Corroboree (34 page)

Arthur said, ‘Gives me the creeps, hearing them blackfellows sing.'

Dogger sniffed. ‘It's not their singing I object to. It's when they start screaming for blood. I saw an old mate of mine killed in front of my eyes once, because he struck a lucifer match on some sacred rock, without even knowing what it was. The chief came up and my old mate said, “how d'ye do,” and the next thing I knew it was wallop right over the head with a war club. And the scream that went up, from all the rest of the blackfellows there. I ran a straight mile and I didn't stop. That was in Whyalla not more than five years ago. You wouldn't believe it, would you? Just for striking a match.'

They drank tea for a while and listened to Weeip singing more chants. Eventually, Arthur threw away his slops into the darkness, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

‘I suppose we
are
going to come out of this alive?' he said, in a noticeably off-key voice.

Eyre looked at him in surprise. Even Christopher lifted his head from the book he had been reading.

‘What makes you think that we won't?' asked Christopher. ‘I mean, why shouldn't we? It's all gone rather well up until now.'

‘I dunno,' said Arthur. Then, ‘I had a nightmare, last night that's all.'

‘Describe it,' Eyre encouraged him.

‘Well, there's not much to describe, really. I just dreamed I was drowning, but I wasn't drowning at all, because it was too dry. It was like being in that what-do-you-call-it, quicksand. And all the time I could feel that
something was pressing on me chest, so that I couldn't scarcely breathe.'

‘I expect Midgegooroo came and sat on you in the night, thinking you were a sofa,' Christopher teased him.

‘Well, you can laugh,' said Arthur. ‘But I woke up in a muck sweat, and I was shaking like a horse with the blind staggers. Almost as bad as when I was in solitary.'

‘You went through a terrible time in prison,' Eyre remarked. ‘It isn't surprising that you have dreams about it. I'm surprised you stood up to it so well. Many men would have gone mad.'

‘And did, Mr Walker. And did.'

A little after midnight, they rolled themselves up in their blankets around the fire, and tried to sleep. But although he was exhausted from the day's travelling, Eyre found it impossible to close his eyes. A dusty northerly wind had got up, uncomfortably warm; and it whistled in the spinifex grass. Fed by the wind, the fire glowed brighter, and its flames made breathy, feathery noises. Sparks flew across the scrubland, and were swallowed in the darkness. Eyre drew his blanket more tightly around him, and stared up at the stars.

He thought of Charlotte, and as if the ancient plains all around him were resonant with spiritual forces, he found that he could picture her with startling clarity, with those pretty blonde curls of hers blowing in another wind far away, and her eyes wide with affection. He could almost hear her speaking, and at times he was unsure if he could make out the words, ‘Eyre … Eyre…' or if it was nothing more than the funnelling voice of the fire.

He wondered if he would ever see her again—if he would ever
live
to see her again. Would it really make any difference if he returned to Adelaide as a celebrated explorer? Would Lathrop Lindsay really take him by the hand and forgive him for everything—the secret courtship, the battered greyhound, and the apple trifle? Would she still love him, or would she have found herself another
smart young suitor, a visiting baron from England or a wealthy stock-farmer from New South Wales?

Lying in the night, he felt painfully lonely for her; and he thought of the times they had walked out together, hand-in-hand, laughing, while Yanluga had sat on the carriage and whistled and waited for them. He thought of her body, too, of her full bare white breasts, and her slender waist, and of her vulva opening up for him like a sticky flower.

Supposing Lathrop forbade him to see her ever again, no matter what he had done? Supposing he died in the ‘Ghastly Blank', like one of those boatloads of ‘skellingtons' that the red-haired matelot had described to him. Supposing he were buried somewhere out in this wilderness in an unmarked grave, and Charlotte never even came to find out where he had died?

He slept for a few minutes, and then woke up again. He began to feel that the clock had deceived him; that an unseen corps of time- and scenery-shifters had been hustling around him while he slept; and that when he woke up the following morning he would find himself somewhere completely different.

From quite close by, Joolonga suddenly whispered, ‘Are you all right, Mr Walker-sir?'

‘Yes, thank you,' Eyre told him, quietly. ‘I was just thinking, that's all.'

‘This is not a place to think, Mr Walker-sir,' said Joolonga. ‘There are too many ghosts and memories of ghosts, all waiting to rush inside your head. Remember what I told you; this place is a
kybybolite
.'

This time, Eyre didn't answer; but lay where he was; listening to the wind and the furtive noises of the night.

In the morning, Arthur was hideously and spectacularly sick. He had only just climbed out of his bedroll, and stretched himself, when he jacknifed forward and clutched at his stomach.

Eyre said, ‘Arthur? Are you all right?
Arthur!
'

Arthur did nothing but shake his head; and then suddenly brought up a splattering stream of dark brown bile and half-digested food. He retched again and again, and the fourth or fifth time he retched he brought up blood. He collapsed on to his knees, his face white and shiny with sweat.

Christopher exclaimed, ‘For God's sake! What's the matter, Arthur? Arthur, are you all right?'

Midgegooroo hurried over to Arthur, and tried to lift him up, But Arthur was too bulky for him, and pitched sideways on to the dust and lay there shuddering and groaning.

Eyre knelt down beside Arthur and unbuttoned his shirt. ‘Christopher!' he called. ‘Fetch me a damp cloth, will you? Now then, Arthur, what's come over you? Do you think it's something you've been eating?'

‘Perhaps it was the cockles,' suggested Christopher. ‘There
are
people who come over all peculiar when they eat shellfish. My uncle Randolph only had to
look
at a whelk.'

‘Arthur, do you think it was the cockles?' asked Eyre. But Arthur simply stared at him through pale misted eyes, and trembled, and said nothing.

‘Well, whatever it is, he seems to have it rather badly,' said Christopher.

‘Weeip, get me my medicine-chest,' said Eyre. ‘Midgegooroo, bring me some water.'

Weeip ran over to the makeshift shelter in which they had stacked their packs, and began to search for the
medicine-chest. Meanwhile Midgegooroo came over with a leather bottle of water.

Joolonga knelt down in the dust beside Eyre, and examined Arthur closely. He peeled back Arthur's eyelid with his black fingers, and looked at the jerking, twitching eyeball as dispassionately as if he were inspecting a freshly opened oyster.

‘Do you think we ought to give him any water, Mr Walker-sir?' he asked blandly.

‘What do you mean?' Eyre asked him. ‘He's feverish; he's been vomiting. He's going to need water, especially in this heat. And especially if he's eaten something that's poisoned.'

‘Hm,' said Joolonga.

‘What do you mean, “hm”?' Eyre demanded. ‘Dο you know something about this that I don't?'

‘I know simply that fresh water is scarce, and that the next water-hole is many miles from here, especially if we go to Woocalla.'

‘So?'

‘So, it is wiser not to waste it on a man who will soon be dead.'

Eyre said fiercely, ‘He has an upset stomach. It can't be unusual, especially when you're living off any bird or fish or animal you happen to come across. Would
you
like to be deprived of water, just because you had an upset stomach?'

‘This man will die,' said Joolonga, baldly.

‘You're a doctor, I suppose, as well as a constable?'

‘I know the bush, Mr Walker-sir. I have seen hundreds of men die here. This man has the mark of death on him, and that is all I can say to you.'

Eyre beckoned sharply to Midgegooroo, who had been standing watching them in perplexity. Midgegooroo gave him the water-bottle, and Eyre opened it and touched it to Arthur's greyish lips. A trickle of water slid across his mouth and dribbled into the white stubble of his beard.

‘He has the mark of death, Mr Walker-sir,' Joolonga repeated.

‘All right, then, he has the mark of death,' Eyre retorted. ‘But what's wrong with him? Why is he sick? All the rest of us are quite healthy. And if it had been the cockles, why wasn't he sick yesterday?'

‘Perhaps the ghost-men pointed the bone at him, Mr Walker-sir,' suggested Joolonga.

‘Pointed the bone at him? What kind of nonsense is that?'

Joolonga stood up. He was wearing his gilt-buttoned overcoat this morning, but no britches, and he had strapped his penis and testicles up against his belly in an elaborate cat's-cradle of bast fibre. He looked down at Eyre with that wise-animal expression of his, and said, ‘To point the bone brings death. Yonguldye's bone is more magical than that of any other Mabarn Man. If that is what has happened to your friend here, then he cannot avoid death. He will die before the sun sets again today.'

Eyre said cuttingly, ‘I respect your religion, Joolonga, but I have no respect whatsoever for malicious mumbojumbo. I want you to load up the horses, but leave one horse completely free of baggage. That horse you will cover with blankets; and on those blankets we will tie Mr Mortlock, in the most comfortable position we can.'

Arthur shuddered again, and moaned. ‘No, sir,' he whispered. ‘I'm not a bolter. Not me, sir.'

‘Arthur,' Eyre coaxed him. ‘Arthur, can you hear me? It's Eyre Walker, Arthur.'

Joolonga said, ‘He will die, sir. That is a certainty.'

‘Joolonga!' Eyre barked. ‘Do as you're bloody well told!'

There was a taut, elliptical moment. Weeip raised his head from the fire, where he was boiling up oats and leftover mallee fowl into a kind of thin meat gruel. Midgegooroo glanced uneasily at Joolonga, and then lowered his eyes. Dogger and Christopher stayed well back; Dogger because he was a stowaway of sorts, Christopher because he had no stomach for angry confrontations. The sun had
risen now, and in that moment they stood in oddly theatrical poses, seven dusty men in a vast and dusty landscape.

Joolonga said something in dialect to Midgegooroo, and then strode off towards the line of pack-horses; angry and obviously affronted. Midgegooroo knelt down beside Eyre and touched his shoulder. His broad face was wrinkled with worry and disapproval, and he made a three-fingered sign across his chest.

‘Weeip,' said Eyre. ‘What is Midgegooroo saying?'

Weeip shook his head. ‘They did not teach me fingertalk at the mission Mr Wakasah.'

Midgegooroo touched Eyre's arm again, respectfully but urgently, and made a jabbing gesture. Then he sketched a triangular shape in the air, on top of his head.

‘Joolonga?' asked Eyre, recognising the triangular shape of the cock-eyed midshipman's hat. Midgegooroo grinned, and nodded, and repeated the jabbing gesture.

‘Joolonga points?' Eyre frowned at him.

Midgegooroo nodded again, more frantically this time; and then reached down into the dust and picked up the wing-bone of one of the mallee fowl they had eaten last night. Again, he jabbed, this time at Arthur.

‘Joolonga pointed the bone at Mr Mortlock?' Eyre queried.

Midgegooroo raised his hand in the one sign that Eyre recognised; the sign for ‘yes'. But then he looked around to make sure that Joolonga was still occupied with the pack-horses, and that he hadn't seen anything of the strange one-sided conversation that had taken place between them. Weeip said nothing; but went back to stirring his mallee fowl gruel.

Arthur trembled again, and snorted. ‘Not a bolter, sir,' he repeated. ‘Not past Doom Rock, sir. Not worth it, sir, what? And end up an uncooked banquet for Skillings here, sir. Ha ha. Not worth it, sir.'

He seemed to contract every muscle in his body for a moment, and then he abruptly squirted green and foul-
smelling diarrhoea into his britches and then squeezed again, and squirted some more.

‘Good Heavens above,' said Christopher, ostentatiously hiding his eyes behind his hands.

‘Get some water down him, for pity's sake,' put in Dogger. Otherwise the poor sod's going to dry up like a quandong; and that'll be the end of him. And give him something to bind his bowels.'

Eyre opened his medicine-chest; the same medicine-chest that had been prepared for him by the chemist at Bakewell, including everything imaginable for the treatment of sickness while abroad. There had been a bottle of tincture of Kino, which was the most effective treatment for diarrhoea that Eyre knew; but he had taken all of it himself during his first few months in Adelaide. He still had a full bottle of Dalby's Carminative, however; and he quickly poured out a spoonful of it and held it over Arthur's half-open mouth.

‘Pinch his nose,' he ordered Midgegooroo; and when Midgegooroo did so and Arthur opened his mouth to breathe, Eyre poured the syrup straight down his throat. Arthur choked, and retched, and for a moment Eyre thought he was going to vomit again; but then he shuddered, and lay back on the ground, and appeared to fall into a deep and fretful sleep.

Christopher came closer now. ‘Well, then,' he said, ‘what are we going to do now?'

‘Do you have any suggestions?' asked Eyre.

‘Well, we could turn back, and take poor old Arthur with us, and hand him over to the authorities.'

‘What about the expedition?'

‘Oh, come on.
Eyre;
you know what I think about the expedition. Doomed from the very beginning, and too dangerous by half. Just look up ahead of us. What do you think you're going to find there? More of the same, if you ask me. Grass and scrub and kangaroos,
ad infinitum;
emus without end, amen. At least if we go back now, we'll have the chance to redeem ourselves, by handing over poor old
Arthur. Come on, Eyre. I told you right at the very beginning that it was a mistake not to call the police, that night he tried to rob us. And wasn't I right? And look where his new-found emancipation has led him to; a smelly death on a scrubby plain.'