Corroboree (55 page)

It would also, he sincerely hoped, bring him Charlotte.

He looked around for his brandy-flask, to fill that up as well; but he couldn't find it. His horse must have trampled down the sand when he was drinking, and buried it. He dug for a while with his hands, but it was growing much darker now, and it looked from the clouds that they were building up in the north-west as if it was going to be a cold and windy night.

He rode back through the gathering dusk, clutching his one full water-bottle close to his stomach. His exhaustion had begun to overwhelm him now, and he had to make a sharp effort to wake himself up every few minutes, and check his compass bearing. His long shadow rode in front of him, across the dark orange scrub; and in the distance, towards the south-east, he saw four or five kangaroos bounding like rocking-horses against the thunder-black eastern sky.

The sun sank at last and the wind began to get up. Eyre dozed as he rode; only managing to jerk himself awake when he was on the point of overbalancing and falling off his horse. As he dozed, he dreamed, and sometimes he found it impossible to distinguish between the dream and reality.

It was only his horse drawing up beside Minil's horse and nuzzling it that at last woke him up. The sky was lighter now, with the moon just about to rise, and he could make out the dark triangular shape of the blankets under which he had left Minil. He clicked encouragingly to Minil's horse, and then dismounted. It was then that he realised with a physical shudder of horror and distress that he was no longer carrying the water-bottle.

‘Oh my God,' he said to himself. He looked desperately around, to see if he could see it anywhere close. But he had just crossed miles of scrub and rough grass in the dark, and he could have dropped it anywhere.

Shaking, he went across to the shelter and lifted back the blankets so that he could see Minil. He thought she was dead at first, but when he bent down and listened against her lips, he could hear her breathing in shallow and uneven gasps, interspersed with occasional reedy whines, as if her lungs were congested.

‘Minil,' he called her, and rubbed her hand. ‘Minil, it's Eyre. Minil for God's sake, wake up.'

There was no response; except for a thin, dry cough. Eyre tried opening her eyelids with his thumbs, but even when she stared at him, it was obvious that she was unconscious,
and that she couldn't really see him. ‘Minil,' he repeated. ‘Minil, you must wake up.'

He knew that she was close to death. She was so cold that he could hardly bear to touch her. Her body seemed to have shrunk even in the few hours that he had been away looking for water. Her hips protruded bonily, and her breasts had shrunk, so that they were soft and flabby.

He dragged together as much brushwood as he could find, and lit a fire. It flared up quickly in the northwest wind, and he had to stack on more brush every few minutes to keep it going. Then he walked back the way he had come, back towards the water-hole, following his horse's hoof-marks in the dust, searching everywhere for his lost water-bottle. He would have cried if he hadn't already been so exhausted, and angry with himself.

At last he walked back to the fire. The warmth seemed to have roused Minil a little, because she opened her eyes and whispered his name. He crouched down beside her, and took her hand between his.

‘
Koppi unga
,' she said, so quietly that he could scarcely hear her. He knew what the words meant. Yanluga had said the same thing to him when he was dying. ‘Bring me water.'

He licked his lips. ‘There is no water. Not unless you can ride.'

He tried to lift her up into a sitting position, but she fell back on the blanket, her arms tangled uselessly.

‘Minil,' he insisted, ‘there is no water. We're going to have to ride and find it.'

He thought: I can lift her up, and tie her on to her horse. But will she survive another two or three hours, jolting on the back of an animal that itself is already on the verge of collapse? And will I be able to find the water-hole again in the dark? He felt that he had as good as killed her already, with his carelessness.

‘Water,' she begged him.

‘Minil, there isn't any. I found some, I filled the bottle, but I dropped it, somewhere in the scrub.'

She stared at him. ‘Where is the water?' she whispered. ‘How far?'

‘Two, three hours. A little more.'

She said nothing for a very long time. Eyre watched her, while the brushwood fire died down behind him.

‘Take me there,' she said, at last.

Eyre lifted her up, and half-dragged, half-carried her over to her horse. On the third attempt, he managed to lift her up on to its back, and she leaned forward, clinging on to the horse's neck, while Eyre tied a blanket around her, in the style of a
buka
.

There was no question of letting her ride by herself; she was too weak, and a fall from the horse's back would probably kill her outright. So Eyre walked beside her, leading his own horse and their one spare pack-horse by the reins.

The wind was stronger now, and as they left their makeshift camp, the brushwood fire was blown away across the scrub in fiery tumbling circles. Eyre pulled his hat down further over his eyes, and leaned forward against the wind and the cold and the stinging dust.

They walked for nearly five hours. The wind was at gale-force now, and it shrieked and howled across the plain of Bunda Bunda like Koobooboodgery. One blessing, thought Eyre: the wind and the sand will cover our tracks, and make it more difficult for Yonguldye to find us. But what will there be for him to find? Bones, and dead horses; nothing worth plundering, nothing worth punishing.

By the time the next day dawned, he knew that he had missed the water-hole; possibly by yards, possibly by miles. He stood on that endless expanse of scrubby plain and looked around him in the light of the early-morning sun, and nothing seemed familiar. He didn't even know where to begin looking for it.

He gently lifted Minil down from her horse, and laid her on the ground on her blanket.

‘Are we near the water?' she asked him, in a peculiarly clear voice. But she looked much worse than she had
yesterday: her eyes were dull and her thin arms were drawn across her chest as if even the act of lying down were painful.

‘Not far now,' Eyre lied.

‘You said two hours. Surely we have gone further.'

‘I've, er… I've, er, lost my way … just once or twice … that's why. But, it won't be long now.'

He looked towards the sun. It was blazing brightly now, rising over the plain with bare-faced ferocity; causing every living creature at which it stared to scuttle for shadow, and protection. Eyre remembered that it was Christmas Day; and he knew that he would never survive it. Neither would Minil. She was already half-delirious, and her eyes kept closing in pain and fatigue.

‘We have to go on,' said Eyre.

Minil shook her head. ‘No more strength, Mr Walker.' She could still tease him, even now. ‘We must go on.

We can't just lie down here and die.'

‘You go on. Let me stay here.'

‘Minil, I need you. You must try.' But his voice sounded broken and weak and unconvincing, like an old man trying to persuade his sick dog not to give in. Minil would die first, probably within a matter of hours, when the sun grew really hot, of dehydration and heat exhaustion; and then Eyre would die shortly after. This patch of mallee scrub would be his last resting-place; and he didn't even know where it was. He looked around but there were no vultures; not yet; although he thought he could see some wild dogs in the distance. He just prayed that they wouldn't start to tear him apart until he was really dead.

Minil opened her eyes again, and lifted one hand to touch her lips. ‘Water,' she said. Eyre didn't know what to say to her. ‘Water,' she repeated. ‘Water.' A soft and plaintive chant to her own extinction. ‘Water.'

He sat up straight. He had remembered something that Captain Sturt had told him, about the way in which men had survived when they were stranded without water in the deserts of Western Australia. He pressed his hand over
his dry lips for a while, thinking; but then he made up his mind. If it would keep Minil alive for long enough for them to find the next water-hole, then there could be no vulgarity about it, and no indignity.

He stood up, unbuttoned his shirt, and loosened his belt, stepping out of his britches. His body was bony and dry-skinned and still pale, although his hands were as brown as gloves. He dropped his clothes to one side; and then slowly and carefully sat himself astride Minil's face, taking care not to kneel on her.

She opened her eyes again and looked at him. ‘
Urrabirra
,' he said, throatily. It meant ‘drink'.

She reached up weakly and touched his bare stomach. She understood. Then she took him in her hand, and guided him between her lips. She closed her eyes momentarily to show him that she was ready.

There was very little; a sudden gush; but then in spite of everything he had drunk yesterday he had been very dehydrated. She drank thirstily, however, and even when he had finished she held him in her mouth, sucking from him the last possible drop. He eased himself up at last; and left her to rest, covering her over with a blanket; but he felt that in an hour or two she might have sufficient strength to ride for just a few miles more.

Those few miles more might lead nowhere. They might lead to another place just like this. Heat, and scrub, and flies, and imaginary oases. But on the other hand they might take them to the next water-hole, and save their lives. There was always hope. After all, there was nothing else.

He waited for her under the sun. At last, after an hour, he woke her and lifted her back on to her horse. Then they went on, south-westwards, into the hottest Christmas Day that Eyre had ever experienced.

They saw the Aborigines from well over two miles away; thin black figures standing ankle-deep in a reflecting lake. They could have turned due south, and tried to escape, but Eyre knew that it was no use. So he kept on walking, straight towards them, and the Aborigines stood and waited for him with their spears and their clubs, a black etched pattern of naked figures against the hot horizon, as if somebody had been shaking a nibful of India-ink on to a sheet of glass.

They reached the Aborigines, and Eyre drew the horses in close and stood with his head bowed, waiting for them to approach him. He had no idea how they had overtaken him. Perhaps they had been running through the night. But he had no more strength to elude them; no more will to fight them. He could scarcely stand, and his horse was trembling and foaming dry foam at the mouth, and almost ready to collapse.

One of the Aborigines came forward, a dignified old man with a big pot-belly and a grey curly beard. He laid his hand on Eyre's shoulder, and said something in a dialect which Eyre didn't understand at all.

Eyre said, ‘Where is Yonguldye? Let me speak to Yonguldye.'

The old man frowned, and shook his head.

‘You are not Yonguldye's people?' Eyre asked him.

Again, the old man shook his head. He turned back to the blackfellows standing behind him, and said something long and excitable and emphatic. One or two of them answered him, and one began to point towards the northeast, and say over and over again, ‘Yarrakinna, Yarrakinna.'

Eyre tried to step back to tell Minil that they had met up with a tribe that seemed to know nothing of Yonguldye, or what had happened at the great corroboree; but as he
turned he felt the ground rising beneath him like the rising crust of a loaf; and suddenly he was deaf and stunned and lying on his side in the dust, although he was not at all aware that he had fallen, and there was no pain, no bruising; only the strange hot silence and the bare feet of blackfellows all around him.

‘We have been travelling for many days without water,' he thought he said, although he couldn't hear his own voice. Then there was nothing at all: no sound, no sight, no feeling. His world dwindled away to a single speck of light, and then was swallowed up.

He was woken by the sound of tapping; the rhythmic tapping of musical sticks. He opened his eyes and saw that it was sunset, and that the sky was streaked with dark curls of cirrus. He was lying on a kangaroo-skin blanket; and not far away a fire was burning.

Stiffly, he raised himself up on to one elbow, and looked around. He was lying in the middle of an encampment of about twenty or thirty Aborigine men and women and children. The men were sitting in a group, tapping with their sticks, and humming. The women and children were squatting around the fire cooking sand-lizards. Two kangaroos were being roasted in pits filled with hot ashes: Eyre could see their leg-bones sticking up out of the ground. An elderly man was obviously in charge of this part of the cooking, for he sat scowling between the two ash-pits, and every now and then he would shout at the children who came hungrily sniffing around, and flick at them with a long whippy stick.

After a while, one of the younger men noticed that Eyre was awake, and came over to kneel down beside him.

Eyre said, ‘Minil, the girl. Is she all right?'

The young man grinned, revealing several missing teeth, and pointed towards the far side of the fire. There, covered up by blankets, Minil was sleeping; watched over by an old woman.

‘Thank God,' said Eyre.

‘Thank God,' the Aborigine repeated.

Eyre pointed to his lips. ‘Do you have any water?'

The young man grinned again, and produced a shaped wooden bowl, filled with muddy-looking water. Eyre took it, and finished it in three large swallows. It wasn't enough to quench his thirst, but it seemed impolite to ask for any more, particularly since the families may not have had very much to last themselves the night. Muddy water meant there had been hours of painstaking digging at water-holes. That much he knew from experience.