It was indeed time to comply with the old man’s suggestion. Leaving the quivering corpse, the men turned away with a sense of relief, to commence their less tragic duties. At the camp much was to be arranged; all disorder was rife since the attack.
Huddled together were heaps of flour-bags, camp-kettles, and pannikins. The tents were overthrown, torn, and bedraggled. The frantic cattle had stampeded over the spot chosen with circumspection by the cook, as the strewn débris of beef and damper witnessed.
The horses were nearly all absent—some hobbled, some loose. Not a hoof of the horned herd was to be seen. Everything in the well-ordered camp, so lately presenting a disciplined appearance, seemed to have been the sport of evil genii.
Worse a hundredfold than all, beneath a hastily pitched tent, tended with anxious faces by his comrades, was stretched a wounded man, whose labouring breath came ever thickly and more blood-laden as the sun rose upon the battlefield, which secured for the white man one of the richest provinces of Australia. Yes! the stark limbs were feeble, the keen eye was dim, the stout heart was throbbing wildly, or feebly pulsating with life’s waning flame. Hubert Warleigh lay a-dying! His hour was come. The hunter of the hills, the fearless wood-ranger, was helpless as a sick child. The weapon of his heathen foe had sped home.
Argyll, Hamilton, Ardmillan, and the others stood around his rude pallet with saddened hearts. Each voice was hushed as they watched the spirit painfully quitting the stalwart form of him whom they had all learned to know and to trust.
‘We have bought our country dearly,’ said Wilfred, as a spasm distorted the features of the dying man and caused his strong limbs to quiver and writhe. Over his chest was thrown a rug, redly splashed, which told of the death-wound, from which the life-blood welled in spite of every attempt to staunch it. Beside him sat Gerald O’More, buried in deepest grief.
‘Better take the lie of the country from me,’ said the wounded man feebly. ‘One of you might write it down, with the bearings of the rivers, while my head keeps right. How hard it seems! Just made a start for a new country and a new life. And now to be finished off like this! The Warleigh luck all over. I might have known nothing could come of it, but——’ Here his voice grew choked and indistinct, while from the saturated wrappings the blood dripped slowly and with a dreadful distinctness upon the earthen floor. A long pause. Again he held up his hand. ‘It will take every man that can be spared to get the cattle and horses together again. A week ought to do it; it’s easy tracking with no others about. You can knock up a “break” to count through. Make sure you’ve got the lot before you start away. Leave Effingham and Argyll with me. I’ll tell them about the course; you’re near the open country. I little thought when I saw it next I should be —should be—like this.’
They obeyed the dying leader to the last. All left the tent except Wilfred and Argyll. The success of the expedition depended on the cattle being recovered without loss of time. Though a monarch dies, the work of this world must go on. Few indeed are they for whom the wheels of the mighty machine can be stopped. Hubert Warleigh was the last man to desire it.
‘It’s no good stopping to “corroboree” over me,’ he said, with a touch of humour lighting up the glazing eye. ‘It’s lucky you haven’t O’More to wake as well as me. You won’t laugh at blacks’ weapons any more, eh, Gerald?’
‘Small laughing will do me for many a day, my dear boy. You have forgiven the rash fool that nearly lost his own life and wasted that of a better man? I deserve all I’ve got. But for you—cut off in the prime of your days, how shall I ever forget it? Forgive me, Hubert Warleigh, as you hope to be forgiven.’