the baker was quite himself by the time the sun went down, and, though smith lighted the fire, he cooked the supper, such as it was; for what stores they had were chiefly flour, tea, and sugar, and bacon. and most of these lay beside mandeville's dead horse.

"what are we going to do?" said smith. for now, having nearly killed him, he thought it a good time to see what mandeville really thought.

"do you mean about goin' on or backin' h'out?" asked the baker.

"that's about it."

the baker twisted up his mouth and looked north.

"there's water there?"

smith nodded.

"and plenty of it?"

"plenty."

mandeville made a step or two in a northerly direction. when he came back, he shook his fist in the south-west quarter.

"and do you think i'm such a nincompoop as to go back across that blazin' desert till the rains come? not me! not by a particularly large jugful, smith."

"and what then? what about tucker?" asked smith.

mandy shrugged his shoulders.

"there's what we've 'ere, sonny; and with what we left back yonder there's enough to last us the three weeks we reckoned on."

"it's more than three weeks to the big rains," said smith.

"one thing at a time, please yer 'ighness," said the baker, who was sitting by the fire, smoking hard. "i guess there'll be 'possums by your creek. and if there ain't, we must 'unt grubs like the black-fellows does."

and as smith was quite insane about the gold, they stayed.

next day they went back and brought in the other stores.

"poor old man," said the baker to his dead horse, "you brought me 'ere, and you died thirsty. do you know, smith, i sometimes think it's a bloomin' queer world?"

"do you?" said smith, with a savage bitterness that made mandy jump. "do you? what a big discovery. have you found out that it's a bit queer for animals to suffer as we make 'em suffer? yes, you're right, it's a queer world, a particularly damnably, disagreeably queer world. and some folks who will never get to any heaven would actually object to meet the ghost of a vivisected rabbit there, except in a celestial pie."

"i don't tumble," said the puzzled baker. but smith didn't explain as he savagely humped stores under a blazing sun.

their new camp was right on the edge of smith's creek, in a small clearing, with thick and almost impenetrable scrub around them.

"and it had better be very small fires, mandy," said smith. "if there are any black-fellows about, we needn't shout to them with a big blaze."

"d'ye think there are any?" asked mandy, who had no liking for any black, negro or papuan or australian aboriginal. "for if there are, i wish we'd brought more weapons than my revolver and yours. a repeatin' rifle now, smith; that would make 'em skip."

but smith did not look for any trouble of that kind.

"we must chance it, and just be careful," said he; "and we'll put in time prospecting. it looks a good country. you might strike anything here."

and they camped down, pulling quietly at their pipes as they lay in the smoke of their fire, damped to keep the mosquitoes off.

the whole of the next week, which was one of unmitigated heat, they spent looking for gold. they tried every gully and every range. though they got very rich indications of alluvial, they never struck any out-crop of gold in quartz such as herder's specimen could come from. and smith, now peculiarly greedy, was after this and this only. he grumbled at any alluvial work with the pan as waste of time, and as the baker's special leaning was "pay dirt," they sometimes almost quarrelled. but since they loved each other dearly, their rows never amounted to much.

yet, all the time, in the minds of both was a sense of futility whether they succeeded or did not succeed. the baker let his mind out one night, and drew out smith's.

"say, smith, old man, what are we a-workin' for? if i get a streak wot went a pound to the pan, or five for the matter of that, what use'd it be? and if you do strike herder's find, it won't buy tucker, nor take us 'ome to our blooming pals."

"that's so," said smith.

"then why work?"

"why not?"

"let's get out instead, old man,"

"across the way we came?"

though they were talking by a regular black-fellow's fire of two sticks and a red coal, smith knew what kind of face the baker's was, all screwed up in knots and lines indicative of the keenest apprehension.

"acrost 'ell," said the baker. "no; what i mean is, let's run the bloomin' creek down till we get's to a river; and then we can scoot down the river. what river is it likely to be?"

smith grunted, for his geography was little better than that of most miners and tramps, and it was a ten to one chance that he could have drawn a rough outline of australia, or have even placed albany, perth, or freemantle, on a westralian map.

"well, you dunno," said the baker, "and i dunno, but it's likely there'll be something or other down it. and after my last little try, i ain't goin' to quit no water again. 'ungry i've bin both at 'ome and 'ere, but thirsty for a thing like water, that i never was. i'd rather croak with the flaps of my stummick glued together, and eating each other, than go two days without water. any common death's heasy to 'alf-dyin' of thirst."

smith grunted again.

"that's what i says," said the baker. "i know'd you agree. and now, do you reelly think as we can foot it back two 'undred mile to new find with that lot of water, our two bags full?"

"no, i don't," said smith; "when the horses went that chance went. how much tucker is left?"

"ten days, i should think," replied the baker.

"then we'll go down the creek to-morrow if you like," said smith. "but it's all risky, and we may get done starved or speared."

"i'll go," said the baker, and they went to sleep.

in the morning they divided up the stores, and stowed them as well as they could in their blankets. they were in the "wallaby" track by six o'clock.

"travellers looking for a job," said the baker. "can we see the boss, and if not, can we put our horses in the paddock and grub at the men's 'ut? what's your trade, smith, when you tike to the bush and go for a job?"

"cattle," answered smith gloomily, for now he was getting downcast. it hurt him bitterly not to find herder's reef, for he had got it into his mind that this journey was his luck, and whatever misfortunes overtook him, yet there would be gold in it after all. and gold meant england, and england meant what it can mean to a man who has lived there long and has then gone into the desert.

"'ah, what wouldn't i give to touch a lady's hand again?'" he sometimes quoted, but not aloud, for the baker had an unconscious way of jumping on his better side when it came up. the only time he had quoted it in the baker's hearing, mandeville told a story of a "lidy in the mile end road," which was nothing but a vile variant of an ancient joe miller translated into the language of the east end, and brought up to date.

the general trend of smith's creek, for so mandeville named it with great ceremony and the emptying of some tea leaves upon its waters, lay generally north and south. it flowed south, and that made smith a little uneasy. in spite of his geographical weakness, he had some idea that such a creek should run into a river, and he could think of no river on the coast, now some four hundred miles away, into which it could flow.

on the second day of their tramp south by the slow waters, a notion came to him which he kept to himself for some hours. but when they camped at noon to boil the billy he spoke.

"which way are we heading now, mandy?"

"i never give it a thort," answered mandy.

"look at the sun."

the baker looked at the noon-day light, and drawing a few lines on the sand, looked up and shook his head.

"why, smith, we're going south-east, and more east nor that."

"yes, we're going inland," said smith. "and i don't believe this is a creek at all."

"what do you mean?" asked the baker, whose colonial knowledge was very small compared with smith's.

but his chum didn't answer; he rose and stood by the creek bank.

"do you think there's as much water in it as there was?" he asked, and the baker rose.

"it may be my bloomin' fancy, but i don't think as there is," he allowed.

"then this," said smith, "is a billabong, and we've been fooled."

the baker, who had not the faintest notion of what a billabong was, or how it differed in its nature from the common creek, looked extremely puzzled.

"what the blue blazes is a billy bong?" he asked. "water that runs is a creek. at least that's my h'idea. what is a billy bong, or what d'ye call it?"

smith went back to his tea, and was followed by the baker.

"a billabong," he said a little didactically, "is a thing i never heard of in any other country but this hot jewel of the beautiful british empire. it doesn't run into a river at all. what do you think we shall find at the end of this?"

the baker shook his head.

"a bit of a swamp maybe, or else it will just go on and on till the bed dries out," said smith. "for a billabong runs out of a river, not into it."

"it's agin the nature of things," said the baker, who began to think smith was mad.

"not australian things, my son," said smith. "in some of the rivers here there are natural outlets on to the plains. when the river rises a certain height the water pours down a billabong. i know one out of the lachlan, in new south wales, which is full three hundred miles long, and ends in a swamp. there must be a big river to the north of us, and the rain we had at new find must have been very heavy up at its head waters, wherever they are."

the baker, after a few explanations, got hold of the main facts, which are just as smith stated them, but he criticised the premises.

"'ow can you be sure this is a billabong?" he asked.

smith shrugged his shoulders.

"there's only one way to be certain, and that's to follow it down to the end. but i think a very little more might settle it."

"then i reckon as we've come so far we'd better be sure," said the baker, "though it will be an offul sickener to 'ave to do back tracks."

so that day, and part of the next, they still went south. by noon they found the water dwindling rapidly, as the timber got smaller and scantier, and there was little more beyond it than a boundless dry desert of scrub.

"it must vanish in this wilderness," said smith; "it will be sucked up in another twenty miles, for dead sure. i think it's right about, baker."

and turning, they faced the three days' journey back to the first camp, upon the billabong's banks.

they were very silent, and ate sparingly.