Worn, footsore, more than half-starved as he was, he could not see his goal nor hear that chime without “singing in his cage.” There was his desired haven, within how many hours of march? He could not tell how many hours; perhaps very many hours; but no matter what his pains were, he felt sure that having seen his goal, he could reach it.
Going down was like soul’s delivery after the toils of the last days. In a few miles he was in the timber, going down a glen of great trees towards a smell of honey which came thickly upon the air to him. Sometimes he missed it for a few yards, but it always returned on the next gust. Sometimes it brought to him memories of tea in England, but more often the intense memory of a picnic at Yapavai, where he had sat near a field of the yellow melilotis hovered over by countless blue butterflies.
At the end of the glen he came out on to a heave of the hill, where he found the cause of the honey scent: eleven great trees lay broken on the ground.
Nine of the eleven were hollow from the ground to the upper branches. In all these, for perhaps centuries, the wild bees had nested, till now many hundreds weight of honey lay broken or spilt upon the ground. Over this, in some places, the bees were still flying confusedly, but by this time most of them had gone with their queens to new shelters. Gorged bee-eaters sat on neighbouring boughs. Some small mountain bears boldly foraged in the tree-boles. They clawed out great paws-full of comb which they plastered into their muzzles in spite of the stings. Sard found a piece of broken yellow comb the size of a bathsponge. On this he fed with thoughts of the prophets fed miraculously in the wilderness. After this, the miseries of the wilderness fell from him as though they had never been. Perhaps the honey had in it some drug of excitement or of comfort. He wandered on happily, feeling sure that all his troubles were at an end. He bathed in the pool of a mountain stream on the banks of which wild strawberries grew so thickly that the ground looked like the foot of a red hawthorn tree after a storm in June. After this he went on through a forest of big timber which grew on easy slopes with little undergrowth.
The moon had risen before he came to any trace of men. He came to a clearing and followed wheel-tracks downhill till he saw the lights of huts. Men in the huts were beating tin pans and singing:
“Is that Mr. Riley
Who sets such a styley?
Is that Mr. Riley who keeps the hotel?
Is that Mr. Riley they speak of so highly?
How d’ye do, Mr. Riley, are you doing quite well?”