A labourer then proposed that a party of two or three should explore the pass of the mountains to the east, and see whether there were caves, or any places in the rock which might be covered in with boughs and rushes so as to make a convenient sleeping-place.
“Excellent!” cried the captain. “And lest this plan should fail us, let another company go into the wood, and try whether we cannot get possession of some stout branches, though we have no tools. Some must have snapped in the wind last week, I should think; and so dry as the weather has been for many weeks, some will yield to force, if we put our strength into our hands. We must remember that our hands are our tools to-day, and we must ply them well.”
“I do not see,” said Mr. Stone, “why the weakest should be idle. Cannot the children pluck dry grass and brushwood to make fires round our sleeping-place?”
“My child shall do her part,” said Mrs. Stone. “She shall look for eggs about the roost; and some of the boys and I will gather the fruit and cook the antelope, and whatever game may be brought in.”
“And I,” said her husband, “will see that the bodies of those we have lost are buried without delay, and with proper respect. Let the mourners of their families follow me.”
When Mr. Stone and about eight of the company had retired, the captain proceeded to appoint to the others their various tasks. His office of superintendent was enough for him. His advice and help were wanted every moment; for it was no easy matter to perform tasks, all the materials for which were wanting.
First of all, Campbell, the herdsman, was sent with two of Robertson’s labourers to follow the Bushmen, and pick up any stray lamb or wearied beast which might have been left behind. They looked round wistfully for a noose, thinking that they might snare an antelope by the way; but not a thread of cordage was left. They were obliged to be content with a stout cudgel each, which they took from the trees as they passed.
Jack, the tanner’s man, set off with two companions up the pass in search of a sleeping-place; while his master, who was accustomed to go into the woods to obtain bark for tanning, guided a party of labourers to a tree of remarkably hard and tough wood which he had barked and stripped of its branches, of which he thought tools of a rude kind might be made. It occurred to him also that the want of ropes might be supplied by thongs of leather tanned and prepared according to the manner of the natives; and he wished, therefore, to proceed upon the antelope’s skin without delay. So his object was to obtain hard wood to make a rude sort of tools, and bark for tanning.
Hill, the barber-surgeon, had explored the whole neighbourhood in search of herbs for his medical purposes; and he told of a pool of remarkably fine water, about two miles off, which abounded with carp. They had only to pass a net through the water, he said, and they would soon catch enough to feed their company. This might be true, but where was the net? Hill could not furnish one; but he could tell how one might be obtained within a short time. He could shew where flax grew in abundance; and if two or three clever pairs of hands would help him, the fibres might be dried and pulled out and twisted and woven into a net, and in three days they might have a plentiful meal of fish. Hill’s wife and her sister Kate, and the three children, went with him about this business.
“If they had but left us our dogs,” said Arnall, a great sportsman and one of the partners of the store or shop where all the commodities of the settlement were exchanged,—“if they had but left us our dogs, we might have started game in abundance.”