“They’ll find me out sooner or later,” I said to myself; “so I need not regret being without a dog. But suppose the savages should attack our little party and make them prisoners too.”
This was quite a new idea to me. The doctor and I had thought out a good many possibilities; but that we, who had come in search of one who was a prisoner, should be ourselves made captives, hardly ever occurred to me.
“That would be a sorry end to our voyage,” I thought, and I lay gazing out across the open space, wondering in a dreamy misty way whether my poor father had been attacked and captured as I had been, and whether I should be kept a prisoner, and have to live for the rest of my life among savages.
My head was not so painful then, and I began to feel that if it would only leave off aching and my poor mother would not be so troubled at this second loss, such a life would be better than being killed, especially as there would always be the chance of escape.
I think I must have sunk into a sort of doze or half stupor just then, for the scene at which I lay gazing grew dim, and it seemed to me that it must all have been a dream about my meeting with that black boy; and once more I suppose I slept.
How long I slept I cannot tell, but I can recall being in a confused dream about home, and going with Jimmy to a neighbour’s sheep-run, where there was a dog, and Jimmy coaxed him away with a big piece of meat, which he did not give to the dog, but stuck on the end of his spear and carried it over his shoulder, with the animal whining and snuffling about, but which was to be reserved until several wallabies had been hunted out, for that was the aim of the afternoon.
It seemed very tiresome that that dog should be snuffling about me, and scratching and pawing at me, and I was about to tell Jimmy to give the poor brute the meat and let him go, when his cold nose touched my face, and I started awake, trembling in every limb.
The darkness was intense, and for some minutes, try how I would, I could not think.
All sorts of wild fancies rushed through my brain, and I grew more and more confused; but I could not think—think reasonably, and make out where I was and what it all meant.
The past seemed to be gone, and I only knew that I was there, lying with my arms and legs dead and my head throbbing. There seemed to be nothing else.