"Oh, dry up," said Smith. "My name is Archibald, and you can call me what you like. When are we going to camp? How much more tucker is there?"
"It should run to three days' if we don't be greedy," said the Baker.
So they camped that night with just three days' food ahead of them. And Smith, as he preferred to be called, was rather cast down.
For they were getting further and further into the unknown, day by day, and as to the mythical river, who knew where it led? It might debouch into the salt sea a thousand miles from any settlement. And how were they to live in a starving country, where they never saw more than a rare 'possum, and had no means of killing a kangaroo further off than fifty yards? And while he had serious doubts of his own revolver shooting, he was quite certain that the Baker could not hit the bad marksman's flying haystack, unless by the greatest good luck.
For now it was a much more serious thing than finding gold. He knew they had left plenty of that behind them, and should they again reach New Find, they could come out to his creek with every prospect of going back fairly rich men. But now they wanted food, and soon would want it badly, and there was every prospect of not getting it.
And when would they get to the river? They had now travelled steadily for six days since leaving the place at which they first struck the creek, and though they were in a more wooded country, there was no particular indication yet of the heavy timber which always lines a big Australian river. In three days more their food would be done, unless they eked it out with another opossum, and these marsupials were not easy to find asleep. They needed a black-fellow to do that.
And when the food was done, what then? They could in desperation and misery perhaps go on for three or four days. He had heard of some starving for much longer, but to walk in hopeless misery was a fearful drain on a man's strength and courage. If nothing turned up, he saw little prospect of more than a week's life.
And now he began to hope they might come across some wandering black-fellows. If they were savage and cannibal it would be a spear thrust or two, and the farce would be played out. If they were amiable and not themselves hungry, they might help two wandering white men. If they were not accustomed to the whites, their revolvers would stand them in good stead. And the weapons might be useful, if they met with neither friend nor foe, to put an end to unnecessary waiting.
And so one more day passed, as they tramped through the mysterious, endless, thin forest, upon the banks of the sullen, quiet billabong.
But the continued oppression of a vast and awful sameness began to get overwhelming. It was scrub and open timber, open timber and scrub. They passed jarrah forests and sullen casuarinas melancholy to see, and scrambled through sharp scrub which tore their flesh. And what they did one hour was done the next, and one day was dreadfully like another.