“I never knowed it worse.”
But old Blear Eyes had.
“So he blew his brains out.”
“Oh, dry up,” said Hill, but the cook murmured of ancient disasters on the Darling and the Macquarie.
“Did you die of thirst, you old croaker, and jump up to choke us?”
And still Wilson wandered to and fro in the sunlight, though the sky was inexorable.
“He’ll be shakin’ his fist at it yet,” said the cook, “and when a man does that he never comes to no good. It’s all up with them as shakes a fist at ’eaven. I’ve seen it myself. Now it was in ’79 that Jones of Quandong Flats went mad. He shook ’is fist at the sky. I seen him, and the next morning ’e was ravin’ ’orrid, as though the ’orrors of drink was on ’im. And well I knowed ’em then.”
The boss came towards them through the hot sand, and he leant in the shade against the pole on which the men’s saddles hung. The men looked downcast and half-ashamed. Sydney Jim lost all his flashness and moved uneasily. And the old cook shambled into his kitchen and fell to work upon his bread.
“There’s little water in the Ten-Mile Tank, Jim?”
“They was suckin’ mud this morning, sir,” said Jim.