“You’d better go to the grocer’s, then, for a pound,” said Rob, with a laugh.
“Oh no, I shan’t,” said Shaddy; “here’s plenty of leaves to dry in the sun such as people out here use, and you’ll say it ain’t such bad tea, neither; but strikes me, Mr Rob, that the sooner you make another pot the better.”
Rob set to at once, and failed in the baking, but succeeded admirably with his next attempt, the new pot being better baked than the old, and that night he partook of some of Shad’s infusion of leaves, which was confessed to be only wanting in sugar and cream to be very palatable.
That day they found a deer lying among the bushes, with the neck and breast eaten, evidently the puma’s work, and, after what Shaddy called a fair division, the legs and loins were carried off to roast and stew, giving the party, with the fruit and fish, a delightful change.
The next day was one to be marked with a red letter, for towards evening Mr Brazier’s eyes had in them the look of returned consciousness.
Rob saw it first as he knelt down beside his friend, who smiled at him faintly, and spoke in quite a whisper.
From that hour he began to amend fast, and a week after he related how, in his ardour to secure new plants, he had lost his bearings, and gone on wandering here and there in the most helpless way, sustaining life on such berries and other fruits as he could find, till the horror of his situation was more than his brain could bear. Face to face with the fact that he might go on wandering there till forced by weakness to lie down and die, he said the horror mastered him all at once, and the rest was like some terrible dream of going on and on, with intervals that were full of delight, and in which he seemed to be amongst glorious flowers, which he was always collecting, till the heaps crushed him down, and all was horror, agony, and wild imagination. Then he awoke lying beneath the bower of leaves, shaded from the sunshine, listening to the birds, the rushing sound of the river, and, best of all, the voices of his two companions.