Lady Thomas, the mother of the chief, heard of these thoughtful attentions exercised under such trying circumstances, and on the traveller being introduced to her, she acknowledged his kindness with no little emotion, and marked her grateful appreciation of it by a suitable gift. ----- On the 19th, the exhausted travellers were in motion again, but completely crippled from the cold of the night. “Corporal Coles,” writes the Captain, “my faithful and tried companion in all my wanderings, could scarcely crawl along. The flesh was completely torn away from one of his heels; and the irritation caused by this had produced a large swelling in the groin. Nothing but his own strong fortitude, aided by the encouragement given him by myself and his comrades, could have made him move under his great agony.”[348] Twenty-one miles the party marched that day without food, and only gave up when the darkness closed in upon them. A night of appalling misery succeeded, for the teeming rain drenched them as they lay; and the following morning, wasted and weak, with rigid limbs and shivering bodies, they could only, by extraordinary efforts, push themselves along. Life was scarcely worth the effort it cost to move. Coles was in a dreadful state, staggering on like a drunken man reduced to the last extremity of human endurance. It required fortunately but a few more desperate struggles to succeed; all therefore buoyed up their spirits, for, in their deep despair, a flickering hope still remained; and on the 21st April the five exemplary adventurers under their captain, entered Perth miserable objects of emaciation and prostration.[349] Here ended their toils, discouragements, and privations; and here they were tended with the best medical skill that the settlement could command.[350] ----- Footnote 348: ‘Grey’s Travels,’ ii. p. 87. Footnote 349: Ibid., ii. p. 88-97. Footnote 350: Both received 1_s._ a-day each working pay, and for their good and enterprising conduct a gratuity of 10_l._ from the Secretary of State for the Colonies. -----