He had started the day whistling
and gay; by ten o'clock he was in the depths of despair and took
Marcella's attempts to chaff him as insults and injuries. As soon as
they reached a patch of stunted bushes she decreed a halt and a rest.
They filled the billy from their water-bottles and, making a fire with
the scorched scrub, had it boiling in a few moments. Louis, though he
was revived to interest by the pannikin of tea and a cigarette and
biscuits, sank back into deep depression after a few minutes, saying
that their coming into the Bush had been the act of lunatics, that they
would die of starvation and thirst--until she made him take out his map
and find out where they were.
Together they pored over it. After much wrangling they located Loose End
beside a small lake and decided that they would reach there to-morrow
with considerable effort.
"Anyway, we'll have to, because of our water," said Louis. "Otherwise
we'll die." But Marcella found that, by going a few miles west, they
would catch up the creek that drained into the little lake.
"It'll only be a dried water-course," said Louis miserably.
"No it won't. It's sure to be a foaming torrent if I say it shall.
Didn't you know I was a witch?" she told him, and she was certainly more
right than he, for that night they camped under great eucalyptus trees
beside a water-course which ran deep and still at their feet.
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