Worn as he was, Auger started again the next day with a party under Lieutenant Mortimer to search for the lagging travellers left with Dr. Walker, and was out a fortnight. Driven by want of provisions the mission returned to Perth on the 6th May, bringing with it one of the missing men. In the following morning the corporal was again afoot with a second party under Mr. Roe, the surveyor-general of the province. Big-boned, broad and unbending, though ailing, attenuated and of melancholy aspect, he marched for eleven more days, re-entering the settlement on the 21st May with Mr. Spofforth, the companion traveller of Mr. Roe. The search was successful; four of the adventurers were taken into Perth, and the starved remains of the last were buried in a sand-hill. After sleeping upwards of 400 nights in the open air and suffering hardships of extreme severity, it seems strange that Auger, footsore and tired, should not have been allowed a horse, as some of the party were, upon which to travel in these concluding services; and it is even more surprising that Captain Grey, in furnishing the details of these secondary expeditions, should have suppressed all allusion to the presence of the corporal, who deserved, for his spirit and endurance, most honourable mention. Months passed away before the two corporals regained their health, when, in February, 1840, they proceeded to South Australia. Corporal Coles joined the detachment of the corps at Port Adelaide; and corporal Auger landed at Woolwich in September, and was soon afterwards discharged by purchase.[351] Coles remained in the corps till June, 1843, when he was pensioned on 1s. a-day, in consequence of the loss of the fingers of his right hand and the forefinger of his left, occasioned by the accidental explosion of a carronade, which he was firing in honour of the birth of the Duke of Cornwall. Captain Grey was then Governor of South Australia, and he at once nominated his faithful companion and servant to a lucrative government appointment in the colony, presenting him also, at great cost, with a set of fingers fitted to his hand, which were so beautiful in their mechanism and accurate in their working, that he could pick up a button or a sixpence with pleasing facility. ----- Footnote 351: Broken down by the service Auger felt it necessary to seek repose in civil life. When sufficiently restored he was engaged to hold a responsible situation in the Pimlico wheel factory, by Octavius Smith, Esq., of Thames Bank, the father of poor Mr. Frederick Smith, who was one of the expedition. This young gentleman offered a noble example of courage, patience, and resignation, but his delicate and shattered constitution not giving him strength to keep up in the forced marches of his chief, he was left, in the painful separation on the 10th April, with the slow marchers under Dr. Walker, and perished in the bush from want and exhaustion, at the tender age of nineteen.