The rain was still falling; the dismal, dusty, thinly-timbered flat, which stretched for miles in unbroken dulness, with a shallow, unmeaning, dry creek winding tortuously through, was now converted into a sea of black mud. Jack knew that in a week it would be carpeted with green, as would indeed be the whole of Gondaree, and the Warroo generally. He groaned as he thought that all this “unearned increment” would be of not a shilling’s-worth of value to him. Mr. Bagemall and Mr. M‘Nab would reap the benefit of it—it was a clear fifty per cent. upon the price of every sheep on the place to begin with. Gregory Hardbake would be on the way down from the mountains rejoicing. All the world would be joyful and prosperous, while he was left on his beam-ends, a stranded wreck, and not even allowed to pursue his lonely voyage in peace. It was hard; but Fate should break, not bend, him. His friends, if he had any left, should see that. All that day he was compelled to pace up and down the narrow verandah of the melancholy wooden box, comforted by the assurances of the host that his ’osses would be safe to be got within the week, that the “young man as was after ’em” had never been known to miss finding such runaways. Unless—added he, meditatively—they’ve gone and made back to where they came from.
However, that night the much-vaunted “young man,” a long-legged, brown-faced, long-haired son of the soil, of the worst type of pound-haunting, gully-raking bush native, returned without the horses. When Jack, in the course of the evening, mentioned that thirty shillings for each horse would be forthcoming on delivery, he brightened up, and declared his determination to have another try next morning.
As Jack, about noon on the following day, was observing gloomily that the rain had stopped, to his intense delight the young man before eulogized was observed approaching, driving the lost horses before him. Perhaps no sense of gratification is keener for the moment than that of the traveller in Australia, who in a strange, possibly evil-reputed locality recovers the favourite steed. The agonizing anxiety, the too probable fear of total loss, the delay, expense, and inconvenience of remount—all these doubts and dreads vanish at the moment when the well-known outline appears. Like wrathful passengers upon reaching the end of the voyage, all previous offences are condoned. The despotic captain, the surly second officer, become almost popular, and a general amnesty is proclaimed.
So, as old Pacha, with his high shoulder and flea-bitten grey skin, followed by his companion, walked into the stable yard, about two panels square of rickety round rails, Jack thought the much-suspected “young man” not such a bad fellow after all. He perhaps reciprocated the compliment after receiving the reward, though his conscience ought to have troubled him if, as is too probable, he had “shifted” Jack’s horses the first night, and left them at a convenient distance from the inn on the second.
Their owner concluded not to tempt misfortune further.
Saddling up promptly, he once more took the road, glad to leave behind Gurran and all its belongings.
That night John Redgrave reached a station where, of course, he was hospitably received, and where he rested secure from the machinations of persons to whom fresh horses and “clean-skinned” cattle presented an irresistible temptation.
Keeping a northerly course, he gradually passed the boundaries of the comparatively settled country, and entered the legendary and half-explored region that skirted the great desert of his dreams. Here rose, like polar meteors, fresh gleams of hope irradiating the sunless cloud-land in which his spirit had dwelt of late—glimpses of that garden of the Hesperides—anew discovery—fortunate isles—a land of gold and gems, were on the cards. Like the garden of old, there was the Dragon—a dragon to be fought or circumvented, as circumstances might direct.
Did he lose the faint track which led between the solitary outposts of the pioneers, there was the certainty of death by thirst. A few days’ anxious wandering, twenty-four hours of delirious agony, and the bones of John Redgrave and his weary steeds would lie blanching on the endless plains and sand-ridges, until the next lost wayfarer or questing tracker fell across them.
Did he escape the famine-fiend, were there not the prowling patient human wolves of the melancholy waste ready to surround and do to death that enemy of all primeval man, the wandering, insatiable white man? Little, however, did John Redgrave reck of Scylla and Charybdis. The barque must float him onward and still onward to fortune and to fame, or must lie deep amid ocean’s treasures, or a stranded wreck upon the inhospitable shore. He was in no mood to be frightened at aught which other men had dared. With the demon of poverty astern, what to him was the terrible deep, fanned by the wildest storm that ever blew? Still he pressed onward; not heedlessly, but with wary patience, as beseemed an experienced bushman, whose life might depend upon the strength and speed of the good horse between his knees. The influence of the great drought in this unstocked country became fainter and less unfavourable. The gray tufted grasses and salsolaceous bushes, uncropped by stock, remained nutritive and uninjured year after rainless year in that strange Australian desert. Their strength untaxed by the moderate journeys, old Pacha and his companion, with the wonderful hardihood of Australian horses, improved in condition.