“I wish you wouldn’t talk,” said Ned.
“Why? Do you want to think?”
“No, of course I don’t. I only want to keep on in this half-asleep way; it makes it a little better then.”
Another halt at sundown, a fairly good meal, and a refreshing sleep, before the doctor roused all once more towards midnight for the tramp that was to last till about ten o’clock the next day. All was done this time in silence, save that Bourne tried to say hopefully—
“I should think we shall see the mountains quite clearly when day dawns.”
But no one answered, for nobody believed they would. A feeling of despondency was making itself too plainly felt, and when broad daylight did at last come all that could be seen was sand and soda everywhere, not so much as a shrub or scrap of grass, only scattered stones here and there, and the party shrank from looking in each other’s wild and bloodshot eyes.
“Forward,” said the doctor, at last. “We’ll keep on till about two hours before noon, and then have a good meal and rest till the sun’s low. We must be getting well on to our journey’s end.”
About this time the doctor edged up close to Griggs and entered into conversation with him in a low tone, “What do you think of it?” he said.
“Don’t think at all, sir,” was the reply.
“But we shall do it?”