While this party was out, corporal Coles, who was posted as sentry on a high terrace difficult of access, saw natives on the opposite cliffs brandishing their spears in the manner they do before a fight. Captain Grey clambered up the height, but as he could not make them out, he thought Coles had made a mistake. “When I told him this,” writes the Captain, “he merely said, Look there, then, sir,” and pointed to the top of Mount Fairfax. There, indeed, they were, going through a series of enigmatical ceremonies. The disposition which the Captain made of his men, being observed by the natives, at first excited them to furious gestures, but by degrees, they calmed down and suddenly withdrew. “The British soldiers and sailors with me,” proceeds the chief, “were surprisingly calm.”[[340]]
The Greenough River was reached on the 8th April. Here some of the men became sullen and would not proceed. In the mean time corporal Auger went alone to search for water, and soon finding it, the party was moved to the stream. Revived in spirits by the supply, all readily resumed the march, and before nightfall, had travelled seven miles further on their journey.[[341]] But the wish for short marches and long halts which prevailed from the first, and in which Dr. Walker coincided, was now exhibited in discontent. The Captain, however, wisely persisted in following his own plan. On the 9th April the want of water was much felt; and late in the day corporals Auger and Coles and three others went in search of some. They had made about seven miles, “when the keen eye of Coles,” says the Captain, “discovered a beautiful spring under a hill, which was then named the Water Peak.” Why this designation? Indebted to the corporal for finding the spring, it would not surely have been irrelevant to associate the humble name of the faithful discoverer with this interesting feature of the hard journey. In returning to the party, they wandered over a rough country full of crevices, sustaining some serious falls, and, being benighted, did not reach their companions till the next morning.[[342]]
So great had the disaffection become about short marches, that the Captain resolved to adopt a course to settle the question. About seventy miles only had been marched, and six or seven pounds of flour were all that was left to each person. All were hourly losing strength and energy, and suffering from stiffened limbs. To delay under such circumstances was sure to bring with it wants and trials of the most distressing nature. The Captain, therefore, determined to proceed by forced journeys. “It was evident,” he writes, “that those men who, during our late toils, had shown themselves the most capable of enduring hardships, privations, and the fatigue of long and rapid marches, were those best suited for the service destined for them.” Among the five selected to accompany him were corporals Auger and Coles, whose force of character and disciplinary habits made them fit examples for imitation in so forlorn an extremity. Dr. Walker’s party consisted of five men, and himself as the chief. Mr. Frederick Smith was with the slow walkers. The separation took place on the 10th April.[[343]]
The Arrowsmith River was gained by Captain Grey and his steady men on the 11th, and a further march of forty-six miles brought them on the 13th to Gairdner’s Range. On the 14th, they reached the Hill River, and after a long journey, halted at a pool, where they each cooked two table-spoonsful of flour in about a pint of thick water into a mess they termed soup. This, with a few nuts from the zamia tree, formed their day’s repast. On this scanty fare they trudged along at a smart pace, over an arid and sterile tract of country, groaning from pain and fatigue. The sun, too, was intensely hot, and all grew faint for want of water. Gaining the course of a parched-up stream, it was called the “Smith” River. Many holes like wells were in its bottom, inviting search and promising success; but all were cruelly dry, and the very stones over which the water once had gushed, were blanched or blackened with long exposure to a burning sun. Now their weary days only passed to be succeeded by sleepless and toilsome nights. Almost perishing with thirst, they wandered like wild men even in the dark hours of night, from swamp to swamp, digging holes in a vain search. For two days and two nights they had not tasted a single drop of water or food of any kind; and on the 17th, as they moved slowly on with weak and husky voices, they moistened their mouths by sucking a few drops of dew from the shrubs and reeds. So worn out were they all, that now they could only walk a few hundred yards at a time; but about two o’clock in the afternoon they were so completely exhausted, it was impossible to move them. The sun was then very oppressive, and the groans of the men were painful in the extreme. Some had fruitlessly essayed to obtain relief to their parched throats by chewing the laces and fragments of the tops of their ankle boots; but now the “last sad and revolting resource of thirst was upon them—they were driven to drink their own ——!”[[344]]
Reduced to the last degree of weakness and want, Captain Grey, in this desperate crisis, resolved to proceed southward, and never to halt until he dropped or reached water; and if any of the party fell behind, not to wait for them, but to go on until he slaked his own thirst, and then to return with assistance to them. Upon all he called to exert their utmost energies and make a last struggle for their lives. Every superfluous article was now thrown away, and the very valuable sextant, carried in turns by corporals Coles and Auger, was also abandoned. In sad procession the sufferers reeled on with wild and haggard looks; and though reason with some had begun to hold but a very slight influence, discipline was rigidly maintained, and not a complaint escaped them. At length, after suffering intense thirst for three days and two nights, performing severe marches under a scorching sun, the delighted travellers, finding a small hole of moist mud, each as he came up cast his wearied and aching limbs beside the hole, and, thanking God, greedily swallowed the liquid.[[345]]
Almost in a state of stupefaction the men lay down by the pool, watching with straining eye-balls until they again saw a little mud in it, which they eagerly licked up. Pigeons and cockatoos in numbers came to drink of the spring, but the gaunt wayfarers forestalling them had consumed the supply. Above, hovered birds in tempting flocks while the travellers by the “lone pool” were starving. Not an arm was strong enough to bring one down. The gun was partially raised, but the tremor of the effort rendered the attempt altogether hopeless. Each now turned to his own little store, and cooking a spoonful of flour, mixed with the black liquid, gratefully ate it. All sense of smell and taste had gone, and a repast of mud was as palatable as a custard. Next day, April the 18th, quitting the memorable pool, they traversed a very hilly and densely-wooded country, and finding excellent water, made, notwithstanding their extreme feebleness, an incredibly long march. At night they lay down exposed to heavy rain, and, as a piece of torn and shredded[shredded] blanket between two was their only covering, their situation was one of extreme wretchedness and suffering.[[346]] During these wanderings, Auger found intervals in which his spirits were sufficiently buoyant to encourage him to unpack his needles and thread, and to do his best—being only an improvised tailor—to mend the gaping rents and fretted fractures in the Captain’s tattered costume.[[347]]
On the 19th, the exhausted travellers were in motion again, but completely crippled from the cold of the night. “Corporal Coles,” writes the Captain, “my faithful and tried companion in all my wanderings, could scarcely crawl along. The flesh was completely torn away from one of his heels; and the irritation caused by this had produced a large swelling in the groin. Nothing but his own strong fortitude, aided by the encouragement given him by myself and his comrades, could have made him move under his great agony.”[[348]] Twenty-one miles the party marched that day without food, and only gave up when the darkness closed in upon them. A night of appalling misery succeeded, for the teeming rain drenched them as they lay; and the following morning, wasted and weak, with rigid limbs and shivering bodies, they could only, by extraordinary efforts, push themselves along. Life was scarcely worth the effort it cost to move. Coles was in a dreadful state, staggering on like a drunken man reduced to the last extremity of human endurance. It required fortunately but a few more desperate struggles to succeed; all therefore buoyed up their spirits, for, in their deep despair, a flickering hope still remained; and on the 21st April the five exemplary adventurers under their captain, entered Perth miserable objects of emaciation and prostration.[[349]] Here ended their toils, discouragements, and privations; and here they were tended with the best medical skill that the settlement could command.[[350]]
Worn as he was, Auger started again the next day with a party under Lieutenant Mortimer to search for the lagging travellers left with Dr. Walker, and was out a fortnight. Driven by want of provisions the mission returned to Perth on the 6th May, bringing with it one of the missing men. In the following morning the corporal was again afoot with a second party under Mr. Roe, the surveyor-general of the province. Big-boned, broad and unbending, though ailing, attenuated and of melancholy aspect, he marched for eleven more days, re-entering the settlement on the 21st May with Mr. Spofforth, the companion traveller of Mr. Roe. The search was successful; four of the adventurers were taken into Perth, and the starved remains of the last were buried in a sand-hill. After sleeping upwards of 400 nights in the open air and suffering hardships of extreme severity, it seems strange that Auger, footsore and tired, should not have been allowed a horse, as some of the party were, upon which to travel in these concluding services; and it is even more surprising that Captain Grey, in furnishing the details of these secondary expeditions, should have suppressed all allusion to the presence of the corporal, who deserved, for his spirit and endurance, most honourable mention.
Months passed away before the two corporals regained their health, when, in February, 1840, they proceeded to South Australia. Corporal Coles joined the detachment of the corps at Port Adelaide; and corporal Auger landed at Woolwich in September, and was soon afterwards discharged by purchase.[[351]] Coles remained in the corps till June, 1843, when he was pensioned on 1s. a-day, in consequence of the loss of the fingers of his right hand and the forefinger of his left, occasioned by the accidental explosion of a carronade, which he was firing in honour of the birth of the Duke of Cornwall. Captain Grey was then Governor of South Australia, and he at once nominated his faithful companion and servant to a lucrative government appointment in the colony, presenting him also, at great cost, with a set of fingers fitted to his hand, which were so beautiful in their mechanism and accurate in their working, that he could pick up a button or a sixpence with pleasing facility.