Baker squirmed uneasily, and looked as sympathetic as he dared, for Smith was talking in a cold, hard, dry way.
"Good old man," he murmured. "Then you never did nothing as you can't go back for?" he added.
"My only crime is not having money, and not having the wits to take others' in a legal way."
"Then I'll see you back 'ome yet, riding an 'orse down Piccadilly. And if I goes back p'r'aps you'll give me your custom. You knows my bread."
And they talked idly till the night fell.
"I'm pretty 'ungry," said the Baker before he fell asleep.
And he dreamt of fried fish.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE ASHES OF A FIRE.
Save that the trees were a little bigger and more closely set, there was no change in the scenery next day. Perhaps the ground rolled a trifle more, and patches of thicker scrub sometimes turned them from the billabong. But the heat was the same, and the accursed flies got worse. Each time they lay down they were hunted by pismires, whose bite is a little red-hot stab, and they saw innumerable ants of other kinds. But though the ants, and flies, and mosquitoes were maddening, their big trouble was hunger, which they found nothing to assuage. Not yet having come to the point where they could swallow their natural antipathies and cook a snake, they let one pass unharmed which would have made a meal for six men, and Smith, who was saving his strength, did not go out of his way to kill it, though it was a black snake, and very deadly.