‘Round that green stove we would sit on Christmas Evening: the relatives, some acquaintances, old women living off friendship, one or two boys apprenticed by my father. We would sing the Christmas songs. There was always a tree, a Tannenbaum, smelling as such trees will when they bleed from fresh wounds. Between all this festivity, and sweet things that were passing round, and the hot wine, I would hear the streets. It was the snow, filling and filling the empty streets, until we were lost, it seemed, in Christmas.’
The German paused.
‘So,’ he said. ‘It was not altogether different. Except for the snow, selbstverständlich. There was the snow.’
‘And except that we are not lost,’ Judd felt compelled to add.
Some of them laughed, and said they were not so sure. At that moment they would not have cared.
‘What did you use to eat, sir?’ asked Harry Robarts.
‘At Christmas, a goose. But on the Christmas Evening, always a fine carp.’
‘What is a carp, sir?’
But how could the German answer, who was so far distant?
In the cool of the evening, when those who had been feasting rose from their stupor of meat and dreams, Voss asked Judd to come with him, and they took horses, and rode out in the direction in which Jackie had gone to look for the lost cattle. It was not long before they had left behind all trace of that pleasant valley where they were camped, entering a dead country, in which the horses were continually stumbling, for they would plunge their feet into burrows or hidden pot-holes, and sink up to the pasterns in the crumbly earth.
Once in the course of this hard going, the horse which Voss was riding shied at a snake. The fact that it was a live one was surprising, for all else in the landscape appeared to be dead. The horse was immediately protesting, with his breath and his forelock, and the whites of his eyes. In that sudden leap, the German’s left temple and part of his forehead were scored by the branch of a dead tree, nothing serious, indeed, he would not have thought anything more of the matter, if the blood had not begun to trickle down into his eyes.
‘You should attend to it, sir,’ said Judd, on noticing that his leader was brushing away the blood.
‘It is nothing,’ Voss replied.
And frowned. With the result that the blood was again gushing, and tumbling down into his eyes.
‘Wait,’ said Judd.
Astonishingly, Voss did. They were both reining in. They were jumping down upon the ground. The convict took a handkerchief that he had but lately washed in the river at the place where they were encamped, and with which he was now preparing to bind the German’s head.
Should I let him? wondered the latter.
But he was already submitting. He was bowing his head. He could smell the smell of the crumpled, but spotless handkerchief, which had been dried on spikes of grass, at leisure, in the sun. He could hear the convict’s breathing, very close.
‘Is that too tight, sir?’ Judd was asking.
Although expert in being of service to others, frequently on such occasions he would experience a weakness so delicious that his skilful hands would bungle.
‘That is right. As it is,’ said Voss.
To surrender itself into other hands is one of the temptations of mortal flesh, the German knew, and shivered for an instant.
‘Do you say that somebody is passing over your grave?’ he laughed.
‘There is some such saying,’ replied the convict, whose eyes were examining his work with a detached affection.
When they had remounted and were riding on, Voss wondered how much of himself he had given into her hands. For he had become aware that the mouth of the young woman was smiling. It was unusually full and compassionate. Approbation must have gone to his head, for he continued unashamedly to contemplate her pleasure, and to extract from it pleasure of his own. They were basking in the same radiance, which had begun to emanate from the hitherto lustreless earth.
‘We will find it pretty rough going from now on, I expect, sir,’ interrupted Judd, who was ploughing forward somewhat in advance.
‘I have every confidence in our company,’ said the German.
They rode on, and it could have been the gentle silence of evening that made them both grateful.
Not long after this, on the banks of a dry creek, they came upon Jackie with seven head of cattle, or what remained of the lost herd.
‘You look all over?’ exploded the infuriated Voss.
‘All over,’ said Jackie, reasoning that this was what the white man wished to hear.
‘We could fan out in the morning, the whole lot of us,’ suggested Judd, ‘and perhaps snap up a few more.’
As it was growing late, nothing else could be done for the present, but fall in behind the exasperating rumps of the recovered few, and return to camp.
In the morning the convict’s plan was adopted by all but Palfreyman, who was occupied with the ornithological specimens he had taken while in the valley. He sat at work beneath a tree, brushing the flies off his neatly folded birds with a switch of leaves. So that the German was irritated to see him.
‘Perhaps it is as well you should remain, Palfreyman,’ he did say, contemplatively, ‘to guard against possible marauders.’
But he continued to be furious with all, especially with Gyp, the big, half-Newfoundland bitch, that got beneath his horse’s feet, and then shrieked.
Except that they discovered the hacked carcasses of two steers, the search for the missing cattle proved fruitless, and after several days it was decided to strike camp and push on without them. Only Palfreyman, it now appeared, had profited by their stay in that pleasant place, for the interlude of Christmas had faded, Turner was suffering from a fever, and two of the others from insect bites. Palfreyman had to try hard to conceal his personal contentment, but did not succeed in hiding it from Voss.
‘What shall we do,’ grumbled the latter, ‘when the back of the last mule is broken under the corpses of birds?’
Palfreyman accepted this as a joke.
And they pushed on.
They were riding eternally over the humped and hateful earth, which the sun had seared until the spent and crumbly stuff was become highly treacherous. It was, indeed, the bare crust of the earth. Several of the sheep determined to lie down upon it and die. Their carcasses did not have much to offer, though the blacks would frizzle the innards and skin, and stuff these delicacies down their throats. The white men, whose appetites were deadened by dust, would swallow a few leathery strips of leg, or gnaw from habit at the wizened chops. Their own stomachs were shrivelling up. In the white light of dawn, horses and cattle would be nosing the ground for any suggestion of leaf, any blade of grass, or little pocket of rock from which to suck the dew. The ghosts of things haunted here, and in that early light the men and animals which had arrived were but adding to the ghost-life of the place.
But it is what we expected, the German assured himself.
His features had grown thinner, his eyes, of that pale, pure blue, were the clearer for this confirmation of vision by fact.
Once they came across a party of blacks, trooping gaily over the grey earth. The blacks approached, laughing, and showing their white teeth. Unlike their fellows farther back, they proceeded to hail Dugald and Jackie. An exchange of cheerful civilities was taking place; then the thin line straggled on into the vastness. The women were carrying nets and children, but the men were free.
It was afterwards learnt from Dugald that the party was on its way to eat the fruit of the bunya bunya.
‘Where?’ asked Le Mesurier, to whom those dark trees promised paradise.
‘Very far. Blackfeller walk,’ answered Dugald, growing sad. ‘Many sleeps,’ he added.