But could he find Mandeville? He almost doubted it.
For when he began to go back over his journey from the tree under which his chum was still lying, it seemed such an incredible one both by time and distance that the sun appeared to lie. By the position of the sun, he could not have been more than three hours. That seemed absurd and ridiculous. Had he then lain insensible twenty-four hours? It occurred to him that he might possibly have been by the creek for a night. It certainly was possible; such a thing, he knew, might happen. But how was he to know? How indeed? And as he asked himself the question, his heart sank. He knew that if he found Mandeville alive, his mad journey had only consumed a few hours. But a day more would certainly kill him, when it was doubtful if a few hours would not do it. And to go back would inevitably take longer than it had taken to come. He began to run, and then he stopped. It would never do to go too hastily; if he missed the blazed way, he might never see Mandeville again. So he tracked himself back through the thicker scrub by some hardly visible footsteps and some broken twigs. He came at last to the spot where he had dropped his tomahawk, and his heart beat more freely. He forgot how insane he had been, for now he was quite himself. He forgot how rarely he had blazed the trees, before he found himself hacking round one single trunk, like a madman. And when he came to that tree, it struck him with the shock which shakes every man, who, believing himself in a lone land, finds evidence of other human beings. For Smith could not, for a long time, believe he had done it himself. It looked purposed; it suggested some end which he thought alien to his own journey. Until he fitted the edge of the tomahawk exactly into a clean wide cut of the ring-barking, he was alarmed; but that reassured him.
"I must have been crazy," he muttered, and, taking his direction, he went on. But he now came to the gap which he had left in his marking, and he found no more slashes in trees for two hundred yards. He examined each carefully, and often went back. Just as he came to the conclusion that he would probably never get through, he saw a whitish mark in a tree fifty yards further south. His heart leapt up, he was once more in the true line.
And now he ran till he came upon the dry creek bed he and Mandeville had crossed. He shouted aloud:
"Mandeville, Mandy!"
And no answer came back to him. He ran like a madman, and at last spied the tree under which he had left his chum. He knew it for the same one, for he could see his own blankets rolled up leaning against it. But when he reached it Mandeville was not there.
"I say, Mandy, where are you?" called Smith in a high, tremulous voice. And there was no answer. The silence seemed a flood; it made Smith shake. For that silence promised to be eternal; the loneliness was complete. He began searching like a madman, and suddenly he remembered that they had gone twenty yards further when he had dropped his swag, for the next tree gave the most shade. The moment after, Smith was kneeling by the Baker, who was breathing very laboriously, and quite unconscious.
Smith's face twitched as he poured a little water between the other's dry lips. For he believed he was back too late. Mandeville seemed in the very act of death; the heavy, slow pulsation of the artery in his neck looked as if it might stop at any moment. His heart strove dreadfully with his thirsty, thickened blood.
But his lips opened, and he drank unconsciously drop by drop. And very slowly life came back to him.
If Smith could have prayed at any time, he would have prayed as his one friend turned hesitatingly from the open door of death, and not even his bitterness against the world and the heaven of brass above could prevent him from breaking down with joy, and sobbing like a child as the Baker opened his weary eyes.