That night John Redgrave and the wailing Doorival buried him at the foot of a mighty sighing pine, covering up their traces as completely as the boy’s woodcraft enabled them to do, and marking the spot in a sure but unobtrusive manner, so that in days to come the burying-place of Guy Waldron should not be suffered to remain undistinguished. This duty being performed, Jack gathered up the small personal treasures of the dead man, and long before dawn, steering by the southern stars, they pursued their mournful progress towards the settlements.
CHAPTER XXII.
“I loved him well; his gallant part,
His fearless leading, won my heart.”—Scott.
For several days they had an average measure of privation only. The resources of Doorival were found equal to supplying them with food and water. From the course pointed out to him he had never varied, and Jack was, from observation and calculation, perfectly certain that it would bring them, if carried out, well within the line of the settled districts.
But as to one condition of success he felt undecided. For some weeks there had been no rain, and a stretch of country lay yet before them in which, according to the rainfall, they might, or might not, find water; in the language of explorers, signifying that they might, or might not, perish. Desperate from the death of Guy Waldron, he had been too reckless to take this risk into the account. He would dare the hazard, and put his last chance upon the die.
So it fared that, after leaving the last watercourse and entering upon the wide untrodden system of plain, scrub, and sand-hill—scrub and sand-hill and plain—which divided the rivers, Jack was compelled to admit, after two days’ short allowance of water, and one with none at all, that he had been foolhardy. The third day passed without the slightest appearance of moisture. It was inexpedient to diverge from the line for more than a short distance in search for fear of wasting their failing strength. The boy, strong in passive courage, held out unflinchingly. John Redgrave had the fullest faith in the accuracy of his reckoning. They must, without the shadow of a doubt, strike the waters of the Wondabyne, if they could hold out. But that was the vital question. By his closely-examined and re-examined calculation they should sight the great eucalypti that towered above those deep and gleaming waters (oh, thought of Paradise!) hurrying beneath the carved limestone cliffs on the following sunset, or at least before midnight. Were but one day longer necessary, then were they both lost. The boy was failing now in spite of his courage. For himself, he would not, could not, consciously yield as long as he could stand or crawl on hands and knees. Yet a certain swelling of his parched throat, a murmur in his ears, a disposition to talk aloud and unbidden, all these signs announced to him, as a practised bushman, that the fourth day, if passed without water, would find them delirious and dying. Shutting out these thoughts as far as his volition availed, he strode on, followed feebly by the boy, during the long terrible day.
At sunset they halted for a few minutes upon the inevitable sand-hill, with pine and shrub and long yellow grass, the exact fac-simile of scores which they had crossed since they had left Raak. Jack faced the west and gazed for a few moments upon the gorgeous blazonry of scroll-like clouds, the rolling wavelets of orange, splashed with crimson and ruddy with burning gold, which rose and fell in shifting masses, as if rent by Titans from the treasure-house of Olympus. Far away northward, far as the eye could see, lay the dim green desert, measureless, lifeless, and life-denying.
“It is the last sunset that I shall see, possibly. It seems hard, as poor Guy said; but when he and better men had gone on the battle-field and elsewhere with the sound of victory in their ears, John Redgrave may well go too. It is a fitting end of the melodrama of life. Doorival, shoot that crow.”
This highly inconsequent concluding remark was occasioned by the alighting of the bird of ill-omen, which had been following them since dawn with the strange instinct of its kind, on a branch almost immediately above them. The boy, wayworn almost to the death, and looking well-nigh lifeless as he lay at Jack’s feet, could not resist the irony of the situation, and, noiselessly sliding his carbine into aim, sent a bullet through the breast of the unlucky “herald of the fiend,” who dropped down before them, like the raven at the feet of Lucy Ashton and her fateful, fascinating companion.