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Clutching the precious quart-pot to his breast, he staggered off into the night, very slowly because of his weakness, and very slowly also because it was hard for him to read the tracks in the dim light. Less than half an hour after Sax left the camp to search for his dying friend, a black form stole silently through the scrub and paused within sight of the bough-shelter.
But nobody was in the bough-shelter, and when the man had made quite sure of this, he stepped out from his hiding. His long hair was plastered up into a bunch at the back, and was kept in place by rings of rope made of his mother's hair.
This relieved Mick's mind greatly, and he set off at once, guided by Yarloo, to the bough-shelter where Sax and Vaughan were sitting. It was a very happy reunion. The boys were still weak, but the thirst, which would have killed them if the stranger black-fellow had not put that sprig of needle-bush in the quart-pot, was quite gone. They were very hungry.
From where he stood, he could not see into the bough-shelter, and so he waited for a couple of minutes to see if the man who had made the tracks was anywhere about. There was absolute silence; the only things which moved were the shadows, which got shorter very very slowly as the sun rose. With minute care Yarloo examined the marks of the stranger.
He seemed to have far more strength than Sax had, but when he started to stagger out from under the bough-shelter, his friend suddenly remembered a yarn which Mick had told them one night, about a perishing man who pulled off all his clothes and walked away into the scrub to die a most terrible death.
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