At sunset they lay down for the night. They spoke very little. They were too tired to speak, and the mind of M‘Crae too troubled; for he knew that even if they found water next day their food was running short. For supper they chewed plugs of biltong. That night she slept very little. When she was not awake she dreamed without ceasing. She dreamed of Far Forest, and above all of a little brook which tumbles from the western margin of the watershed of Clow’s Top to the valley of the Teme, and a mossy pool of icy, clear water into which the thin stream fell with a tinkling sound. When she was a child, returning on hot autumn days from the wooded valley, she had often bathed her flushed face in its basin, and let the water trickle into her mouth, and so, she dreamed, she was doing now. Then she awoke to the brilliant moonlit sky untenanted by any cloud or any dewy tenderness. In the cold, dry air she huddled closer to M‘Crae. It was good, after all, not to be quite alone. She decided that she would chew no more biltong. She would rather starve than have that savour in her dry mouth. It tasted to her like the dregs of beef-tea.
A little before dawn he awakened her. Now he had determined to take the greater risk and march due south. Even without water—and the land could not be waterless for ever—it would be possible for them to cover as much as fifty miles, and he did not suppose that they could now be farther than this from the railway.
It was a bitter start. She found that her feet had become so sore that it was torture only to stand; but she supposed that when once she had got going it would be easier. He knew that she must be suffering thirst, for he himself had taken far less water than she.
“You poor child,” he said. “You poor, dear child. It can’t be so very long now . . .”
She knew it could not be so very long.
But that day was a repetition of the last: more terrible, perhaps, in its alternations of hope and despair; for now their way led them over a series of river valleys, every one of them full of promise, every one of them dry. She began to hate the temptations of their beckoning green. All the time he was at her side ready to cheer her, and always eager to give her rest.
“You are brave,” he said, “you are splendid. You are wonderful. A little longer. Only a little longer . . .”
Towards evening she knew that she could do no more. After a longer halt than usual she made her confession.
“I’m afraid I can’t. . . . No . . . I know I can’t. My feet are dreadful. It’s worse than being thirsty. You mustn’t take any notice of me. You had better go on. You mustn’t mind leaving me. I want you to do so.”
“We must see what we can do,” he said, “and you mustn’t talk such wicked nonsense. You know that I can’t leave you. Let’s see what we can do to your feet.”