They were four hundred miles from civilisation on a roaringly hot salt lake, with one desperately wounded man and another who could only limp; and only two young Aborigines who were little more than children to guide them.
They drank hot water from their flasks, and ate two grey-faced terns which Weeip had snared the previous evening and charred over his camp-fire. It was Eyre’s instinct to eat only a little, and to save the rest for later, but Dogger reminded him that the meat wouldn’t last the day, not in this heat.
‘Eat like an Aborigine,’ he told Eyre. ‘Cram as much into your belly as you can, because whatever you save will be stinking by nightfall. You can’t keep anything fresh, not in the outback. I think the only food that I’ve ever seen the blackfellows store is wild figs, which they roll up in balls of ochre, and hide in the trees. The rest of it, they keep in here,’ he said, pointing to his stomach.
They talked about Joolonga and Captain Sturt. Minil told them exactly what Joolonga had been discussing with Yonguldye; how Yonguldye wanted to break open the white djanga’s head at once and take all the magic that was stored there. Apparently Joolonga had been arguing that if he allowed Yonguldye to kill Eyre so soon, he would no longer have any guarantee that Yonguldye would direct him to the place where the firestones could be found; or north to the inland sea.
Surprisingly, Yonguldye had been determined to travel south to Adelaide to give Yanluga’s body a traditional Aborigine burial, as he had agreed. It was a crucial part of the coming-alive of the legend that he should do so. Presumably he would have asked Joolonga to take him to Captain Sturt, and Captain Sturt would then have arranged the burial with Lathrop Lindsay.
Christopher said, ‘I really find this all rather hard to swallow.’
Dogger sniffed, with a dry catarrhal thump. ‘You’re dealing with people who believe in magic here, matey. I’ve heard tell of that story of the white djanga myself, although the one I heard had a slightly different twist to it. I think the djanga ended up eating the clever-man, instead of the other way about. And there was something about a waratah tree in it.’
‘But it’s quite extraordinary that the news of it should have spread so quickly … and that we should have travelled all the way out here and found Yonguldye ready for us.’
‘Not at all,’ said Dogger. ‘Once old man Lindsay’s blackfellow had decided that Eyre here was the one true djanga, and told his friends, that story would have spread like a bushfire. The trouble with you, Mr Willis, is that you think that all blackfellows are as good-for-nothing as those idle buggers you see hanging around Adelaide, getting drunk on twopenny rum and running odd-jobs. Well, you’re wrong, sir; eighteen hundred percentile wrong, because the chaps you come across out here beyond the black stump, they’re clever and they’re bright and if they want to carry a piece of important news from one end of this desert to the other in three days flat, then they’ll do it. Look at the way they’ve been following Eyre around, ever since they decided that he was their man, taking care of him, making sure that he got out here safe and sound. If those fellows Chatto and Rose had tried to take him back to Adelaide, I reckon they wouldn’t have gone for more than a mile before the blackfellows used them for spear practice. Mind you, I think they could do with some, the way they’ve been flinging them at us.’
‘But can you really believe that Captain Sturt arranged all this?’ Christopher demanded. His cheeks were red and flushed from the heat, and his eyes were bloodshot. ‘It all seems so, well, underhand. So ungentlemanly. For a man of his stature to send another chap out to be killed by savages …’
‘Christopher,’ said Eyre, quietly, ‘I know about the money. Joolonga told me.’
Christopher opened his mouth, and then closed it again. He flushed.
Eyre said, ‘I know you didn’t realise what Captain Sturt really had in mind. Well, I assume you didn’t. Perhaps he didn’t have anything in mind. Perhaps he knew nothing about all this ritual brain-eating and whatever; and perhaps Joolonga’s been lying to me. But, if Captain Sturt is capable of paying one friend to betray another—well, I would say that he’s capable of almost anything.’
Christopher said unevenly, ‘It was five pounds. I don’t even know why I took it. But Captain Sturt did solemnly promise me that he would try to persuade you not to go off looking for Yonguldye.’
‘Although of course he did exactly the opposite.’
‘I still couldn’t tell you, though, could I? How could I protest that he hadn’t kept his word to me, when I had taken his money? What would you have thought of me? My God, what do you think of me now?’
Eyre looked at Christopher; and then looked away. ‘Not much,’ he said.
‘I suppose if I were to say that I had nothing but your best interests in mind … that I was thinking of nothing else but protecting you …’
‘Oh, for God’s sake, Christopher, protecting me from what? From myself? From the Aborigines? If you ask me, the only person I need protecting from is you.’
Christopher’s reddened eyes brimmed with tears. But then he sniffed loudly, and took a deep breath, and brought himself under control.
‘Well, well,’ said Dogger philosophically, and then, for no reason that anybody could think of, ‘Rats in the cupboard.’
Eyre could think of a dozen cutting and hurtful things to say to Christopher; but there was no point in adding to the humiliation which he already felt. Besides, Christopher’s suffering seemed trivial beside that of Midgegooroo, who was groaning again now, and calling out.
Eyre glanced at Dogger with a questioning expression.
‘You’re in charge,’ Dogger conceded. ‘Whatever we do, it’s all up to you.’
‘But you’ve seen wounds like this before.’
‘I’ve seen worse. I’ve seen chaps with spears through their faces; and no way of getting them out. You should have left him, you know. He would have been dead by now; but at least you would have spared him all of this.’
‘He stayed loyal to us; we had to stay loyal to him,’ Eyre argued.
‘Making him suffer like a dying dog isn’t a very noble piece of loyalty, I wouldn’t have thought,’ said Dogger.
‘Well, what do you suggest we do? Shoot him?’
‘No,’ said Dogger. ‘I suggest we face up to what we’ve started to do, which is try to keep him alive; and the only way we’re going to have any chance of succeeding in that particular mission is by taking that spearhead out of him.’
‘You mean pushing it right through him,’ said Eyre.
‘I mean pushing it right through him,’ nodded Dogger.
Eyre stood up, and went over to the shadow where Midgegooroo was lying and knelt down beside him. A shower of flies rose into the hot afternoon air, and Eyre had to keep brushing them away.
‘Midgegooroo?’ he said, gently.
Midgegooroo’s eyes flickered, but he said nothing.
‘Midgegooroo?’ Eyre repeated.
Again, nothing but a flicker. A fly crawled into Midgegooroo’s open mouth, and out again.
Eyre sat back. ‘Well,’ he said, swallowing dryly, ‘I think you’re right. We’re just going to have to try it. Weeip, will you bring my medicine-box?’
Weeip ran over to the pack-horse which was lying on the ground and unbuckled its pannier. In a moment, he came back to the rock carrying the polished wooden case, and set it down beside Eyre, wide-eyed. ‘You cure Midgegooroo?’ he asked, impressed.
‘I don’t know,’ said Eyre. ‘I can only do my best. Would you like to untie a scarf from my saddle-pommel, and see what you can do to keep the flies off while we operate.’
‘Operate?’ said Dogger, wryly. ‘That’s a fancy word for pushing a spear through somebody.’
‘Just give me a hand, will you?’ asked Eyre testily. ‘And Christopher, could you hold his ankles? I think he’s probably going to kick quite a bit.’
Between them, they lifted Midgegooroo out of the shadow of his crevice and laid him on his side on a crumpled
green horse-blanket. Midgegooroo’s eyes were still open, but Eyre wasn’t at all sure that he was actually conscious. He didn’t appear to be focusing on anything or anyone; and his breathing was rough and shallow, as if he were asleep, but having nightmares. His face had always looked very primitive to Eyre; very pug-like and Aboriginal; but now it was so ashen and stretched with pain that it scarcely seemed human. It reminded Eyre, chillingly, of some of the gargoyles on Durham cathedral.
Dogger said, ‘Are you quite sure you want to do this? It isn’t going to be easy; not on us, and especially not on him. It would be twenty times kinder to do away with him quickly.’
‘We can’t kill him, for God’s sake,’ Eyre retorted.
Dogger shrugged. ‘If you say not. You’re the one who knows everything about immortal souls, and stuff like that.’
‘He’s a human being,’ Eyre reminded him.
‘Well, exactly,’ said Dogger, equivocally.
Eyre hesitated, and looked around, They were all watching him—Christopher and Dogger and Weeip and Minil—and none of them was able or prepared to take the decision for him. He was the leader of the expedition. Midgegooroo’s life was in his hands; and the hands of God.
The day felt so immensely hot that he couldn’t think. The heat was almost audible, an endless terrible drumming on the back of his neck. He realised that the atmosphere was so dry that he wasn’t even sweating any more. His tongue lay in his mouth like a lizard, and swallowing required a complicated contortion of his throat muscles, as well as an act of will.
‘I think we’d better begin,’ he said, and opened the hot brass catch on his medicine-box, and took out surgical spirits and soft linen cloth. Weeip flapped the clustering flies away while Eyre cleaned as best he could around the lips of the wound, which were already stiff with crusted blood, and bobbled with whitish flies’ eggs. Midgegooroo remained limp and silent as Eyre was doing this, except when Eyre cleaned very close to the broken-off shaft of the spear. Then, his hand flailed out, and he clasped Eyre’s knee; and let out a faltering breath, and a single word that sounded like ‘yungara …’
‘He’s asking for his wife,’ said Dogger.
Weeip piped up, ‘Midgegooroo have wife Mary-mary. Mary-mary died last Christmas, very sick.’
Eyre finished cleaning the wound, and wiped his dry forehead with the back of his hand, abrading it with salt grit.
‘Right, Mr McConnell,’ he said. ‘Do you have any idea how this kind of thing is done?’
Dogger cleared his throat. ‘You grab hold of the spear, and you push. It’s as simple as that.’
Eyre took a painful swallow of hot air, reached around Midgegooroo, and clasped the spear in his right hand. Instantly, Midgegooroo screamed like a slaughtered cat, and jerked upwards, and thrashed his legs, and Eyre whipped his hand away from the spear and knelt there, shaking. ‘Jesus,’ he prayed. ‘If I ever needed help, I need it now. Please help me to save this man’s life; and please guide me so that I don’t hurt him so much.’
Christopher was white. ‘Please, Eyre, if you’re going to do it, then do it.’
Eyre nodded. He firmly grasped the spear again; and again Midgegooroo shrieked so harshly that Eyre could imagine the flesh being stripped away from his larynx. But this time, Eyre kept on: pushing and twisting the spearhead into Midgegooroo’s back, cutting through muscle and membrane and liver. Midgegooroo writhed like a beetle on a hotplate; and his screaming became so intense that he ceased to scream at all, but uttered an endless soundless cry that was more terrifying than all the screams of hell.
The point of the spear burst bloodily through Midgegooroo’s chest, with a sound like a dinner-fork piercing the taut skin of a turkey. By now, however, the broken-off shaft was so deeply buried in his body that Eyre no longer had any purchase on it; and he was unable to grip the sharpened head and drag it through the front. He said to Dogger in a mouthful of jumbled words, ‘Pass me that ramrod, from your rifle. Yes, the ramrod. Quickly.’
Dogger grimly did as he was told; and then Eyre lodged the end of the ramrod against the end of the spear, and gave one fierce push. The spear head cut its way out from under Midgegooroo’s ribs, dragging with each quartz barb a shred of bloody muscle or black liver; and then at last it was out. Midgegooroo shuddered once, and then lay still, with his face pressed against the ground.
Christopher gingerly released his ankles. ‘Is he dead?’ he asked.
Eyre felt his wrist. His pulse was uneven, almost undetectable, but he was still alive.
‘He can’t last,’ said Dogger.
‘Perhaps if we could get him back to Adelaide,’ suggested Christopher.
‘I doubt it he’d survive it,’ said Dogger. ‘Look at the poor bastard; he’s almost dead now. And what are we talking about—eight days on horseback at least. More like nine.’
‘In any case,’ put in Eyre, ‘I wasn’t planning on going back to Adelaide.’
Christopher stared at him; and slowly took off his hat.
‘What? But what are you going to do?’
‘I’m going to go on.’
‘What are you talking about, go on? Go on to where?’
‘Go on to the inland sea, where do you think?’
‘But we no longer have the guide, or the supplies. Look at us—one poor fellow nearly dead—two young children—and my leg’s coming up like a balloon after that boomerang hit it. How can you possibly think of going on?’
Dogger thrust his hands into his britches pockets, and whistled a dry little tune. ‘In for a penny, in for two or three hundred pounds,’ he said, and then whistled some more. The sky above their heads was utterly cloudless, and the thermometer was creeping up to 115 degrees.
Eyre cleaned Midgegooroo’s wound again, making sure that he squeezed out as many of the flies’ eggs as he could. Then he padded both the entry wound and the fresh exit wound with folded gauze; and with Christopher’s stunned and resentful help, he tightly bandaged the Aborigine’s chest.
Christopher said, ‘It’s madness. We’ll die.’
Eyre began to pack away his medicine-chest. ‘There’s an inland sea there, Christopher. Once we reach the sea we’ll be safe.’
‘But we don’t have anybody to guide us.’
‘The sea lies to the north. Due north. You heard what Yonguldye said.’
‘But why, for Heaven’s sake? Don’t you think we’ve all suffered enough? I just assumed that we’d be heading straight back to Adelaide. I ask you, my dear chap, why should we carry on? Our sponsors have betrayed us; our guide has nearly had us sacrificed; what earthly reason do we have for continuing?’
Eyre made sure that Midgegooroo was as comfortable as possible, and then he stood up. ‘I want that inland sea to be called the Walker Sea, that’s why. I want this saltlake to be named Lake Eyre; and I want that mountain to be called Mount McConnell; and that outcrop to be called Willis Hill. I want this place to be known as Midgegooroo; and we’ll find other places and call them Weeip and Minil. We’ve sweated and fought our way as far as here; let’s go back with the fame and the glory. Let’s make our mark on this continent. What do you think would happen if we crawled back with our tails between our legs; whining that Captain Sturt had tried to feed us to the Aborigines? We’d be laughed out of Adelaide. No, Christopher, we’ve got to go back and announce that we’ve discovered the inland sea and maybe the opal mine, too; and then we’ll see what our fine Captain Sturt has to say for himself; yes, and Colonel Gawler, too.’
Christopher walked two limping paces away from Eyre; then he turned around and kicked Eyre’s medicine-box all across the sand, scattering bottles and tweezers and tablets.
‘Are you mad?’ Eyre shouted at him.
‘You’re asking me if I’m mad?’ Christopher shouted back. ‘What’s the use of keeping a medicine-chest if you’ve condemned us to death? What’s the use of salt tablets for men without water? Or laxatives if we don’t have any food? By God, Eyre, we’re going to be the healthiest corpses
in the desert! Skeletons with rosy cheeks! You and your vanity! You and your damned vanity! I always knew that it would be the end of me! I always knew!’
Eyre took a deep breath, and held it. Then, without another word, he knelt down and began to pick up his bottles. Laudanum, syrup of Toulu, acid of sugar. He had almost finished collecting up the liver-pills when he saw that the tiny amber-glass jar of corrosive sublimate appeared to be empty. He picked it up and held it against the light. Absolutely empty; even though he knew that there must have been two or three drachms in it when they started out on their expedition. Usually, he kept it right at the bottom of the chest, since it was so intensively poisonous, and scarcely ever useful; but Christopher’s kick had sent it flying out.
He thought of Arthur; and the sudden way in which Arthur had started vomiting those long stringy white masses of bloody mucus. He had suspected Joolonga before of poisoning Arthur; but the events that had followed had put the matter out of his mind. This empty sublimate jar was proof; at least as far as Eyre was concerned. The pointing-bone may have held some strange and dangerous properties; but none of them could have been half so strong as two drachms of corrosive sublimate. The only question that really remained unanswered was why Joolonga had considered it necessary to put Arthur to death. He had said, of course, that it was to protect them all from the vengeance of Ngurunderi. But nothing that Joolonga had said or done had turned out to be what it appeared to be. Eyre decided to reserve judgement; but to remain suspicious.
He also decided to say nothing to Dogger and Christopher, not yet. He didn’t want them thinking that he had turned completely mad.
‘Listen,’ he said, closing the medicine-chest, ‘if the inland sea is as close as Yonguldye said that it is, we should reach it in two or three days. But, if we turn back, we’ll have at least a week of hard travelling; and nothing to show for it. Besides, Joolonga will probably still be after us; and the first thing that he will expect us to do is turn south. We’ll ride straight into him, more than likely; and then where will we be?’
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