“I don’t know, and he could not explain. Time seemed to be quite out of his calculations. It must have taken years, for he said that he was a young and vigorous man when he started.”
“But look here,” said Griggs, “Murrica’s a big place, and I s’pose he joined Mexico on to it in his travels; but you could get over a deal of ground in years. How far away was it from here?”
“Distances seemed with him to be alike,” continued the doctor. “Much of what he said in this respect seems to me to be all imagination, for he talked of the vast unknown land that he and his companions had penetrated, and in which they passed away, leaving him alone.”
“Poor chap, to find out that the gold story was all a hatch-up, and that he had given up the best years of his life in a great hunt after a yellow nothing. Well, go on, doctor.”
“There is not much more to tell you,” was the reply.
“Then I’m right,” said Griggs; “he went through all that to find nothing.”
The doctor was silent for a short space, before he continued.
“No,” he said; “you are wrong, according to the poor old adventurer’s account, and here comes the strange part of his story. He said that he believed he went raving mad after being forced to cover the remains of his last companion with pieces of rock, and for a long time he could think of nothing but getting back to civilisation; but the more he tried the more he seemed to be led deeper and deeper into the great hot, sandy, stony wilderness. It was as if something from which he could not escape kept on driving him to continue the search upon which he had started, till one day he came upon a wider and more level plain of salt and sand, while in the distance, far down upon the horizon, he could see a clump of mountains, towards which he made his way, toiling on day after day, week after week, as it seemed to him, and the range seemed to be always receding with tantalising regularity, while he was parching with thirst and the tops were covered with snow.
“At last, though, when he had been compelled to lie down and rest every few steps from exhaustion, and after months of toil, he reached the foot of the mountains.”
“Poor fellow!” said Griggs. “They must have been a long way off, and no mistake. In dreamland, I’m afraid.”