I believe if it had not been for the valuable information which I possessed, and which first prompted me to attempt to escape, I should have committed suicide, but a reluctance to let my news die with me kept me going. I now seemed to be having recurrent spasms of delirium, for once I remember suddenly coming to my senses and finding I was laughing. I imagined then my end was pretty near. It did not seem to worry me; in fact, I felt a sort of happy feeling, and thought to myself, "Well, I am going to meet my old friends who are dead."
VIII—DIGGING MY OWN GRAVE—THE REUNION
I tied my water-sack to a piece of the deck-chair which I had been using for a walking-stick, to represent a flag, and propped it up in the hope that it might be seen by some passing ship or a patrol. It would also mark the place where my body would be found. I then lay down and went to sleep for a couple of hours. Soon after I awoke I noticed three figures walking along the beach, about half a mile from me. I stood up and signalled to them, and they stopped, looked towards me, and then moved on.
"Whoever you are," I thought, "I am going to follow you." So I picked up my flag, arrows, and water-bottles—I must have looked a regular Robinson Crusoe—and went towards them. They sat down and waited for me. When I got up to them I thought they were natives, as they appeared to be black, and it was only after Mackenzie spoke that I recognized his voice, and knew that they were my own mates, whom I had lost three days previously.
"Good heavens, Pat!" cried Mackenzie. "How have you lived? Where did you get water?"
By way of reply I handed him my water-bottles. He took the cork out of one, smelt it, and threw both away; they smelt horrible. He then gave me some water, and I may say that I never tasted anything so sweet in my life before. I only took a little at a time, but each mouthful seemed to give me fresh life, and my tongue, which was swollen, got back to its normal size, and the horrid dry feeling in my throat went away. We remained here about an hour, during which time my mates and I compared notes as to what had happened since we parted on the Wednesday.
It was now February 13th, and a Saturday afternoon. They told me that on arrival at the sealing station, the evening we separated, they turned into a house and fixed up a lamp with some seal oil which they found. They left the lamp burning at the window so that I could see it, and being very tired, all of them went to sleep. The lamp, however, must have gone out. In the morning, finding that I had not turned up, Franzen and Maritz went back to see if they could find me. In the meantime Mackenzie hunted for shellfish among the rocks, and managed to find enough for two meals. There was a plentiful supply of water, as the previous night's rain had half-filled several old tanks. After going back a few miles Maritz and Franzen found the lid of a small tin box which they knew I had been carrying in my haversack. From this they realized that I had passed their sleeping-place during the night, and was probably somewhere in front. To make quite sure, however, they waited all that day, and resumed the journey on Friday morning. They noticed my "spoor," but had lost it some hours previously.
Mackenzie advised me to throw away the arrows I had been carrying, as one of us might easily get scratched and poisoned with them. I was now feeling much refreshed, so we all "trekked" on together. We had not gone very far when we saw a white sea-bird, with red on its bill, standing on the sand. It looked sick, so we gathered round it, and I gave Maritz my piece of deck-chair to kill it with.
We then set about collecting firewood, there being any amount of driftwood scattered about the beach, and with the aid of flint and steel, which Mackenzie carried with him, we lit a great blazing fire. In the meantime Maritz had skinned the bird, and Franzen had got some salt water in a kettle they had picked up at Cape Cross. After boiling our bird for about fifteen minutes we tackled it, my share being the liver and one of the legs. It did not taste at all bad. We then sat by the fire for some little time, feeling a good deal better, and again resumed our journey. We walked until 3 a.m., and then tried to sleep, but found it too cold. At daybreak we resumed our tramp. It began to drizzle, and about nine o'clock we came to some flat, rocky ground, where I borrowed a water-bottle from Franzen, and managed to fill it. We walked on until about 3 p.m., when we sighted what appeared to be tall chimney-stacks in the distance. Franzen asked me what I thought they were, and I said, "Perhaps some abandoned place, like the one we passed up the coast."
"I think it's Swakopmund," he said.