of May, another horse was killed, and a supply of meat dried to carry with them.
From this point water was more frequently met with, a decided change for the better took place in the face of the country, and the wretched horses they still had left began to pick up a little. At last, when their rations were quite exhausted, they sighted a ship at anchor in Thistle Cove. She turned out to be the MISSISSIPPI, whaler, Captain Rossitur, and once more Eyre had to thank fortune for relief at a critical moment.
For ten days he forgot his sufferings, and regained some of his lost strength, under the hospitable care of Captain Rossitur, who, it will be remembered, was the first foreigner to anchor in Port Lincoln.
Provided with fresh clothes and provisions, with his horses newly shod, Eyre recommenced his pilgrimage, and arrived in King George's Sound on July 8th. Having successfully crossed from Port Lincoln to King George's Sound, with incredible suffering, not alone to himself, but also to his men and horses, so far as they accompanied him; added to which, his obstinate persistence, led to the death of Baxter, who, against his own convictions, went on with him, rather than leave him in his need.
It is generally said with regard to this journey of Eyre's, that it any rate established the fact that no considerable creek flowed from the interior to the south coast. But this had been pretty well-known before by the maritime surveys, for it must be borne in mind that this portion of the Australian shore in no way resembles the general coast line of Australia. Granted that numbers of the largest rivers in the continent were overlooked by the navigators, we must also remember that the conditions here were essentially different. No fringe of low mangrove covered flats, studded with inlets and salt-water creeks, masking the entrance of a river, was here to be found. A bold outline of barren cliffs, or a clean-swept sandy shore, alone fronted the ocean, and Flinders, constantly on the alert as he always was for anything approaching an outlet or river mouth, would scarcely have missed one here. As for any knowledge of the interior that was gained, of course there was none, even the conjectures of a worn out, starving man, picking his way painfully around the sea shore, would have scarcely been of much value. Eyre has, however secured for himself a name for courage and perseverance, under the most terrible circumstances that could well beset a man, and this qualification leads us to overlook his errors of judgment. The picture of the lonely man—not separated from his fellow creatures by the sea, as has often been the case, but by countless miles of weary, untrodden waste, in his plundered camp, beside his murdered companion—is one that for peculiar horror, can never be surpassed.