They were very silent, and ate sparingly.
CHAPTER VII.
RUNNING UP THE BILLABONG.
As fate now seemed to be closing in on the two wanderers, they did the journey back much faster than they had come. For they had wasted at least six days' food in their futile southern trip. But the heat of the northern journey seemed even more intense than the heat had been before, and there was hardly a breath of air. What did blow came from the north, and scorched them by day and by night; they could not stay in their blankets, and had to camp far from the creek, which was in some parts a hot-bed of mosquitoes.
They came back to the old camp early on the morning of the third day, and passed it in silence. But now the unknown was before them, and possibly the unexpected. For what white man had ever been there? So far as they knew they were the first.
On the second day from the old camp it certainly seemed that the billabong was larger than it had been. On the third day they were sure of it. The timber, too, was larger. But that third day the current of the water to the south had ceased.
"The river that feeds it is falling," said Smith. "I wonder how far it is away."
He was oppressed by all the strange uncertainties of their position; they were cut off from the world: they had seen no sign of life beyond one or two birds, and an opossum, that Baker had extracted from a hole in a tree as it slept its daily sleep.
But the Baker was quite cheerful; nothing seemed to matter to him. He chattered on about everything and nothing, telling stories of London life and London bakeries which might have been useful to a royal commission on sweating in both its senses.
"Lord love you!" said he, "it ain't the 'eat as knocks me. If a London baker can't stand 'eat, what can he stand? The bloomin' old baker up aloft there can't put a crust on me direct. As long as the water 'olds out I'm good. It's want of that does me."