“To tear the flesh of princes
And peck the eyes of kings.”
Murmured Jack, “If one ever could smile again, it would be at this transposition of situations. A minute since this unprejudiced fowl had a well-grounded expectation that he was about to dine or sup upon us. Now we are going to eat him.”
“Stupid fellow this one waggan,” said Doorival, taking a long and apparently satisfactory suck at the life-blood of the incautious one; “he think we close up dead.”
“He wasn’t far wrong either,” answered Jack, grimly. “Now light a fire, and let us roast him a little for the look of the thing.”
Stimulated by even this unwonted repast, the forlorn creatures struggled on till midnight. The night was comparatively cool, and with parched throats and fevered brain John Redgrave judged it better, in spite of the increasing weakness of the boy, to press forward and make their last effort before dawn.
The Southern Cross, burning in the cloudless azure, with, as it appeared to the despairing wayfarer, a mocking radiance and intensity of lustre, had shown by its apparent change of position that the night was waning, when the boy, who had been going for the last hour like an over-driven horse, fell and lay insensible. Jack raised him, and after a few minutes he opened his eyes and spoke feebly.
“Can’t go no furder, not one blessed step. You go on, Misser Redgrave, and leave me here. I go ’long a Misser Waldron.” Here his dark eyes gleamed. “He very glad to see Doorival again. I believe Wondabyne ahead; you make haste.”
Jack’s only reply to this was to pick the boy up and to stagger on with him across his shoulder. For some distance he managed by frantic effort and sheer power of will to support the burden; but his failing muscles all but brought him heavily to the earth over every slight obstruction. He was compelled to halt, and, placing the lad at the foot of a tree, he extemporized a sort of couch for him of leaves and branches.
“Now look here, Doorival,” he said; “you and I are not dead yet, though close up, I know. I will go on, and if I get to the water before daylight I will come back and bring you on. I will keep the same track till I drop. I know the river is ahead, perhaps not very far. I break the branches and leave track. You come on to-morrow morning if you don’t see me. Now, good-night. I’ll leave Help with you.”