, only to run in again with hope renewed.

Poor Gibson! The women-folk were particularly attached to him because he
never went out with the men, or with me, on my various excursions, but
remained behind in their charge. Sometimes, however, he would follow at
our heels as faithfully and instinctively as Bruno himself. For the past
two years Bruno and Gibson had been inseparable, sleeping together at
night, and never parting for a moment the whole day long. Indeed, I am
sure Bruno became more attached to Gibson than he was to me. And so
Gibson did not, as I at one time feared he would, pass away into the
Great Beyond, carrying with him the secret of his identity. Looking at
him as he lay back among the eucalyptus leaves, pale and emaciated, I
knew the end was now very near.

I knelt beside him holding his hand, and at length, with a great effort,
he turned towards me and said feebly, "Can you hear anything?" I
listened intently, and at last was compelled to reply that I did not.
"Well," he said, "I hear some one talking. I think the voices of my
friends are calling me." I fancied that the poor fellow was wandering in
his mind again, but still his eyes did not seem to have that vacant gaze
I had previously noticed in them. He was looking steadily at me, and
seemed to divine my thoughts, for he smiled sadly and said, "No, I know
what I am saying. I can hear them singing, and they are calling me away.
They have come for me at last!" His thin face brightened up with a slow,
sad smile, which soon faded away, and then, giving my hand a slight
pressure, he whispered almost in my ear, as I bent over him, "Good-bye,
comrade, I'm off. You will come too, some day." A slight shiver, and
Gibson passed peacefully away.

CHAPTER XV

Lost in the desert--Gibson's dying advice--Giles meets Gibson--A fountain
in the desert--A terrible fix--Giles regains his camp--Gibson's
effects--Mysterious tracks--A treasured possession--A perfect
paradise--Grape vines a failure--A trained cockatoo--An extraordinary
festival--My theory of the "ghosts."

After the funeral his wife followed out the usual native conventions. She
covered herself with pipeclay for about one month. She also mourned and
howled for the prescribed three days, and gashed her head with stone
knives, until the blood poured down her face. Gibson's body was not
buried in the earth, but embalmed with clay and leaves, and laid on a
rock-shelf in a cave.

T