Patrick White - Voss

‘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.

So the white men continued westward through what could have been their own perpetual sleep, and the fruit of the mystic bunya bunya contracted in their mouths.

Several days from there they came to a ridge, of hills even, at which a brigalow scrub whipped their flesh back to waking. Mules began to buck. The udders of those goats which had kidded were slashed and torn by twigs, and the glassy eyes of the most rational of all animals were seeing far too clearly as they advanced into chaos. On the farther side of the ridge, however, there was the suggestion of a creek, that is to say, a string of pools, filled with brown water or scum, for which the expedition made with all the speed it could muster, and but for curses, and skill in horsemanship, would have been trapped in it.

As it was, two of the more obstinate mules succeeded in becoming bogged, and were only dragged out by concerted strength at the end of their leading ropes, and blows on the rump from the torn-off branch of a tree.

One of these animals, it was seen, had staked itself. Dark blood was mingling on its fetlock with the slime of mud. It limped ostentatiously.

Voss approached the animal with that directness which comes from controlled distaste, a thin figure possessed by will, and was immediately lying on his back, his face even thinner.

Most of his party appeared as if drugged by circumstance, but Palfreyman was quick to dismount and run to their leader.

‘What is it, Mr Voss?’

‘It has got me in the stomach. The devil of a thing!’ the German did manage to convey, as he lay twisting his lips.

At this point Judd arrived at his side, and the tortured man was carried back up the slope, and laid in the shade of some scrub, over which the convict rigged a sheet of canvas as additional shelter.

As the German continued to bite his lips, and seemed incapable of uttering any but his own language, Judd took it upon himself to call a halt, and they camped there several days, treating the sick, for the fever-ridden Turner had contracted the diarrhoea, from the milk of a goat, he insisted, and there was, besides, the staked mule.

Judd had soon organized the camp. He sent the supple Jackie out along a log to scoop the scum-water with a pannikin. Dugald unearthed the roots of trees, from which he shook a quantity of crystal water. Soon all were meagrely refreshed. Only the beasts were dissatisfied with their portion of scum; they would stand and murmur, with their heads held low, nosing for celestial dew.

One evening when the pain had begun to leave him, and the skin of his face was less yellow, Voss sent for Judd and thanked him formally.

‘For your personal attention, Mr Judd, and kindness,’ said the stiff German, who was still stretched upon the ground like a breathing corpse, looking from beneath his eyelids.

‘A man does what he can,’ said Judd, and would have accepted the cat rather than the scourge of recognition.

‘But with no water,’ he blurted.

A most shameful tenderness was taking the shape out of his mouth.

He had, indeed, been forced to boil in a pot of scum the rags he had used to foment the German’s belly. Tinged by the mule’s hoof with saffron and purple, this part of his anatomy must originally have been ivory in colour, very thin, moreover, and private, so that, as he worked, the convict had been forced continually to turn his head, and turn his head, to look out into the haze, and thus avoid violating further the privacy, that almost sacrosanctity of which he was aware.

Voss, who had felt more exposed on some less physical occasions, despised all sickness; he despised physical strength; he despised, though secretly, even the compassion he had sensed in the ministrations of Judd. His own strength, he felt, could not decrease with physical debility. But, was Judd’s power increased by compassion?

He was continually observing the convict as the latter applied the miserable hot rags, and now, from beneath his eyelids, as he thanked the man for his services.