The Animal Stars Collection

by Jackie French

  You do not strike your leader either, said a voice. Was it mine? At times the world swam and wandered in front of me. Fever dreams flashed through my nights, and left me damp with sweat.

  How many days till Brahe would leave Cooper’s Creek now, I wondered. Wills had stopped giving us the date each morning. We were already pushing ourselves as hard as any man could do.

  The camel Boocha couldn’t keep up. We stopped to slit his throat. We cut what meat we could, ate some of it half raw, just warmed up by the fire. We kept on going.

  Grey stumbled. He tried to rise, but could get no further than his knees. Wills and I lifted him, and tied him across Rajah. He lay there limply, gasping.

  Burke said nothing. We plodded on.

  The sun ate the days. The cold froze our bones at night. Grey grew weaker. We had to lift him from the camel each night, and tie him on each morning.

  Wills spooned flour and water into him. Grey gulped it like a baby. But he was mostly too dazed to speak.

  Each day I wondered how long the camels could keep going. How long had it been since they had eaten? Gotch stumbled, unable to get up a bank. We killed him, then Golah Sing too.

  We had no strength to carry most of the meat, and Rajah had Grey’s weight to carry too, as well as our water. We dried what flesh we could in the sun. Hard black strips, but they’d keep us alive.

  Perhaps.

  Only Rajah and Landa survived now to carry Grey, our food, our water, our blankets and our tents. But somehow Burke’s horse Billy still stumbled on.

  How could any horse take what he’d endured? His ribs almost poked through his skin. His hide was bare in patches. Infected bites oozed pus.

  We were no better.

  We’d made it halfway through the stony desert when Burke looked up. We had no fire tonight—no wood, no energy, no time for anything but walking and survival. Burke looked at Billy, his head dropping to the grassless ground.

  ‘He won’t make it back across the stones. I’ll kill him tomorrow, while there’s meat on him.’

  Burke shot his horse in the predawn light. Wills and I helped him cut up the meat. Grey stayed in his tent, asleep or half unconscious, mumbling too low to understand. Billy’s meat was sweet, but there wasn’t an ounce of fat on the poor animal.

  I glanced over at Burke. He had shown no emotion at Billy’s death. He showed none now.

  Grey had fouled himself. I helped Wills clean him. There was no spare water. But we did our best.

  It was a few days afterwards that I found Mr Grey dead, cold in his swag when I tried to wake him. So he hadn’t been shamming when he’d said he was ill. I wondered if Burke might cry for a man, even if he wouldn’t for a horse. But he didn’t. We scratched a shallow grave and buried him, and pressed on.

  CHAPTER 42

  The Camel’s Story

  Cooper’s Creek, March 1861

  At last the days began to grow cooler once again. Lightning cracked across the sky. Rain fell, though not enough to wet the dust. At least the air smelt sweet for a few seconds, covering up the smells of men and horses.

  Every day one of the men climbed the hills and looked towards the north. Were they looking for Mr Burke? Every night I climbed the hills too. I stood under the bright stars and sniffed the air, hoping to catch a whiff of Rajah. But there was no smell of other camels in the air.

  CHAPTER 43

  John King’s Story

  Near Cooper’s Creek, 21 April 1861

  It wasn’t far to the Cooper now. We would be there by the end of the day! We pushed ourselves through this last stretch, determination overcoming the weakness of our bodies, taking it in turns to ride the camels, forcing ourselves to get there before the dark, staggering as the afternoon shadows grew.

  Landa and Rajah were nearly as weak as we were. Our only remaining stores were one and a half pounds of meat—all that was left of poor Billy.

  It was Wills who first saw the line of trees that meant the river. We pushed ourselves harder than I had ever thought possible before. Step after step after step, even the camels plodding faster now, as they could scent the water. Our only thought was of that moment when we would reach the camp. Only a few horses to go…

  CHAPTER 44

  The Camel’s Story

  Cooper’s Creek, 21 April 1861

  Suddenly the men began to move. They packed up stores. They dug a large hole near a tree, big enough for almost half the sacks of food. They buried all the good oats and flour that could have been fed to camels. They carved shapes into the nearest tree, above the good food that they had buried.

  Finally Dost Mahomet loaded us with all that remained, the tents and tools as well as bags of water.

  No, young camel, I do not know why we waited there, with no grass and no good water. I do not know why we left that morning either. Men are strange!

  CHAPTER 45

  Dost Mohamet’s Story

  Cooper’s Creek, 20 and 21 April 1861

  We waited four months and five days before we left, four hungry men, and six starving camels, with skins slack from lack of food.

  Each night Mr Brahe ordered a guard kept on the supplies in the stockade, in case the black-skinned people took them. The water stank. Green scum floated along the edges. Our flour grew sour and the rice grew mould. All of us grew ill, Mr Patton worst of all.

  One by one we climbed the sandhills, and gazed towards the north. No one admitted they were looking for faint figures staggering back across the dust. We would stand till the heat drove us back to the waterhole and the thin shade of the trees.

  Once I thought I saw them, men striding through the dusk towards our camp. I opened my mouth to give a cry. But then I looked again.

  They were black-skinned men, not men with camels. They must have been hunting, for they carried something. But it was too far away to tell what it might be.

  My stomach screamed at me in hunger.

  Finally one night Mr Brahe made the decision. ‘We leave tomorrow.’

  No one argued. We had all known it had to come. Mr Burke and the others had either died, or decided to try to reach a town or homestead some other way. And if we did not leave now there would not be enough food to last us till we reached Menindie.

  If we did not leave now Mr Patton would die, and then the rest of us.

  I thought: Mr Wright is dead. Belooch is dead. They have tried to get food to us across the shrivelled grasslands, and they have died.

  And without grass, without the camels to carry food and water, we were dead as well.

  We left soon after dawn. Four thin men, one dying. Six camels, one almost staggering with the itch. We had left half our poor supply of food, buried beneath a tree. Half for us to get back to the Darling. Half for the four explorers to the north to get back too.

  But they will not return, I thought. The food would rot there under the hot ground.

  We had waited as long as we could. No one, I thought, can ever say that we abandoned them.

  CHAPTER 46

  John King’s Story

  Cooper’s Creek, 21 April 1861

  ‘I can see the tents!’ yelled Mr Burke, running ahead of us.

  But when we got there they were only shadows in the dusk.

  They had abandoned us!

  I leant against a tree, too weak to stagger to the waterhole and drink, though my tongue was swollen and my lips were raw. Flies sipped at the heat blisters on my hands.

  Had it only been four months since we had left? It seemed I had lived a lifetime since I had seen this waterhole.

  Had it always smelt as bad?

  There was nothing here. Nothing but the silence aching all around us, nothing but our panting as we gazed around.

  ‘Bastards. Bastards,’ muttered Burke. ‘Abandoning their leader…’

  You said to leave, I thought. You said ‘Wait three months and go.’ It’s been four months now, and five days.

  But there was no point saying that to Burke. Mr Wills saw it first�
�the blaze cut in the tree. All that was left were words carved onto a coolibah tree:

  So we dug—and found a camel feedbox filled with provisions: flour and oatmeal, rice and meat. With it was a note from Brahe, saying he had abandoned camp to go back to the Darling. Wright had not arrived. Patton was ill, the other three still well.

  I looked at the date again, and tried to make my battered mind work.

  21 April…today!

  They had only left that morning!

  If we hadn’t stopped to bury Grey…if Burke had managed to walk that one day after eating the big snake…

  But there was no point thinking of ‘what ifs’ now.

  ‘They have betrayed us!’ roared Burke. ‘The traitors! Abandoning us here!’

  I said nothing.

  Brahe had waited even longer than we had asked. Waited till his supplies were almost gone and he was sure we were dead, I supposed.

  Burke should never have left the stores and men behind. He should have sailed up to Menindie, so we started fresh. He should have waited till the cool of winter…I shook my head, to clear it of the thoughts. The past was gone. What mattered now was our survival.

  Burke was still muttering, half in rage and half in confusion from the sun and the diarrhoea that still affected us all. I managed to crawl to the waterhole, and bring us back a billy full of water to drink.

  We felt better after that. The night air was cooler too.

  Burke wanted to head after Brahe at once. But Wills was done for. I was not sure how far I could stagger either.

  Perhaps tomorrow, I thought. We will see what we can do tomorrow…

  CHAPTER 47

  The Camel’s Story

  South of Cooper’s Creek, 22 April 1861

  We began to walk back the way that we had come. There were six of us camels now, twelve horses and four humans, a small caravan after the big ones I had known.

  It was not too bad at first, though Beer and Jambel were so weak they could hardly walk, much less carry packs with the humans’ tents and food. But soon we reached the waterhole where we’d camped before. There was grass to eat there, too—the best grass we had eaten in a long, long while.

  But we didn’t stay, despite the water and the grass. My nose was telling me the plains that had fed and watered us so well on the way here were dry and dusty now. But these men had never learnt to listen to their camels. And if Dost Mahomet tried to give them good advice, they did not listen to him either.

  The world grew drier. The creeks had shrivelled into the ground. The grass had baked to dust. At times it felt as if we would become dust too.

  Beer whimpered in the night.

  We walked.

  I do not know how long we plodded on. Each day seemed like the one before it. And then suddenly I smelt…

  Camel!

  No, not the ones in our poor caravan. But these were camels that I knew! I smelt Nero, Rangee, Shadow, Gobin…

  ‘Grahhh!’ I bawled. I stamped my feet. I was desperate to find these other camels. I could smell that they were near water, too.

  But none of the men took any notice! The other camels harrumphed just like me. But there was nothing we could do.

  Finally Dost Mahomet saw fresh camel droppings in the sand. ‘Sahib! Look!’ he yelled. And at last the men began to realise the truth of what I had tried so hard to tell them.

  CHAPTER 48

  Dost Mahomet’s Story

  Bulloo waterhole, 29 April to 14 May 1861

  My mind wandered. I was following the caravan at home, the camel droppings on the ground. Soon we would pray together. There would be rice on the platter, a giant pile, with so much roast goat that the meat juice ran down onto the ground…

  The camels snorted, and poor Bell Sing had to bawl and stamp at me before I realised…

  Camel droppings in front of us, not behind. Camels…Belooch…Mr Wright…

  I felt like crying like a baby. We had not been forgotten! They had survived! And so would we, for they were bringing food, the sheep that Mr Wright had said he’d buy. My stomach hungered for the taste of fresh killed meat…

  It wasn’t long before we saw their camp, shimmering in the hot air like a mirage on the horizon. There were trees about a waterhole, a rough stockade like the one that we had left behind, tents and camels and, as we drew closer, men who saw us and came running. I recognised Belooch, even at this distance, in his robes and turban.

  Then I saw the graves. You cannot miss where men are buried. What other reason could there be in this desert to dig three holes like that?

  ‘Dost Mahomet!’ Belooch embraced me. There were tears in my friend’s eyes. I stared at him. He was as thin as we were—worse perhaps. His eyes were like black holes. Empty skin sagged beneath his cheeks. Our rescuers were in a worse state than we were.

  Around us the other men were greeting friends, exclaiming and explaining. I gestured at the graves.

  ‘Who has died?’

  Belooch took my hand. How long had it been since I had felt the touch of a friend’s hand? ‘Old Dr Becker. He died this morning. It is the will of Allah, my friend. Mr Stone and Mr Purcell are dead as well.’

  My heart felt emptiness. I had not realised how much I liked the old man, with his bottles of strange lizards, his wrinkled hand guiding the charcoal to make his sketches. He had joined the expedition to find new insects and animals, to record what we had done in the pictures in his notebooks. He had stayed to work like all the other men, forced by Mr Burke to trudge in the heat and dry despite his age, only allowed to make his drawings at night after all the other work was done.

  Now he was dead. There would be no more sketches. Was this the hand of Allah, I thought, a punishment for making images of His creation?

  Then I remembered the lime juice, the stores left behind, the old man’s words. ‘If you die of scurvy in the desert you will know who to thank.’

  It was Mr Burke who had done this.

  No, this was not the rescue I had dreamt of.

  We plodded over to their camp, and Belooch explained. It had taken months for money to come from Melbourne, for Mr Wright to buy fresh stores. Mr Wright had stayed to send his family down the river to Adelaide, as well. By the time Mr Wright and the others set out to find us the grass had withered; the waterholes turned to green mud. They had no surveyor with them, so they got lost. Their filth and poor food had made them ill…

  They had eaten most of the stores that had been meant for us by the time they found this waterhole. Wright’s men built the stockade to keep the black-skinned men away in case they attacked the weakened men or tried to kill the animals. Three men had died so far.

  I glanced at the sun. It hung in the air like the gong Mr Burke had been so proud of, to call us to his side. It was time for us to pray again.

  What would Allah send us now? How had I come to be here, led by men who knew so little about the land they could not find food or water, or even find the way?

  Could we get back to Menindie?

  We were in Allah’s hands now, to live or die.

  I went to cleanse myself and make my prayers.

  Now we waited at the camp while Mr Wright and Mr Brahe went back to our camp on the Cooper, to see if Mr Burke and the others had returned there since we had left.

  My legs began to swell, though the rest of me was thinner than a stick.

  ‘Scurvy,’ said Belooch softly. Dr Becker had told him the signs. Belooch’s legs were swollen too. The water stank, and so did the air about the camp. I wrapped the end of my turban about my face, as much to keep off the bad air as the dust and heat and flies. All of us had diarrhoea now. Mr Wright and Mr Brahe came back, and said there had been no sign. Mr Burke had perished in the desert.

  So we set off again, leaving the mud of our waterhole, the dusty graves, the stockade the men had built as though to keep off fever and starvation, as well as the men with darker skins. The horses staggered, and the camels limped.

  We were skeletons that wa
lked, thin men with dry lips and red-rimmed eyes, under a baking sky. Only the flies were interested in us now.

  Some of us might live to reach Menindie. Perhaps.

  CHAPTER 49

  The Camel’s Story

  Bulloo, heading towards Menindee, May 1861

  We began to walk again, into the dry world, back the way we’d come. There was no grass. Few bushes even for a mouthful of dry leaves. Even I was starving now. My knees trembled. My hump flapped against my side like a dry leaf.

  I had never imagined a caravan could be like this. The horses sweated and shook with every step. The flies gathered at their eyes. The men walked as though the world about them were a dream. Even I was shaking with each step.

  I looked at the dead limbs of the trees that had fallen on the ground. They were grey and white, like dappled bones. I wondered if Rajah was nothing but bones like this. I wondered if soon that was all I would be as well.

  Dost Mahomet staggered as he tried to round us up each morning now. But we camels staggered too, so we were well matched.

  One morning Dost Mahomet rubbed his mouth with his sleeve, as though his teeth hurt. Suddenly there was blood on his sleeve. Three teeth fell into the sand at his feet.

  Dost Mahomet stood there, staring down at them, then felt up in his gums where they had been. His hands were swollen now, and his eyes looked tiny in his swollen face.

  ‘What is it?’

  It was Belooch. His skin was covered in big sores. The flies clustered round them even though he kept brushing them away.

  Dost Mahomet gazed down at his teeth again, then at us starving camels, the high glare of the sky and the stony ground.

  He smiled. It was a strange smile. I could see the black gaps where his teeth had been. He laid a swollen hand on Belooch’s shoulder. ‘We must trust in Allah,’ he said quietly. ‘For now there is no one else to trust.’