But then Minil thrust her hips at him again, and roused him up, and the wetness that ran down his buttocks made him feel that he had excited and satisfied her fully; and that gave him a pride that fuelled up his passion again. He suddenly groaned, and ejaculated right up inside her, right up against the neck of her womb; and it was then that she fell forward on him, and hugged him, and wiggled and wriggled her hips against him, and kissed him, and rolled her face against his, so that he could feel the tears, and the decorative scars on her cheeks, and her sharp teeth biting at his lips.
It occurred to him as they lay together afterwards, and Minil slept, that he may already have made her pregnant. She looked disturbingly young lying there against his arm, her mouth slightly parted as she breathed. She also looked remarkably black. But he didn’t mind her blackness at all. It was rather like an exotic varnish on a body that was already beautiful.
Dawn cleared the skies again, and for an hour the air was remarkably limpid, so that they could see for miles. Ahead of them, the salt-lake looked flat and firm; although they already knew how deceptive it was. Behind them, they could see for the first time the encampment of the Aborigines who were following them: a strung-out row of improvised shelters and smouldering fires. Dogger spent a long time scrutinising the Aborigine camp through his telescope while Eyre tried to shave with nothing but soap moistened with spit. It was a slow and painful process; but Eyre was determined to be civilised, and not to grow a beard. Every now and then Dogger said, ‘Mmm,’ and Eyre said, ‘Ouch.’
After a while, Dogger said, ‘Have a gander at this,’ and passed the telescope to Eyre. ‘Look to your left,’ he said, ‘the big umpee second from the end.’
Towelling himself with one hand and holding the telescope with the other, Eyre inspected the Aborigine encampment. There were more than a dozen shelters altogether, and another score of blackfellows had probably slept out in the open, wrapped in their bukas. When he swung the telescope towards the left-hand side of the encampment, however, Eyre saw a larger shelter, and this shelter was decorated with feathers and skulls.
‘That looks like a medicine-man’s hut,’ Eyre remarked, He turned to Dogger, and said, ‘Joolonga?’
Dogger shook his head. ‘Wouldn’t have thought so.’
‘But I shot Yonguldye.’
‘Perhaps you didn’t. You know how the balls tend to drop out of these old Baker rifles, especially when you shake them around. More than likely you did nothing worse than burn his bum with a charge of powder.’
‘Then they’re really after us,’ said Eyre. ‘Yonguldye too.’
‘I would have thought so, yes,’ sniffed Dogger.
‘And they’ll still be determined to sacrifice us,’ said Eyre.
‘Well, they’ll still be determined to sacrifice you,’ agreed Dogger.
‘Thanks very much,’ Eyre snapped.
‘Don’t mention it,’ said Dogger, cheerfully.
Eyre finished wiping his chin, and put on his hat. Dogger said, ‘You’ve humiliated Yonguldye, that’s the worst thing. Humiliation is worse than death; at least as far as a clever-man is concerned. You can bet your hat that he’s wearing the Kurdaitja boots; and you can bet your hat that he’ll follow you now to the ends of Australia, wherever they may be.’
Eyre returned the telescope. ‘It’s time we left then, before they break camp.’
Minil came up. This morning she was wearing Eyre’s shirt tied around her shoulders, and her scarf arranged in peaks, like the wimple of a Brigittine nun. She came close to Eyre, but didn’t touch him; but all three of them knew now that the triangle between them had changed during the night; and that Dogger was now the outsider. She said, ‘Will we have time for breakfast?’ But Eyre shook his head. ‘We’ll eat a few biscuits while we ride. I want as much distance between us and those blackfellows as we can possibly manage.’
‘I heard you say Yonguldye,’ said Minil, simply.
‘Dogger thinks he may still be alive,’ Eyre explained. ‘One of the shelters has skulls on it; or what look like skulls.’
‘Yes,’ said Minil.
‘Yes, what?’
‘Yes—I too think that Yonguldye is alive. I feel it. He has a very strong—’ she waved her hand around her head to try to describe mental power. ‘When he calls me, even when he is far away, I am sure that I can feel it.’
‘You feel that now?’ Eyre asked her.
She stared at him. Her eyes were reddish-hazel and very wide. ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yonguldye is still alive.’
All that day they rode westwards, skirting the edge of the salt swamp. The sun rose hot and white over their heads, and their shadows shrank beneath their horses as the thermometer rose to 112 degrees. Eyre wore his smoked-glass spectacles; but during the fiercest hours, just after noon, he felt as if the world were nothing but glaring white; white on white; and when he turned around to make sure that Dogger and Minil were following him, he thought that they looked like ghosts, bleached-out apparitions on a bleached-out landscape.
He drank as little as he possibly could; for their flasks were low now and there was no sign of a water-hole. But three mouthfuls during the course of the day was far too little to prevent his mouth from drying up, and his skin from cracking. At times he felt so hot and exhausted that he could have dropped off his horse and laid down on the salt and let the sun slowly bake him into a gingerbread man, stiff and smiling. A happy, mindless end. And there were plenty of times when he felt like giving it all up, and turning south.
They ventured again and again into the salt swamp; at least once every two miles. But each time their horses broke the crust of the lake, and began to sink. Then they spent valuable time coaxing the horses out of the mud, and calming them down, before they set off westwards once more, searching with increasing desperation for a northern passage.
At three o’ clock in the afternoon, Dogger passed the telescope to Eyre without comment. Eyre focused sharply, about a mile-and-a-half away; and there was Yonguldye, in his tall head-dress; and beside him was that familiar midshipman’s bonnet that belonged to Joolonga.
‘We may have to stop and fight,’ said Dogger.
‘They will kill us,’ said Minil, with frightening certainty.
Eyre focused the telescope again. Behind Yonguldye there was a large band of Aborigine warriors; fifty or sixty, judging from the spear-points which rose from the dust.
‘We don’t have a chance,’ he told Dogger. ‘Not out here, in the open. We’re going to have to think of a way to balance the odds.’
‘We’ve got rifles,’ said Dogger.
‘Not enough,’ Eyre asserted. ‘All they have to do is run into spear-range while we’re reloading, and that will be the finish of us.’
‘Well, don’t ask me,’ said Dogger.
They rode westwards for three or four more miles, but now it was clear that the Aborigines were catching up with them. Eyre observed the Aborigines through Dogger’s telescope every five minutes or so; and they were running at a steady, even, lope. They must have scented that Eyre and Dogger and Minil were very close now; some of their sharpest-eyed warriors may actually have seen them, even through the dust and the distorted waves of heat.
Eyre drew his rifle out of its saddle-holster and made sure that it was loaded; this time checking that the ball was still in place. Dogger did the same; and also unsheathed a large cane-cutting knife with a curved blade, which he tucked into his belt.
‘What’s that for?’ asked Eyre.
‘Topping and tailing,’ said Dogger, without smiling.
Eyre looked all around for any kind of cover; any slight hillock or outcropping of rock where they could dismount and make a stand against Yonguldye. But the salt-lake’s surface remained relentlessly flat and featureless, swirled with pink and grey; and he began to realise that if they were going to fight, it would have to be man-to-man, and face-to-face, and that they would unquestionably die. He muttered a prayer under his breath, and then part of the 59t
h Psalm: ‘Deliver me from my enemies, O my God; set me securely away from those who rise up against me. Deliver me from those who do iniquity; and save me from men of bloodshed.’
Yet still, throughout the grilling afternoon, through the whiteness and the heat and the saline dust, Yonguldye and Joolonga followed him, guided by their native instincts and by the bloody Kurdaitja shoes, emu feathers stuck together with human blood, perhaps Yonguldye’s own blood, or the blood of a tribesman who had been especially slain for the purpose.
At last, as the sun began to glower down through the crimson dust of the day, Eyre and Dogger were able to see their pursuers without using their telescope; and the trail of dust that the Aborigines left hanging in the air behind them was like the red steer, which was what the bush settlers nicknamed a bush-fire.
‘They’re going to catch us,’ Dogger said, philosophically.
Eyre pulled up his horse, and sat in the saddle for a long time, looking behind him. At last he said, ‘Could a man walk across that swamp, without sinking?’
‘I haven’t a clue,’ said Dogger. ‘You want to try it?’
‘Yes,’ said Eyre, and dismounted. He sat down on the ground and tugged off his boots, and then he began to walk due north, feeling the crusted ground gradually giving beneath his feet. He was able to walk nearly a hundred paces before the crust broke, and thick grey mud began to squidge up between his bare toes.
He walked further; and the salt crust broke again and again, until he was up to his knees in mud. At last he was floundering, and unable to walk any further. He fought against the warm mud clinging to his legs, but the more he struggled, the more deeply embedded he became. At last, panting harshly, he managed to drag himself clear, and crawl on his hands and knees back to firmer ground.
‘You are so dirty,’ smiled Minil. ‘You look like the Mud-Man.’
‘You certainly do,’ agreed Dogger. ‘And what have you proved? Yonguldye’s only about a mile away now; they’ll be with us in ten minutes.’
Eyre said, ‘Don’t argue, just listen to me. We’ll ride on a little further, until we reach a place where the ground’s unbroken; then I’ll tell you what to do.’
They rode on for another half-mile, even though their horses were exhausted and stumbling. Then Eyre told them to draw up, and dismount, and unbuckle their saddle-panniers. Dogger frowned, and shrugged, but did as he was told. Eyre took their rifles, and their ammunition, and as many water-bottles as he could carry, and shared them out between them. Then he said, ‘We have to buckle the saddle-panniers on to our feet, like big flat shoes.’
Dogger stared at him. ‘You haven’t got sunstroke, have you, chum? You want us to buckle these things on to our feet?’
‘That’s right,’ Eyre nodded. ‘Look, just watch me,’ and he sat down and strapped one of the wide leather panniers to his right foot, buckling it tightly.
Dogger rubbed the back of his neck. ‘I’ve seen some lunatics in my time, but this just about takes the biscuit.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Eyre. ‘I got this idea from one of my father’s parish magazines. We can walk across the salt swamp without falling through.’
‘Like Christ walking on water?’
‘No, of course not. Like Eskimos walking on snow-shoes. The Eskimos wear wide flat shoes to spread their weight, so that they don’t sink down through the snow. We can do the same on top of the salt swamp.’
Hesitantly, still sniffing and grumbling, Dogger eased himself down on to the ground and strapped his panniers on to his feet. He stood up, and danced a little shuffling trot, and said with distaste, ‘I feel like a duck. What are my mates going to say if I die with a couple of satchels on my feet?’
‘They’ll say “clever, but unlucky”,’ Eyre replied. ‘Now, let’s walk out as far as we can.’ He took Minil’s bare arm, and began to guide her out on to the crust of the salt swamp.
The sun had turned bloody now, and was almost gone. They walked clumsily across the salt swamp, tiny figures in a red-and-purple panorama that stretched as wide as any of them could see. Eyre felt the ground give beneath his feet as he dragged his panniers along; but it didn’t break. Soon they were more than a half-mile out on to the crust, in an evening that had now turned to boiling plum.
The wind smelled of brine, and dry dust, and distant mountains. The last vultures of the day spun lazily over their heads, looking for any stray creatures that might have died on the salt-swamps just before nightfall.
Eyre slowed down at last, and stopped, and said, ‘Here. This should do us.’
Dogger looked around. ‘This place is as flat as any other place; and any other place is as flat as a churchwarden’s pancake.’
‘Didn’t you feel those last few hundred yards?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Didn’t you feel how soft the ground was?’
Dogger peered back. ‘Yes. I suppose it was. But what does that have to do with anything at all?’
‘Watch,’ said Eyre. ‘They’re coming.’
Already, Yonguldye and his warriors had reached the edge of the swamp, where Eyre and Dogger had tethered the horses. Now, with Yonguldye leading them, his huge head-dress bobbing and waving in the evening light, they were running due northwards, to catch up with their magical prey. They wanted the djanga for their sacrifice. They wanted Yonguldye to have Eyre’s brains, and devour them, so that at last they could stand equal to the white man, and keep him away from their sacred corroboree-sites, and their bora-grounds.
Eyre and Dogger had four rifles between them, all loaded. Eyre said, ‘I’ll fire first; then, when I’m reloading, you fire. And so on. But we may not need to kill very many!’
‘I’m glad you’re so confident,’ said Dogger.
The sight of the Aborigines running towards them in the twilight was mystical and frightening. The tribesmen’s eyes were surrounded by huge circles of white pipe-clay, and their bodies were outlined like boogie-men. This evening, too, they were completely silent, except for the clattering of their spears and the slapping of their bare feet on the salt. No fighting cries; no anger; no chants. Just fifty of them, running nearer and nearer; a dark and complicated outline of spears and head-dresses and running legs.
Eyre touched his cracked lips with the tip of his dry tongue, and lifted his rifle to his shoulder. He took aim at Yonguldye’s head, and held it as best he could. Yonguldye was taller than most of his tribesmen, and so he made an easier target; but all the same he was bobbing and weaving as he ran, and Eyre knew that he would be very difficult to hit. ‘Save me from men of bloodshed,’ he repeated to himself.
Dogger said, ‘God almighty, Eyre, they’re going to murder us.’
Eyre, at that moment, felt equally frightened. The back of his neck prickled coldly, and he found it almost impossible to maintain his aim on Yonguldye. Any second now, he thought numbly, it’s going to be the death-spear through the ribs, or into the belly; and after having seen how poor Midgegooroo had suffered, he knew what he would do next. Thrust the muzzle of his rifle into his own mouth, and pull the trigger. At least it would all be over in one catastrophic blast.
A spear whirred overhead, then another, and a third landed crisply in the salt soil not five feet away. Eyre fired; and his gunpowder flashed brightly in the gathering darkness; and he saw Yonguldye’s head-dress collapse out of sight. Then Dogger fired, so loudly that it made Eyre’s head sing, and another Aborigine went down.
Eyre took another rifle, and lifted it up; but at that moment he heard a cry from two or three of the Aboriginies; then more cries, and shouts of panic. Their running feet had broken through the crust of the salt-swamp, and they had staggered headlong into the mud. Eyre fired at a knot of them who were struggling to free themselves; hitting one of them in the shoulder, but causing shouts of terror that far outweighed the value of the shot. Four or five more spears whistled around him, but now Dogger fired again and Eyre began to reload; and the Aborigines began to turn back in confusion.
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For a few minutes, it sounded like a major battle. Six or seven tribesmen were stuck waist-deep in the mud, while at least twenty others tried to drag them out. The rest were running away; while Dogger and Eyre fired their rifles into the air, and screamed and yelled and shouted. ‘Bunyip! Bunyip! and ‘God Save The Queen!’ Even Minil joined in, dancing and shrieking and banging two ramrods together.
Quickly, fearfully, the last tribesmen slithered out of the salty mud and ran away; grey ghosts in a thickening night; until only three of them were left. Yonguldye, lying flat on his back, his mighty head-dress plastered with blood; a young warrior whose spears remained unlaunched; and Joolonga.
Eyre and Dogger and Minil shuffled back across the salt, with their saddle-panniers on their feet. Joolonga stood by their horses and watched them with arms folded.
‘Well, Joolonga?’ said Eyre, unbuckling his panniers.
‘Well, Mr Walker-sir. It seems you were wiser than I first imagined.’
Eyre nodded towards the last of the running tribesmen. ‘Will they be back?’
‘I don’t believe so, Mr Walker-sir. Not without Yonguldye the great Darkness to guide them.’
Dogger kept his distance from Joolonga, his loaded rifle over his arm. Minil crouched down and began to scoop a pit in the sand where they could light a fire.
‘You deceived me, didn’t you?’ Eyre asked Joolonga. ‘You knew that Yonguldye wanted to put me to death.’
Joolonga said nothing, but took off his midshipman’s hat, and nodded.
‘Did Captain Sturt know about this?’ asked Eyre.
Joolonga closed his eyes, and swayed a little. ‘I am wounded, Mr Walker-sir.’
Eyre handed his rifle to Minil, walked up to Joolonga, and opened the Aborigine’s decorated coat. There was blood all over his chest; like a waistcoat of scarlet silk, and with each beat of his heart, there was more. Eyre looked straight into Joolonga’s eyes. ‘You’d better lie down,’ he said, quietly.
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