‘Well, we searched till daylight—rainin’ cats an’ dogs all the time. And we searched all the next day without any luck. That evenin’ it cleared-up bright at sundown. Then Fairleigh gives in complete, an’ has to be carried home to his wife.
‘After a camp an’ a snack the moon rose, an’ we at it afresh. But we ’bouted ship now; for I was sure we’d overrun ourselves. There was full fifty of us, an’ we circled, takin’ in all the country we could. You see, we was hopin’ for fresh tracks, an’ we went with our noses on the groun’ like a lot of dogs on the scent of an old man kangaroo, only a sight slower.
‘’Bout midnight I sees somethin’ shinin’. It was the steel buckle on the front o’ poor Dot’s shoe. Only one of ’em, an’ all soaked through with rain. No tracks; so we reckoned he’d been here last night in the heaviest of it.
‘That little bit o’ leather put us in better heart. But it wasn’t to be. The sun was just risin’, when, pretty [273] ]near done up, me an’ Bill an’ Wilhelm Reinhardt comes out o’ the scrub on to a small bald knob, an’ there, on a bare patch, lies Dot, stone dead, with his blue eyes wide open, starin’ at the sky, an’ the long curly hair, as his mother used to be so proud of, all matted with sand and rain.
‘Four crows was sittin’ overright him on the limb of a tree. I don’t believe the poor little fellow ’d been dead very long—in the chill o’ the early hours o’ that mornin’ likely. In one hand he had a bit o’ stick. With the other he held his pinny, gathered up tight, same as you’ve seen kiddies do when they’re carryin’ somethin’.
‘A real pitiful sight it were. It was as much as Bill an’ me could stand. As for Wilhelm, he just sits down aside the body an’ fair blubbers out.
‘Well, with our coo-ees, the rest comes up in twos an’ threes. Most of the Germans started to keep Wilhelm company. Foreigners, I think, must be either softer-hearted than us, or ain’t ashamed o’ showin’ what they feel. Anyhow, there wasn’t a dry eye among them Germans when they gathered round little Dot.
‘Presently we starts to rig a sort o’ stretcher with coats and a couple o’ saplin’s.
‘Then Bill lifts the body up, an’ as he does out from the pinny drops four o’ the beautifullest specimens you’d ever wish to see—them on the table ain’t a patch on ’em.
‘I twigs them at once. So did three or four more old digger chaps.