Far away a dingo cried out. But he was not afraid.
But after hours, it seemed, of this clambering and stumbling his weakness struck him down, and he lay among the rocks and with one hand hid his eyes from the yellow moon. His hair was whiter than moonlight, and his face dark. The dingo howled again, but he was too feeble to build a fire, and had no fear.
Over his head a stunted tree waved, its leaves outlined with silver light. He thought he had never seen anything so beautiful, and could have lain and stared at it all night; but his eyes clouded and he dropped suddenly into a black sleep.
Long and thin up the gully: ‘Bau!’ shouted a voice. And the riders on the hillside halted and turned, searching the rocks, the bushes.
The cry came again.
‘Ah,’ said Rex, deep in his throat. He turned his horse down a hillside and rode from his companions; who, watching him recede down the gully, became aware also of a dark, moving figure, a tired man urging himself on through the boulders.
It was the end, Gunn knew; and he had not expected this sense of bereavement which descended on him so belatedly.
Now the two figures were close, and Rex had dismounted; but Justin had stopped, his face turned to the other man, and would not approach him. It was left to Rex to advance over the last few yards between them, and even when they were face to face Justin would make no movement, but stood stooped and frozen, his eyes intent.
Then Rex reached out and touched his shoulder. And slowly the older man’s hand went to his pocket, and he brought it out again and laid it in Rex’s, and held out the rifle for Rex to take. Yet there was still a strange dream quality in their movements, neither moving his eyes by a fraction from the other’s. Until Rex, gently and humbly, bent his head and touched Justin’s shoulder with his forehead; and the other man’s hand appeared and lay lightly across his back.
On the hillside, sweating in the heat: ‘This is all,’ Gunn said softly. ‘You can go home now, Stephen.’
Stephen, his eyes fixed on the two dwarfs in the valley, nodded, his mouth taut and sad.
‘Hard to believe it’s over,’ Gunn said. ‘Hard to believe. Nothing will be the same again.’
High on the hill, overlooking the reconciliation of Heriot, his foster-father, Stephen bent his head. ‘No,’ he said quietly. ‘Nothing going to be the same,’ he promised.
The old man’s eyes came slowly open, and he saw the sun sitting half below the next rise. He was hot and choked with thirst, could not remember when the rocks had exuded such heat or when he had sweated so. It was intolerable. He rose shakily to his feet and stepped forward towards the sunrise. The hill grew tall in front of him, reaching up to hide the sun.
‘Who am I?’ he asked, dazed, half-blinded. ‘My name was Heriot. A son of the sun.’
He began to sing, in the midst of his stumbling, a wild corroboree song about himself.
‘Ali! Bungundja bugurga, nandaba brambun?
Worai! Heriot ngarang, nawuru morong nangga.’
And he asked: ‘Where are you going, old ghost? Going to the islands, are you? Going to Bundalmeri? He is your lord. His country is outside—outside.’
‘Worai! mudumudu-gu ngarambun,
Gre-gu Bundalmeri nangga.
Bungama ngaia, beni brara.
Walawa gre beninangga,
Walawa ada bram.
Worai! Worai!’
An eaglehawk hung over him, great ragged wings curved around air.
‘Worai!’ said Heriot. ‘Alas. The earth’s hungry.’
He was staggering then to the top of a rocky rise, and when he came there he stood suddenly still, his white hair blowing against the sky, his eyes dazzled with the sea.
It was the sea’s shine, and the sea’s noise, shattered against rock cliffs. Ultimate indeed, at last found. And the sun that had led him hung close over the sea, not rising but setting, not lighting but blinding.
He came forward to the edge of the cliffs, where they dropped, vast red walls, to the faraway sea below. And the sea, where the light was not on it, was the blue-green of opals and endlessly rearing, smashed into white at the foot of the rock.
There was a break in the cliffs, and he climbed unsteadily down a few yards to a red ledge with a shallow cave behind it. The skulls were there again, and the eyes of the mouthless god, turned forever towards the islands. But the islands—the islands. He stared out to sea and saw nothing but the sun on the water; his dreams and his fears all true, and there were no islands.
He turned, blinded, away, and saw on the ledge beside him a block of stone fallen from the cliff. And he stooped, straining, and lifted it in his arms. He knew suddenly the momentousness of his strength, his power to alter the world at will, to give to the sea what the sea through an eternity of destruction was working to engulf, this broken rock. Truly, he would work a change on the world before it blinded him.
Poised on the ledge, he threw the stone, and it floated slowly, slowly down the huge cliff face, and crashed against it; and slower and slower entered the sea, in a tiny circle of spray.
And watching it, he staggered, and stepped back towards the cave, shaking in the legs, and in his head following the enormous fall into the waves.
High overhead the eagle patrolled the cliff. But suddenly, passing under it, a gull flew out from the rock and planed towards the sun until it was hidden in light. And when the sun sank lower, there, in the heart of the blaze, might appear the islands.
The old man kneeled among the bones and stared into the light. His carved lips were firm in the white beard, his hands were steady, his ancient blue eyes, neither hoping nor fearing, searched sun and sea for the least dark hint of a landfall.
‘My soul,’ he whispered, over the sea-surge, ‘my soul is a strange country.’
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To the Islands Page 19
