Then, one evening as they scrambled up towards a red ridge, one of the horses, or skeleton of a gelding, of which the eyes had gone milky with blight, and the crimson sores were the only signs of life, stumbled, and fell back with a thin scream into the gully, where he lay, and lunged, and continued to scream.
At once every man, with the exception of the leader, raised his voice, in curses, commands, or words of advice. All together. What they intended to achieve by their outcry, the men themselves could not have explained, except that they had been compelled to join with the horse in expression of their common agony.
Then Voss said:
‘I suggest that you shoot the beast, Mr Judd.’
Judd dismounted, and, when he had unslung his gun and descended the slope, quickly dispatched the poor horse. This humane act was the only one that reason could have suggested, yet, when the convict had stripped the pack-saddle from the carcass, pulling at the leather with such force as he could still summon, almost falling back under the surviving weight of his once powerful frame, he took stones, and began to pelt the dead horse. He pelted slowly and viciously, his broad back turned to the group of his companions, and the stones made a slow, dead noise on the horse’s hide.
Until Voss insisted:
‘Come up, Mr Judd. It is foolish to expend your energy in this way.’
It did seem foolish. Or terrifying. Harry Robarts, who had respected, and even fallen in love with his mate, was terrified. But he, poor boy, was simple.
As soon as Judd had recovered his customary balance, and his legs had returned him to the horse he had been riding, the party struggled a little farther, climbing out upon what appeared to be a considerable plateau, arid certainly, but blessedly flat.
‘Here I think we will camp,’ decided Voss, when they had come to a few twisted trees.
He did not say more. There were occasions when, out of almost voluptuous perversity, he did respect the feelings of others.
All sat in the dusk, nursing in their mouths a little tepid water, that tasted of canvas, or a sad, departed civilization.
But Harry Robarts went wandering across the desert of the moon, stumbling quite drunkenly, and when the actual moon had risen, the tears were icy in the ravines of the boy’s agèd face. Rambling and snivelling, he fell to counting such mercies as he had received, and in so doing, recalled the many acts of kindness of his mate the convict. These appeared more poignant, perhaps, since all human ties must be cut.
When, suddenly, in the mingling of dusk and moonlight, the boy realized that he was looking into animals’ eyes. In the interval before fear, the situation remained objective for all concerned. Then it became better understood. The boy saw that the eyes were those of a blackfellow, squatting in a hollow beside two women, his equals in nakedness and surprise, who were engaged in coaxing a firestick into marriage with a handful of dry twigs. The attitudes of all were too innocent to be maintained. The boy stumbled back upon his heels, mumbling the curses he had learnt, the black man leaped, faster than light, blacker than darkness, into the nearest gully, followed by his two women and their almost independent breasts.
The boy was still cursing the shock he had received, and the absence of that courage which he always hoped would come to match his strength, when he heard a wailing from the natives, and from the distance, a blurred burst of answering cries. Upon telling his story afterwards, he remembered also to have caught sight of a second, more distant fire the moment before it was extinguished.
‘So we did not throw off the damn blacks,’ panted Harry Robarts in his own camp circle.
Voss, alone of all his party, remained persistently cheerful.
‘There is no reason to believe that these natives are not of our present locality,’ he said, ‘and it could suggest that we have come to better country.’
Such logic persuaded those who wished to be persuaded.
‘It is unreasonable,’ laughed Voss, ‘when we have practically ignored the presence of the natives in the past, to behave of a sudden like a number of nervous women.’
‘We were strong then,’ said Judd, passionately. ‘And had hopes.’
‘You, surely, of all men, have known before the unwisdom of abandoning hope,’ the leader replied.
Seeking to comfort him with human precepts, in what was possibly an unearthly situation, the comforter alone was strengthened.
When Voss had lifted the flap of his tent and got inside, Judd the convict muttered to his own teeth:
‘In those days, I knew how much and how little I was capable of. I knew where I was headed. Now I do not know about us.’
After that, everybody went to bed, with firearms ready to hand, but slept deeply, as they were exhausted.
In the morning there was a bright, cold dew upon the world, and even the travellers, as they looked out across the austere plateau, were sensible of some refreshment, if only from sleep.
Voss himself was up earliest, and was going about gathering the dew with a sponge and squeezing it into a quart pot to make use of all possible moisture for his own consumption. Palfreyman soon joined him at his work.
‘It could be idyllic,’ the ornithologist remarked, ‘if we were to keep our heads lowered, and concentrate our whole attention on these jewels.’
‘This is the way, I understand, in which some people acquire religious faith,’ the German replied.
Palfreyman, whose own faith had suffered considerably, was prepared to accept the remark as punishment of a sort.
‘Some people,’ he agreed.
‘Ah, Palfreyman,’ said Voss, ‘you are humble. And humility is humiliating in men. I am humiliated for you.’
As Palfreyman did not answer, he added, though more for himself:
‘I suspect we shall soon learn which of us is right.’
He could have continued to humiliate his unresisting friend and to exalt himself in that metallic light, for the mornings were still relentlessly cold and conducive to sharp detachment, if an uproar of voices had not at that moment arisen from the camp nearby. On going and inquiring into it, he and Palfreyman were informed by their companions that an axe, a bridle, and the surviving compass had disappeared, indeed from under canvas, in the course of the night.
‘It is these blacks, sir,’ Judd protested. ‘With your permission, I will go in search of them.’
‘We cannot accuse the natives on no evidence,’ Voss replied.
‘I will soon find evidence,’ said Judd.
‘If they did not help themselves to our property,’ Turner spluttered biliously, ‘and they could have without much effort, simply by lifting the canvas, who else would have taken the things?’
Both Turner and Judd, remembering Jildra, were trembling to say more, but were held back by some lack of daring. Or was it by Voss? His strength had been increased by sight of the great, trembling Judd.
‘At least, here are the natives themselves,’ Palfreyman broke the awkwardness.
Everybody looked, and saw a group of several blackfellows assembled in the middle distance. The light and a feather of low-lying mist made them appear to be standing in a cloud. Thus elevated, their spare, elongated bodies, of burnt colours, gave to the scene a primitve purity that silenced most of the whites, and appealed particularly to Voss.
‘Good,’ he cried. ‘Here is an excellent opportunity to satisfy Judd’s eternal craving for material evidence.’
‘I do not understand,’ shouted the exasperated Judd. ‘I will give as well as find evidence. I will fire a few shots right into the middle of ’em.’
‘Wait, Albert. I will come with you. Dirty blacks,’ contributed Turner, the spotless. ‘But I must find my gun first.’