“For God’s sake mates, give us something to eat, we are starving, we have lost everything crossing the Normanby.”
“Aye, aye, lads,” said Brown. “Come up to the fire, and you shall share our meal. Have you come from the Palmer?”
“No, we could not get there. It is six weeks since we left Cooktown, and we are trying to get back. Our provisions gave out, and we could neither go forward or get back, owing to the district being flooded and impassable. Three days ago the strength of the river eased down a bit, and we managed to cross by strapping our bits of clothes, and the little food we had on the horses’ backs, then we got on their backs and forced them into the water, but the current was so great that they were borne down the stream, so we slipped off, and getting hold of the horses’ tails with one hand, we swam with the other. We managed to cross, but it was a desperate undertaking, and we were so done up that we were too weak to tie up the horses. We just lay where we landed and went to sleep. We never saw the horses again, and have not the slightest idea what has become of them. And now mates, we are stranded here, without a bite of food, and unless you can help us here we must die; we can go no farther. What is it to be?”
“Well, strangers,” said Brown, “my mate here and I were bound for the Palmer. We have had a tough job of it so far, and we have had quite enough of it. Hal a good meal, and rest yourselves well, and we’ll all go back together.”
The poor fellows could hardly find words to thank him. They ate a hearty meal, and washed it down with a good pot of tea, and very soon after were in a sound sleep.
Brown and I sat talking far into the night. To tell the truth I was not sorry he had decided to return, for with one thing and another, I had begun to ask myself whether the game was worth the candle, and seemed all at once to have sickened of the roaming about, and felt that the ups and downs of sea life were luxury in comparison to hunting for goldfields.
The following day we divided the stores between the two horses, and prepared to tramp back to Cooktown.
CHAPTER XXV
We Return to Cooktown
The first day of our return journey we travelled as far as the creek where we had lost our horse the day before. The poor fellows we had rescued were completely done up, so Captain Brown determined to go along slowly, and so give them a chance to pick up their strength. Their names, they told us, were James Whitefield, Henry Bagly and Thomas Pain. Whitefield, it seems, had been on almost every goldfield in the colonies, and had three times been in possession of twenty thousand pounds worth of gold. According to his own account, which I afterwards verified, the man had not a friend in the world, or a relative living. He was utterly indifferent to worldly possessions, and after returning from the Victorian goldfields had spent, or squandered, twelve thousand pounds in Melbourne in three weeks. A woman in Burk Street took his fancy, and he bought and furnished a house for her that cost him five thousand pounds, then, after living with her there for ten days, he grew restless and cleared out to the Charter Tower goldfields. He could neither read nor write distinctly, because, as he said, he had no use for either. The other two men were runaway sailors, who had been working ashore for twelve months at Brisbane before starting for the Palmer.