“Yes,” he said; “every one has been asleep from utter exhaustion.”
I looked round, and there were our companions sleeping heavily.
“I’ve been thinking that we may be as safe here as farther away,” continued the doctor; “so let them rest still, for we have a tremendous task before us to get down to the coast.”
Just then Jimmy leaped up staring, his hand on his waddy and his eyes wandering in search of danger.
This being absent, his next idea was regarding food.
“Much hungry,” he said, “want mutton, want damper, want eatums.”
The rest were aroused, and, water being close at hand in a little stream, we soon had our simple store of food brought out and made a refreshing meal, of which my father, as he lay, partook mechanically, but without a word.
The doctor then bathed and dressed his ankles, which were in a fearfully swollen and injured state. Like Mr Francis, he seemed as if his long captivity had made him think like the savages among whom he had been; while the terrible mental anxiety he had suffered along with his bodily anguish had resulted in complete prostration. He ate what was given to him or drank with his eyes closed, and when he opened them once or twice it was not to let them wander round upon us who attended to him, but to gaze straight up in a vague manner and mutter a few of the native words before sinking back into a stupor-like sleep.
I gazed at the doctor with my misery speaking in my eyes, for it was so different a meeting from that which I had imagined. There was no delight, no anguished tears, no pressing to a loving father’s heart. We had found him a mere hopeless wreck, apparently, like Mr Francis, and the pain I suffered seemed more than I could bear.
“Patience!” the doctor said to me, with a smile. “Yes, I know what you want to ask me. Let’s wait and see. He was dying slowly, Joe, and we have come in time to save his life.”