During the afternoon the leader went in search of the body of the black, which he said they should bury too, but members of the tribe appeared already to have crept up and removed it. So Voss returned, furious with the flies, and the devotion of Laura Trevelyan, which did not allow her to leave him unattended. She was dragging after him, across the stones. And the Christ-picture. He could have shouted.
But on coming to within a hundred yards or so of the camp, his attention was attracted by the glitter of some substance, that proved to be glass, and in it the needle of the stolen compass.
‘Mr Judd!’ he called in triumph.
When Judd had come, the German pointed to the patch.
‘This will obviate the necessity of deciding who will take the one compass.’
He laughed, but Judd, who had already been tried too sorely, stood silent, looking at the little arrow that was pointing and pointing on the bare earth.
Since the day was already far advanced, and every man, as the result of the recent disaster, aching as if he had ridden miles over the very roughest country, it was decided not to push on until the following morning. In the course of the afternoon, Judd followed the tracks of the stock, that had wandered in a direction roughly to the south of the encampment, and there found them congregated along the banks of a river, of which the course was in general dry, though there remained a few passable waterholes to which the animals had been attracted. Thin horses stood, easing a tired pastern, humbly twitching a grateful lower lip. One or two surviving goats looked at the newcomer without moving, admitting him temporarily to the fellowship of beasts.
The man-animal joined them and sat for a while upon the scorching bank. It was possibly this communion with the beasts that did finally rouse his bemused human intellect, for in their company he sensed the threat of the knife, never far distant from the animal throat.
‘I will not! I will not!’ he cried at last, shaking his emaciated body.
Since his own fat paddocks, not the deserts of mysticism, nor the transfiguration of Christ, are the fate of common man, he was yearning for the big breasts of his wife, that would smell of fresh-baked bread even after she had taken off her shift.
That evening, after the canvas water-bags had been filled against an early start, and the men were picking half-heartedly at a bit of damper and dried meat, Judd approached their leader, and said:
‘Mr Voss, sir, I do not feel we are intended to go any farther. I have thought it over, and am turning back.’
Some of them caught their breath to hear their own thoughts expressed. They were sitting forward.
‘Do you not realize you are under my leadership?’ Voss asked, although quite calmly, now that it had happened.
‘Not any more I am not,’ Judd replied.
‘You are suffering from fatigue,’ pronounced the leader.
The corroboration of his worst fears was making him firm, bright, almost joyful.
‘Go to bed now,’ he said. ‘I cannot allow myself to suspect a brave man of cowardice.’
‘It is not cowardice, if there is hell before and hell behind, and nothing to choose between them,’ Judd protested. ‘I will go home. Even if I come to grief on the way, I am going home.’
‘I do not expect more of you, then,’ said Voss. ‘Small minds quail before great enterprises. It is to be hoped that a small mind will stand the strain of such a return journey, and unaccompanied.’
‘I am a plain man,’ said Judd. ‘I do not understand much beyond that plainness, but can trust my own self.’
Voss laughed. He sat culling stones out of a little pile.
‘So I am going back,’ Judd ended. ‘And I will lead anybody that is of like mind.’
This was to be the test, then. Voss threw a hateful stone into the darkness.
At once Turner jumped up, and was straining his throat to utter the words. He was like a gristly fowl escaping from the block.
‘You can count on me,’ he cried too quickly, ‘and Ralph will come.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ snapped Angus, ashamed at being stripped naked by such trash, who was, moreover, his friend.
‘No doubt others will have made up their minds by morning,’ Voss said. ‘Gentlemen, I will wish you good night. You have several hours. The nights are still cold, and will favour thought.’
Then he crawled into his tent, and was not altogether ungainly in doing so, it was realized.
The situation did crystallize, if painfully, under the stars, and by morning each knew what he must confess. In some cases, the decision was too obvious to require putting into words. There would have been no hope for Frank Le Mesurier, for instance, on any course other than his leader’s, and Voss, who had read what was written, would not have dreamt of asking for proof of loyalty. Frank was busy strapping and buckling. Somewhere he had stowed his book, that he valued still, but in which he no longer wrote, as if all were said.
Turner was gabbling. The prospect of a return to sanity had brought out the streak of madness that is hidden in all men.
‘I will not eat, Albert,’ he was saying craftily, ‘and the load will be so much lighter for the provisions we do not have to carry. It is surprising how little a man need eat. I will be the headpiece, you will see. Food, they say, only numbs the brain.’
Just then, the German came across, and insisted upon a fair division of stores. He and Judd arranged these matters quite naturally and amicably, in the pale morning. Although they were shivering, and their teeth chattering, it was from the cold.
‘And the compass!’ laughed Voss, who had become a thin, distinguished, reasonable being.
‘There is no need for any compass,’ laughed the big, jolly Judd.
As Ralph Angus approached them, he was terribly uncertain in his certainty, and in need of that macassar, which provided half the assurance of young, personable gentlemen.
‘I have decided,’ he said, who had been deciding all night.
‘Yes?’ asked Voss, who knew, and who would have let him off.
‘I have decided to throw in my lot,’ said Angus, sweating in the cold, ‘to go with Judd. It seems to me questionable to continue any farther into this wilderness. I have enough land,’ he finished rather abruptly, and did not mention the acreage, for this would have been in bad taste.
‘You are rich, then,’ remarked Voss, with elaborate seriousness.
‘I mean,’ stuttered the unhappy young man, ‘there is land enough along the coast for anyone to stake a reasonable claim.’
At that moment, his leader, as Judd the convict had become, put his strong hand on the landowner’s arm and asked him to do something.
‘All right,’ said Ralph Angus, surlily, but with every intention of obeying.
He went to do it, and at the same moment gave his life into the keeping of Judd. As the latter’s hands were capable ones, it could have been a wise move, although the young man himself felt he was betraying his class, both then, and for ever.
All was got ready in quickest time. Nobody could have criticized the almost unbroken smoothness and amiability with which their departure was prepared. When the moment came, however, movements grew abrupt and unnatural. As the two parties were separating, each man remembered how the others knew him far too intimately, with the consequence that nobody experienced any real desire to look back.
Only Harry Robarts called to his mate:
‘Good-bye then, Mr Judd.’
They had forgotten about Harry, who was, of course, a lad, and a simpleton. Even Judd had forgotten, who had sensed the boy’s affection, while always knowing that he must lose him.
‘Ah, good-bye, Harry,’ the convict replied, now that he had been accused.
When he had cleared a passage in his throat, he added rather furrily:
‘You are leaving me. And I would not have expected it.’