Mr. Neuchamp was beginning to derive practical benefit from his experiences. This was a great concession for him.
Next morning, having ascertained his line of route, and that Garrandilla was about two hundred and fifty miles distant, Ernest shouldered his knapsack and prepared to finish his little walk.
‘It’s a lucky thing that there are no Red Indians or wild beasts on this particular war-path,’ thought he, as he left the town behind him and was conscious of becoming a speck upon the vast and lonely plain. ‘I feel horribly unprotected. Even an old shepherd might rob me, if he had a rusty gun. I might as well have carried my revolver, but the weight was a consideration. How grand this sandy turf is to walk upon. I feel as if I could walk all day. Not a hill in sight either, or, apparently, a stone. I can imagine some people thinking the scene monotonous.’
Such a thought would have occurred to many minds; but there was no likelihood of such a feeling possessing Ernest Neuchamp. To him the strange salsolaceous plants, so succulent and nutritive, were of constant interest and admiration. The new flowers of the waste were freshly springing marvels. The salt lake, strewn with snowy crystals and with a floor like an untrodden ice-field, was a magical transformation. The crimson flags of the mesembryanthemum cast on the sand, the gorgeous desert flower, the strutting bustard, the tiny scampering kangaroo, were all dramatic novelties. As he strode on, mile after mile, at a telling elastic pace, he thought that never in his whole life had he traversed a land so interesting and delightful. All the day across the unending plains, sometimes intersected by small watercourses. Towards nightfall, however, this very unrelieved landscape became questionable. Ernest began to speculate upon the chance of finding a night’s lodging. Not that there was any great hardship in sleeping out in the mild autumnal season, but the not having even a tree to sleep under was a condition of things altogether unaccustomed, unnatural, and weird in his eyes.
Just as the sun was sinking behind the far, clear, delicately drawn sky line, a deep fissure was visible in the plain, at the bottom of which lay planté la, a rough but not uninviting hostelry. There he succeeded in bestowing himself for the night. He was perhaps more fatigued than at any previous time. He had been excited by the prairie-like nature of the landscape, and had covered more ground than on any day since he started.
The food was coarse and not well cooked, but hunger and partial fatigue are unrivalled condiments. Bread, meat, and the wherewithal to quench thirst are amply sufficient for the real toiler, not overborne, like the luxurious children of civilisation, by multifarious half-digested meals. Mr. Neuchamp, therefore, on the following morning, having slept magnificently and eaten a truly respectable breakfast, surveyed the endless plain from the back of the ravine with undiminished courage.
He amused himself by considering what sort of mental existence the family who kept this wayside caravanserai could possibly lead. ‘They must feel a good deal like Tartars,’ decided he. ‘Here they are deposited, as if dropped from the sky upon this featureless waste. They have no garden, not even a cabbage or a climbing rose; no cows, no sheep; of course they have half a dozen horses. I saw no books. They do not take a newspaper. The landlady and her two daughters occupy themselves in doing the housework, certainly, in a very perfunctory manner. The man of the house moves in and out of the bar, smokes continually, and sleeps on the bench in the afternoons. When travellers come, occupation, profit, society, and information are provided for the whole household till the next invasion. What are their hopes—what their social aims? Some day to sell out and live in Nubba, the landlord informed me. How little of life suffices for the millions who possess it in this curiously fashioned world of ours!’
Mr. Neuchamp took his departure from this uninteresting lodge in the wilderness, and commenced another day’s travel, not altogether dissatisfied with the idea that the end of another week would bring his pilgrimage to a close.
Mid-day found him still tramping onward over ground so accurately resembling that he crossed during his previous day’s journey, that if he had been carried back he could not have detected the difference. A feeling of great loneliness came over him, and despite the doubtful success of his chance acquaintanceship, he began to wish for another travelling companion, of whatever character or condition in life. He had not shaped this desire definitely for many minutes before, as if the attendant friend was watchful, a man debouched from a shallow watercourse, and walked towards him.
The new-comer carried, like himself, a species of pack strapped to his shoulders, but it was rolled up after the country fashion, in a form commonly known as a ‘swag,’ containing apparently a pair of blankets and a few articles of necessity.