t when they heard his good news they lost no time in seeking
their native benefactors. Yet, on account of their weakness, they
travelled very slowly, and when they reached the encampment it was
deserted. They had no idea whither the natives had gone. They struggled
a short distance farther; their feebleness overcame them, and they were
forced to sink down in despair. All day they toiled hard to prepare
nardoo seed; but their small strength could not provide enough to
support them. Once or twice they shot a crow, but such slight repasts
served only to prolong their sufferings. Wills, throughout all his
journeyings, had kept a diary, but now the entries became very short; in
the struggle for life there was no time for such duties, and the grim
fight with starvation required all their strength.

At this time Wills records that he cannot understand why his legs are so
weak; he has bathed them in the stream, but finds them no better, and he
can hardly crawl out of the hut. His next entry is, that unless relief
comes shortly he cannot last more than a fortnight. After this his mind
seems to have begun to wander; he makes frequent and unusual blunders in
his diary. The last words he wrote were that he was waiting, like Mr.
Micawber, for something to turn up, and that, though starving on nardoo
seed was by no means unpleasant, yet he would prefer to have a little
fat and sugar mixed with it.

#4. Death of Burke and Wills.#--Burke now thought that their only chance
was to find the blacks, and proposed that he and King should set out for
that purpose. They were very loath to leave Wills, but, under the
circumstances, no other course was possible. They laid him softly within
the hut, and placed at his head enough of nardoo to last him for eight
days. Wills asked Burke to take his watch, and a letter he had written
for his father; the two men pressed his hands, smoothed his couch
tenderly for the last time, and set out. There, in the utter silence of
the wilderness, the dying man lay for a day or two: no ear heard his
last sigh, but his end was as gentle as his life had been free from
reproach.

Burke and King walked out on their desperate errand. On the first day
they traversed a fair distance; but, on the second, they had not
proceeded two miles when Burke lay down, saying he could go no farther.
King entreated him to make another effort, and so he dragged himself to
a little clump of bushes, where he stretched his limbs very