The answer came slowly. “Jo is your trump card, certainly ... and your only one.”
Then Fetherston spoke. “Gentlemen, if I were your master I should absolutely forbid you to go, but I have not the right to interfere with your liberty. [57] ]But I am glad that you have had the benefit of Mr. Blundell’s experience.” (Mr. Blundell was Tim.) “His opinion and mine coincide exactly.”
“Well,” said I, “Mr. Fetherston, we will be careful and we will bear in mind your advice, and I think it is on the whole most probable that you will see us back within the week.”
“Possible,” said Jack.
They all looked very sober then, and nothing more was said on the subject, and indeed little on any subject until the company broke up.
CHAPTER V.[ [58]
AMONG THE BLACKS.
Our preparation for this madcap expedition was very soon made. We took our horses, for on foot we could not keep up with Gioro, and it was better to have the full benefit of his fleetness. We strapped our blankets to the pommels of our saddles. Jack carried a small fowling-piece, and I carried a pistol. We both had serviceable knives. A few small packages of tea and tobacco and what we thought a fair supply of ammunition completed our impedimenta.
We left our spare horse in charge of our man, and entrusted Mr. Fetherston with a cheque sufficient to pay the man’s wages and to give him a small gratuity on his return to Adelaide. Meantime he was to be in Mr. Fetherston’s service until we should rejoin the expedition, and if we did not rejoin it before its return to Adelaide then Tim Blundell was to have the horse. Early in the forenoon Gioro showed me a hill which [59] ]seemed to be about ten miles away (it proved to be much further). He told us that at the foot of that hill we should find a creek which we had crossed at an earlier part of its course the afternoon before, and that creek we must follow down. Mr. Fetherston had the same hill marked on his chart, and his instructions were that when he was abreast of it he was to turn to the right nearly at right angles. So that when he should make this turn that must be our signal for parting with him. As we did not get abreast of the hill until it was rather late in the afternoon, we camped a little earlier than usual, and Gioro, Jack, and I deferred our departure until the next day. Shortly after sunrise we bade adieu to our friends with those noisy demonstrations on both sides which often serve the Englishman as a decent veil for those deeper feelings which he nearly always hesitates to show. The landscape here consisted of grassy slopes and plains, alternating with belts of well-forested country. We were in the middle of a plain when we parted from our fellow-travellers, and our courses were not in quite opposite directions; ours was about north-west, and theirs east-north-east. So while we remained in the plain we could see our fellow-travellers by simply looking to the right, and they us by looking to the left. So for a while there was much waving of hats on both [60] ]sides. But the first belt of timber that we entered hid them from our sight. And then I think for the first time I became fully aware of the meaning of what we were doing.
“Jack, my boy!” said I, giving my horse a slight cut, so that he bounded forward, “we’re in for it now.”
“You don’t seem sorry for it, Bob,” said he, urging his horse to join me.