They heard the voice distinctly, faint and feeble though it was.
"I am dying!" it moaned. "Oh, Denis, where are you?"
Mr. Kitto almost choked.
"Thank God—but if she does die!" he croaked and whispered in one breath. "We're coming! We're coming, my dear, dear young lady! But," in his whisper, "who's that hobbling toward us—dot-and-carry-one? It's Dent, man, it's Dent himself; go and tell him like a good fellow—only don't raise too much hope." And deeply agitated, the squatter thrust his lantern among the outer branches of the thicket.
In an instant came the faint voice, immeasurably stronger, and poignant with a nameless agony:
"Take it away! Oh, take it way, or I must die—I must!"
Kitto flung his lantern far behind him: he had seen a terrified face among the branches, a burning face that told him all.
"And you have been here all day!" he cried, but chiefly to himself, in the inward glare of his enlightenment. "And I cooeying till I could cooey no more!"
"I thought it was savages," the voice in the clump faltered unconvincingly. "I—I never heard it before——"
"We have everything ready for you," continued Kitto, cheerily: "hot coffee, plenty to eat, dry clothes, and our best bed when we get you to it. Here, take this to go on with." His coat came off with the words, and was thrust through the branches until he felt she had it. "Now I'll get you the rest," he said, and was hurrying off.
"Wait! Wait!" she called to him, and even more strongly than in her last alarm. "Where's Denis—Denis Dent? He was the second officer, and he saved me, he alone. I must speak to him first … to thank him … while I can!"
And her voice broke for him, as his had broken for her, but with more reason than Nan Merridew could dream; for Denis was lying close at hand on the beach, with the station overseer stooping over him.
CHAPTER V
A TOUCH OF FEVER
Denis awoke between clean sheets in the widest berth and the largest cabin he had ever occupied: it was a matter of moments to realize that he was really on land, for the bed still heaved a little as the beach had done yesterday, or whenever it was he had been washed ashore. He felt as though he had been asleep a week; he could not have imagined so delightful a lassitude of limb and spirit. It was a small room without pretense of paper upon its weather-board walls, but the toilet cover on Denis's left was as snowy as the sheet under his chin, and a sunlit blind flapped soothingly behind it. Silence reigned, but it was the peculiarly drowsy hush of hot weather, only the deeper for its innumerable tiny sounds: one could have heard that it was hot. But there was so little on him, that little was so light, and so sweet a draught blew through the room, that in his own person Denis felt deliciously cool.
He tried to remember how he had come there, but the final stages were a painful farrago. He beheld a bandage on either hand, and could feel one on head and foot; but they led him too far back. He had an impression of the stars as he lay upon the beach, and another of interminable steps with a handbreadth of starry sky at the top, but there was something far more important that he was seeking in his mind without avail. He certainly had not found it when the blind was pushed aside by a sun-burned face, which vanished instantly, to reappear with its appertaining shirt and moleskins in the doorway opposite.
"Awake at last, mister!"
"Only just," said Denis, feebly, but with his first smile, and the lad entered staring curiously.
"You couldn't look like that whilst we was seekin' her," said he, drily. "Why, what's wrong now?"
Denis had shot upright in bed.
"Didn't we find her?" he cried. "Yes, yes, of course we did! I remember now. I'm so grateful to you; that's exactly what I was trying to remember. Well? Well? And how is she?"
"Right as the mail, mister, so they all say; but I haven't seen her yet."
"You're sure they say so?"
"Sure as my name's Jimmy Dockerty."
Denis fell back with a whispered thanksgiving.
"What did you say your name was?" he asked presently.
"Dockerty," replied the boy. "Christian name of Jim."
"Well, Jim, I don't forget you. It was you I clapped eyes on first, and I'm almost as glad to see you again. Where am I exactly?"
"Merinderie Station: the barricks."
"The what?"
"Where the parlour men camp," explained Mr. Doherty, darkly. "You've got the tooter's room; he has his schoolroom next door."
"It's very quiet."
"They've all cleared out for the day, apuppus; and you ain't in the house, you see, though nice and handy. But I'll have to go over to the house, to tell 'em you've waked up. There was something ready for you the moment you did. But, I say—mister!" And the boy stood wistfully beside the bed.
"Well, Jim?"
"Ask for me to come back and set along of you! Say you feel lonely like, and ask for me to look arter you, mister. You needn't take no notice of me, and no more won't I say nothink, if you don't want."
"But I shall want, Jimmy. I shall want you to tell me heaps of things. Go and say so for me, by all means; and bring me anything they like to send, though a cup of tea is all I fancy."
But when a chop was sent in characteristic conjunction it was eaten with its slice of damper, and so heartily as to exclude immediate conversation.
"One thing at a time," said Denis, "and the next thing is a wash; but I don't mean to get up yet a bit."
"I wouldn't," said the boy, removing the tray and flourishing a towel. "The young lady, there ain't any signs of 'er either; I'll give you the word when there is."
Meanwhile the subject nearest Denis's heart was the one on which he could extract least information. Doherty did not warm to it as he did to other topics. And yet Denis could not help liking the lad; in the first place, the lad was openly enamoured of him, and the present Denis far too languid a hero to object very strenuously to his worship. There was nothing slavish about it; hardly a word was employed in its expression; but in the pauses the boy's eyes would remain upon the man's, and once he said he had been to see the place, and continued gazing at Denis and his bandages with redoubled reverence. It appeared that many bodies had been washed ashore, and Mr. Kitto with nearly all his men was down there now. Mrs. Kitto was at the other bedside, and had sent word that she preferred not to leave it in case her patient, who had been asleep many hours, should wake and miss her. Doherty suddenly remembered the message; it drove Denis back into yesterday's inferno, and he lay with such a pained face that the boy darted in with his own details. It was four o'clock in the afternoon: Denis had slept nineteen hours, but Miss Merridew was beating him. And they were the only survivors; not another soul had been saved.
Denis thought of the hundred souls on board, above all of Nan's father, her all in this world, to whose loss she would awake now any moment. And that was a thought which brought tears to the second mate's eyes, yet it was one with several facets, and presently his eyes were shining in quite a different way; then he caught himself, and little Jim saw the marine bronze deepen on the heroic cheek. But at last it was Jim's turn, for Denis turned to him as though impatient of himself.
"Now let's hear about you," he said. "How long have you been in Australia, Jim?"
"Only since I was born, and a bit before, and ever after, amen!" said Mr. Doherty; and the teeth displayed by his grin were certainly worthy of an aboriginal.
"And how long is that?" asked Denis, smiling, too.
"I