"No; her I can never forget."
"Why did you not marry her?" said I. "I suppose as you went visiting her, she would have had no objection?"
"How could I?" replied he. "If only I had been an ordinary working man I would willingly have asked her; but I was not that. Her father always spoke to me as if I owned a mansion, and yet I had scarcely sufficient salary to pay for my own clothes. No, I never asked her."
"Does she know you are out here?" inquired I.
"No, neither she nor my parents, nor anybody; they must think I am dead."
I had nothing to say. I was lying thinking about matters of my own. A little after this I thought I heard him crying. Was it possible? I did not like the idea. I listened again. Yes! there was no mistake. Thorkill was really crying. Deep, big, stifled sobs. I asked what was the matter. Two or three times I asked before he answered. At last he said, "I could not help it; I cried because I know very well I shall never see Reikjavik" (the only town in Iceland) "again."
After that I kept talking for some time to him in a sort of overbearing way about that, saying we need not cry, surely, about that, if that was our only trouble; that we had money enough to get home now, and if we had not, what then? As for myself, if I set my mind on going home, rather than cry over it I would stow away on a ship or work my passage. But I got no answer from Thorkill. I could not sleep, and soon after the day broke. The rain had by this time ceased, and as I saw that Thorkill had now fallen asleep, I thought it a pity to waken him, and crept as quietly as I could out of the tent to make a fire and get a drop of tea for breakfast. As I sat by the fire an hour after, eating my breakfast, I saw Thorkill coming, creeping on his hands and feet out of the tent, with his head screwed round, looking up in the air over the tent. I somehow thought he was looking at a bird, and wondered he had not got the gun, so I sat still and said nothing, but kept watching him. When he was a long way out of the tent he got up, and, still looking up in the air, pointed fixedly at something and cried, "See! oh, look there!" I stole behind him and looked, but could see nothing, so I asked, "What is it?"
"Oh, don't you see? See! a large Russian emigrant ship flying through the air."
"Are you going altogether insane?" cried I, beating him on the back. The next moment with a deep groan he fell right into my arms. I asked him what was the matter. Was he sick? Was he bitten by a snake? I do not know half I asked him, but all the reply I got as I laid him in his bunk again, was, "Go for a minister."
My mate was dying, and I knew it now. Dear reader, whoever you may be, if you have seen your nearest friend die, then you know how bitter it is. But if you at such time have been among others who have shared your grief, and had a doctor to take the responsibility off your hands, then you may only guess at what I felt when I saw Thorkill lying there perfectly unconscious. We had as it were for a long time been everything to each other, and the disappointments and mishaps we both, so far, had suffered in Queensland, had, it seemed at that moment, made him simply indispensable to my existence. How could I go for a parson? I jumped out of the tent and ran round it three or four times before I recollected that I did not know of any human habitation within fifty miles! Then I went in again and spoke to him. There was no answer; not a movement in his body. He lay as if in a heavy sleep, a high colour in his face. One of his arms was hanging out over the bunk, and would not rest where I put it, so I took a saddle and placed that underneath it, and as it was not yet high enough, I put a pint pot on that again. There I balanced it, and there it remained. I had not much medicine, only some quinine. That was no good. Then I thought he must have been taken by an apoplectic fit. I took the scissors and cut off all his hair and beard. Then I went outside and worked desperately at making a sunshade over the tent, because the sun was beating down on us so fiercely; next in again, and out. I did not know what to do. I could not for a moment remain still. Sometimes I carried water from the creek and bathed his head with it. Then I feared I was only tormenting him, and knocked it off again. As I sat looking at him in the afternoon I could not avoid thinking about how he had in his last hour of good health made such a complete confession about matters he always before had been so reticent about. Why? I ask the question now. Can any one answer it. It is not fashionable in our age to believe more than can be rationally explained, but I believe most people in their lives have had similar strange experiences. If I make the remark that I am superstitious, then I know I shall lay myself open to ridicule, and yet it is only a form of admitting that I do not know all that passes in heaven and on earth.