Stepping out of the water on to the hard dry sand, Tom ascended the bank, and then a cry of dismay escaped from him--the Rocky Waterholes were surrounded by a belt of blazing logs, and it was impossible for him to approach within a hundred yards, and the holes themselves were not to be seen!
Tom returned to the beach to consider. He must get a drink, and there was none to be had on the way back home, except from the thick vines in the scrub through which he had ridden the previous morning. But was there any scrub left? As far as he could see to the southward, the coast was still burning, and even if the scrub where the vines grew had escaped, he could not cut one, for he had lost his knife when he fell. Well, he must try and get along the beach and round the cliffs, further on, to the creek at the Green Bluff. There was always deep running water there; and now he began to think of nothing else--he must get a drink, or he could never attempt to walk all the way to Port Kooringa. Oh, if he could but get to the creek quickly! he thought, as, taking off his boots and socks, which were filled with coarse gritty sand, he tied them together with the laces, and set out along the hard beach. If it were only five miles of such easy walking as the first two, he would soon reach there; but the remaining three were the trouble--three miles of rocky shore, under a blazing sun, and with his head making him feel strange and faint.
Never once halting, the lad kept steadily on, trying hard not to lose courage, for every minute he felt his strength failing him, and a strange buzzing noise was in his ears, and the yellow sand seemed to dance and twist about and sink away from his feet. Oh for a drink, a drink! A long drink would set him right again, he kept repeating to himself; there was nothing really much the matter with him except his head.
At last he came to the end of the beach, put on his boots, and began to climb over the first point of rocks. This took him much longer than he anticipated, and he slipped and fell heavily once or twice. Then came a succession of small deep bays, the shores of which were covered with smooth loose pebbles, giving way to every step, and terribly exhausting to walk over. Then again another point--a flat reef of rocks running out some distance into the sea, dangerous, slippery, and covered with a greasy green weed, and awash at high water. Tom had never before walked along this part of the coast, and at any other time its wild loneliness would have pleased his Nature-loving imagination--now it appalled and terrified the poor boy, who, though he did not know it, was rapidly becoming physically exhausted from the injury to his head, which was more serious than he imagined.
Once over the wide stretch of smooth rocks, he took heart again; Green Bluff, now black and smoking, seemed quite near. Another little bay, and then another, and panting and half frantic with excitement and thirst, Tom stumbled blindly over the loose stones and gravel, which were heaped up in ridges on the narrow foreshore. Surely, he asked himself, there could not be many more of these dreadful stony winding bays, backed up by steep walls of rock. Once more a high point obstructed him; and now an insensate rage took possession of him. With blazing eyes, and parched and cracking lips, he sprang at the great boulders, slipping and falling again and again, to rise with bleeding hands and face, a dazed determination in his whirling brain to get to the water at the Green Bluff in spite of everything. Trembling in every limb, he succeeded in getting round--and then stopped, his face white with horror: on the opposite side of the bay a long stretch of cliff rose sheer up from the deep blue water at its base. And then a sudden blackness shut out the world, and he sank down upon the shingle in despair.
CHAPTER IV
CAPTAIN SAM HAWKINS AND THE LADY ALICIA
Thirty miles to the eastward of Breaksea Spit, which lies off Sandy Cape, on the coast of Queensland, a little tubby and exceedingly disreputable-looking brig of about two hundred tons burden was floundering and splashing along before a fresh southerly breeze, and a short and jumpy head swell. By the noise she made when her bluff old bows plunged into a sea and brought her up shaking, and groaning, and rolling as she rose to it and tumbled recklessly down the other side, one would have thought that the Lady Alicia was a two thousand ton ship, close hauled under a press of canvas, and thrashing her way through the water at thirteen or fourteen knots. Sometimes, when she was a bit slow in rising, a thumping smack on her square old-fashioned stern would admonish her to get up and be doing, and with a protesting creak and grind from every timber in her sea-worn old frame, blending into what sounded like a heart-broken sigh, she would make another effort, and drop down into the trough again with a mighty splash of foam shooting out from her on every side, and a rattling of blocks, and flapping and slapping of her ancient, threadbare, and wondrously-patched canvas.
Aft, on the short, stumpy poop, a short stumpy man with a fiery-red face, keen blue eyes, and snow-white hair, was standing beside the helmsman, smoking, and watching the antics of the venerable craft--of which he was master and owner--with unconcealed pride. His age was about the same as the brig, a little over fifty years; and this was not the only point in which they resembled each other, for their appearance and characteristics bore a marked similarity in many respects.
In the first place, the Lady Alicia was a noisy, blustering old wave-puncher, especially when smashing her cumbrous way through a head sea, as she was doing at present. But despite her age and old-fashioned build, her hull was still as sound as a bell; and Captain Samuel Hawkins was a noisy, blustering old shell-back, especially when he met with any opposition; and despite his age and old-fashioned and fussy manner, his heart was not only as sound as a bell, but full to overflowing with every good and humane feeling, for all his forty years of life at sea.