Augusta woke up just as the dawn was stealing across the sodden sky. It
was the smarting of her shoulders that woke her. She rose, leaving Dick
yet asleep, and, remembering the turmoil of the night, hurried to the
other hut. It was empty.
She turned and looked about her. About fifteen paces from where she was
lay the shell that the two drunkards had used as a cup. Going forward,
she picked it up. It still smelt disgustingly of spirits. Evidently the
two men had dropped it in the course of their midnight walk, or rather
roll. Where had they gone to?
Straight in front of her a rocky promontory ran out fifty paces or more
into the waters of the fjord-like bay. She walked along it aimlessly
till presently she perceived one of the sailor’s hats lying on the
ground, or, rather, floating in a pool of water. Clearly they had gone
this way. On she went to the point of the little headland, sheer over
the water. There was nothing to be seen, not a single vestige of Bill
and Johnnie. Aimlessly enough she leant forward and stared over the
rocky wall, and down into the clear water, and then started back with a
little cry.
No wonder that she started, for there on the sand, beneath a fathom and
a half of quiet water, lay the bodies of the two ill-fated men. They
were locked in each other’s arms, and lay as though they were asleep
upon that ocean bed. How they came to their end she never knew. Perhaps
they quarrelled in their drunken anger and fell over the little cliff;
or perhaps they stumbled and fell not knowing whither they were going.
Who can say? At any rate, there they were, and there they remained,
till the outgoing tide floated them off to join the great army of their
companions who had gone down with the Kangaroo. And so Augusta was left
alone.
With a heavy heart she returned to the hut, pressed down by the weight
of solitude, and the sense that in the midst of so much death she could
not hope to escape. There was no human creature left alive in that vast
lonely land, except the child and herself, and so far as she could see
their fate would soon be as the fate of the others. When she got back
to the hut, Dick was awake and was crying for her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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