His servants would be faithful unto death. None would ever question his order of march. And if he were not successful in founding a kingdom, to be worked as a relief province for Badajos, he would never come back at all. Some day there would be found the traces of a white man’s encampment, amid tribes of natives as yet unknown—the shreds of tents, the waggonette wheels, the scattered articles of plate, and the more ordinary utensils of the white man. From beneath a spreading tree would be exhumed the bones of the leader of the party. Such would be the memorials of a pioneer and explorer, who was never known to turn back or confess himself unsuccessful.
As to the labour question, Dick Evans and his wife were indispensable now, more than ever, as the brothers had resolved not to remain in statu quo. Wilfred had determined to organise an expedition, and to take the greater part of the herd with him. In such a case it would have been suicidal to deprive themselves of Dick’s services, as, of course, he would be only too eager to make one of the party. He cheerfully submitted to a diminution of wages, stating that as long as he and the old woman had a crust of bread and a rag to their backs they would stand by the captain and the family.
‘If we could only get through the winter,’ he said, ‘I shouldn’t have no fear but we’d box about down south with the cattle till we dropped on a run for them. There’s a lot of fine country beyond the Snowy, if we’d only got a road over the mountains to it. But it’s awful rough, and the blacks would eat up a small party like ours. I don’t hardly like the thoughts of tacklin’ it. But what I’m afraid on is, that if the winter comes on dry we’ll have no cattle to take. They’re a-gettin’ desprit low now, and the lake’s as good as dried up.’
The outlook was gloomy indeed when even the sanguine Dick Evans could make no better forecast. But Wilfred was the sailing-master, and it did not become him to show hesitation.
‘We must do our best, and trust in God, Dick,’ he said. ‘This is a wonderful country for changes; one may come in the right direction yet.’
As for Andrew and Jeanie, they would not hear of taking any wages until times improved. They had cast in their lot with the family, and Jeanie would stay with her mistress and the girls, who were dear to her as her own children, as long as there was a roof to shelter them.
Andrew fully recognised it as a ‘season of rebuke and blasphemy.’ He who ordered the round world had, for inscrutable reasons, brought this famine upon them. Like the children of Israel, he doubted but they would have to follow the advice given in 1 Kings xviii. 5: ‘And Ahab said to Obadiah, Go into the land, unto all fountains of water, and unto all brooks; peradventure we may find grass to save the horses and mules alive, that we lose not all the beasts.’
‘And did they?’ asked Guy.
‘Nae doot; as maist like we shall do gin we use the same means as gracious Elijah. No that I’m free to testify that I conseeder the slayin’ o’ the prophets o’ Baal a’thegither a needcessity. It wad have been mair wiselike on the pairt o’ Elijah to have disestablished their kirk and garred them lippen a’ their days to the voluntary principle. But let that flee stick to the wa’; dinna doot, laddie, that ae day the heavens will be black wi’ clouds, and there will be a great rain.’
Perhaps the one of the whole party most to be pitied was Howard Effingham. With the eagerness of a sanguine nature, he had become fixed in the idea that the prosperity with which they had commenced was to be continuous. Inspired with that belief he had, as we have seen, commenced to indulge himself with the reproduction, on a small scale, of the pleasant surroundings of the old country. He had fancied that the production of cattle, cheese, butter, bacon, and cereals would go on almost automatically henceforth, with a moderate amount of exertion on Wilfred’s part and of supervision on his own. It was not in his nature to be absorbed in the money-making part of their life; but in the acclimatisation of birds, beasts, and fishes, in the organisation of the Hunt Club, in the greyhound kennel, and in the stable his interest was unfailing, and his energy wonderful.