"My dear, dear old Tom!" he cried. "Thank God you are all right." But Tom was too far gone to speak. He could stand up, it was true, but after forty-eight hours of burning thirst and exhaustion he was speechless. His dry, leathery tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. He tried to ejaculate a word, but failed, and instead pointed to his mouth. Guy was the quickest to relieve him. Unstrapping his water-bottle from the saddle, he unscrewed the stopper and handed Tom some lime juice and water. The fierce, ravenous look in Tom's eyes, as he clutched the bottle, told eloquently enough what he had suffered and how great was his extremity. He took a long draught, and then his father touched his elbow and said gently,--
"Take it by degrees, Tom, or you may do yourself injury. Have a rest now, and take it in nips. Sit you down for a bit." Tom sat down, and they all sat around him. He was a pathetic sight, as he sat there, sipping at the water-bottle. His shirt was torn by thorns, and hung in tatters about him. His cheeks had fallen in, and he looked gaunt and haggard--a strangely altered figure from the fresh and comely lad who had ridden away so gaily from camp just two mornings before. But thirst and anxiety, under a burning sun, will make a wreck of most people in the space of forty-eight hours. At last he could get out a word.
"Thank God, I have reached you," he said. "I thought last night I was never going to see your faces again."
They put him on to Jan Kokerboom's pony, and took him back to the wagons, where there was immense rejoicing all round at the young baas's recovery--for Tom was a general favourite. After more lime juice and water, the lad ate some food and drank some tea; after which he lay down on a blanket, under the shade of a tree, and went fast asleep. Towards sundown he awoke, refreshed, cheerful, and nearly his normal self again. They had a merry supper together, and Tom told them his adventures, of which the reader already knows some part.
"After Rufus had bolted," he said, "and I found I couldn't catch him, I turned back and skinned the cow eland, cut off the head, trimmed it up as well as I could, and made ready a lot of meat. I had fired two shots to try and attract Guy and Poeskop, and I kept thinking they would be riding up. Well, two hours passed and nobody came, and I thought it time to be off. Taking some meat, I started on the spoor of the pony. After following it for nearly three hours, it became so mixed up with a lot of game spoor, and then so faint, that I clean lost it. I hunted about in every direction, and at last had to own myself beaten, although, as you know, I'm a pretty fair hand at the business.
"Well, what was to be done now? I had wandered about in so many different directions on the tracks of the pony that I had by this time clean lost my bearings. However, I took what I judged to be the direction of your wagon route, after looking at my compass and the sun, and marched on. After skinning the eland I had acquired a tremendous thirst, and could have drunk gallons; before sundown I began to find serious inconvenience from want of water. You know it has been desperately hot; and shut up in dense bush and forest on this light, sandy soil, it seemed blazing. I never felt the heat so much. Well, it came to sundown that evening, and I knew I was lost. I began to feel uncomfortable. Still, I thought, I shall be all right in the morning, and shall hear guns going or find the road. I wouldn't let myself believe that I was in really a serious mess. I lit a fire and cooked a bit of meat, but I was too dry to make much of a meal. I slept fairly well; but every now and again I awoke with my tongue, throat, and mouth horribly parched, and feeling that I would give anything just for one little glass of clean water.
"Morning came, and I got up and went on my way. I was too thirsty to eat: my tongue, throat, and lips were very much swollen, and the mere action of swallowing was most painful; and so I just tramped on. I took the direction by sun and compass again, but I was this time so 'bushed,' and had wandered so far from where we had started, that I knew it would be a mere chance if I hit off the wagon track again. As for water, there was none, of course, in that miserable wilderness. Nor, at this time of year, was there the least speck of dew--everything as dry as a bone, including myself. Well, I wandered on and on that day, seldom resting, and gradually getting slower and weaker. All the afternoon I tired steadily, and by two o'clock could scarcely drag one leg after another. The veldt was the same: endless bush and mopani forest.
"I rested for an hour, and then, looking at my watch, I determined to walk for another two hours in as straight a direction as I could manage. Of course bush and timber divert one constantly from one's course, but I pushed steadily on at a slow pace. All this afternoon I kept on thinking of pleasant drinks. Cricket matches came constantly to my mind, with huge refreshing draughts of shandy-gaff, and so on. And often I pictured to myself the big dam at Bamborough, and imagined myself wading in up to my neck and drinking till I could drink no longer. My thirst, somehow, was not quite so bad as in the morning, but my mouth and tongue bothered me a great deal--they were just like so much leather--and my throat was horribly sore.
"Well, I marched steadily from three till close on five o'clock; then I felt so done that I sank down on the ground, and lay in a kind of stupor for some minutes. I had done my best. It seemed to me that I was beat, and that the vultures would soon be picking my bones. Suddenly I pulled myself together and looked at my watch, which was still going. It was now five minutes to five. With the three minutes' rest I had taken, I was still short of the two hours' task I had set myself. Somehow a stubborn fit took possession of me. I had said I would walk for two hours. I always had rather a mania for finishing up a task and getting done with it. Feeble as I felt, I determined, in sheer doggedness, to walk another eight minutes. Then I would lie down, and for the rest--well, the worst must come to the worst. So I got up and pulled myself together, and stumbled on. It was a wonderful thing, but my blessed obstinacy saved me. In five minutes I came suddenly on the wagon spoor, going north-east. I could scarcely believe my good luck. I stared at the tracks of the wheels, at the spoor of the good old oxen. Never have I seen anything more beautiful. Then, throwing myself on the sand, I patted the spoor as if it were a friend and a living thing. It seems absurd now, but that is actually what I did.
"Well, the rest is soon told. It was now nearly sunset. I walked on till the light went; then I lay down and slept, waiting for the moon to rise. I awoke just as she climbed up from behind the bush, towards twelve o'clock. Somehow I felt wonderfully better. I knew that I should now see home and friends again, which I had begun seriously to doubt all day yesterday. I could hold the spoor all right in the moonlight, and tramped along slowly and wearily, but still steadily, till four o'clock. Then I rested for an hour and a half. Little did I think I was now within a few miles of camp, or I should have fired a rifle shot. As soon as dawn began to come I walked on again, and then, after twenty minutes, looking up, I saw Poeskop and you, dear old pater, galloping up towards me."