The second day found all the four men cheerful, but it left them a little apprehensive. For, as the day went on, though it appeared impossible for the morning's heat to be greater, it still grew and grew till noon. That seemed its full flood, and yet they knew it must be worse. And after one o'clock, when they guessed the time intuitively, as bushmen will—for Hicks was their clock—the little breeze that blew from the south-east failed.
They were then pushing across a patch of dense, thick scrub with openings in it, which were partially overgrown with dry spinifex, the colour of ripe wheat straw, and every piece of exposed whitish ground shone with reflected heat which was as intense as the sun. And about two o'clock a breeze came from the north. Hicks shook his head and pulled up his horse, for they took no noon-time that day. It was better to push on even through the spinifex, which murdered the horses.
"What's wrong?" asked Smith, who was riding with both legs on one side like a woman.
"What's wrong?" said Hicks. "Well, and don't get narked about it, I should say a north wind here was nothing to yearn for. It will soak every pool of water up in twenty-four hours, and we shall be done."
"Tut, man," cried Smith, but Hicks went on.
"And now we are almost as far as we were last time, or even further. Where's your creek that you gassed about?"
They wrangled for ten minutes, and then rode on rather sullenly. Tom and Mandeville, who knew least about the country, said little. But the Baker would say "ditto" to Smith if Smith said "die." That was evident.
The north wind blew steadily at about ten miles an hour, and it was in truth like a breath from a furnace; it caught the men on the left cheek, and Tom's skin fairly burnt and blistered. The others grinned and were silent, and rode through the living invisible flame. Their horses were evidently distressed, and their legs streamed with blood from wounds made by the porcupine grass.
At last, about six, when Hicks' big horse was almost done for, they came to a water-hole. Before they could check them, the animals were half up to their knees. They drank till they stretched their girths almost to breaking point.
That night, by their little fire of scrub, there was the usual discussion, which now bore more continually on the thing most to be considered. They did not divagate into common ribaldry, neither did they discuss horse flesh in general. They spoke only of their own horses, of water now and water to-morrow, and the prospects of getting through to some place where they could stay and prospect, or to some rise in the ground which they looked for. For so much they had gathered from Herder's dying delirious gabble.