The wanderers still occasionally came across the natives. Once, on arriving at a village, they obtained a young bullock in exchange for buttons, a few of which the savages had left on their coats; and that the distribution of this godsend might be equal, the whole was cut in pieces, and, just as I have seen done with a cake at school, one of the party, standing with his back to it, named the person who should have the piece held up. But generally the natives denied them everything. Once they strove to barter some poor relic of their property for a calf, which the others appeared to agree to, "but no sooner had they got the price than the calf was driven away."
On one occasion only did they exhibit the slightest pity. On the party coming upon another dead whale, a band of natives surrounded them, but on perceiving their sad condition, and that there was really nothing more to steal, they forbore to molest them, and one of them even lent his lance, with which some chunks of blubber were cut out.
A little afterward they found two planks on a sandy bank, in each of which was a nail. "Elated," as we are told, "with this valuable discovery," they set fire to the planks, and getting out the nails, "flattened them between two stones into something like knives." A few yards further on, by turning up the sand, they found water, of which they had been much in want; and here, with much thankfulness, they rested. This was the last day of what seemed to these poor souls good fortune.
They did indeed fall in with a dead shark, but it was in such an advanced stage of decay that "the liver only could be eaten." Nay, driven by the extremity of hunger, the carpenter ate of some deadly berries, and was poisoned. Now this man it was who from the first, until the hour of his death, had taken care of the little boy; who had striven to relieve those fatigues which his tender limbs could so little endure; "who had heard his complaints with pity; who had fed him when he could obtain wherewithal to do it," and who had lulled his weary little body to rest.
No human work more commends itself to our admiration than that of this poor carpenter, who reminds us, indeed, of the Carpenter's Son with his "Suffer little children to come unto me." Even at this distant time, when that poor boy has been a hundred years "where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest," the tears rise to our eyes when we think of his forlorn condition, deprived of his noble protector.
"I will take him," said the steward, however, who had now succeeded to the command, and that good man kept his word. The natives never gave them so much as a drink of water, though "now and then the women gave a draught of milk to the little boy," and the little party began to break down from sheer fatigue and privation. When this took place, from hard necessity there was no chance but for the rest to leave them.
"THEY CARRIED HIM BY TURNS."
Only they never dreamed of leaving the boy. "It was marvellous," we are told, how he supported the journey (and, alas! how much more marvellous, since he was fated not to survive it after all). "Where the path was even and good," says John Hynes, in his simple fashion, "the child walked, and was able to keep pace with the party; when they came to deep sand or long grass, the people carried him by turns." His only duty was to keep their fire alight while they explored the sand for food.
It will be remembered that, having no flint and steel, they always carried torches; and once, in rounding a bluff to shorten the way, the surf put them out; they came, however, upon the remains of a fire which some Caffre women had lighted, "and joyfully rekindled them." In crossing the rivers where there was a ford, they tied their rags in a bundle, fastened it round their heads, and in it they stuck their brands, and thus kept them dry. Sometimes great storms would come on, and the rain fall so heavily that the men had to hold their canvas frocks over their fire to prevent its being extinguished. Without fire, they would have been lost indeed.