m whether they should
eventually leave those banks to the northward or to the southward;
a matter of importance by reason of the difference in the country
to the northward and to the southward. But it was chance at last
that decided the question for them. They drank many times during
the day, and towards nightfall a small mob of kangaroos was sighted
to the northward, and that led the pack to head northward, a little
westerly, from the river-bank that night.

[Illustration]

CHAPTER XXXI

THE TRAIL OF MAN

It was exactly a fortnight later when the pack turned despairingly
in its tracks, animated by a forlorn desire to reach again the high
ragged banks of that shingly river-bed, in which some trace of
moisture might be left still, where the muddy pools had been.

But in that fortnight much had happened, and the character and
constitution of the pack had undergone notable changes. The six
whelps had disappeared, old Tufter and the oldest of the mothers of
the pack were no more, and neither the carrion-crows nor the ants
had profited one atom by these deaths. The pack had not wittingly
hastened the end of these weaker ones, but it had left only their
bones behind upon the trail. And, now, when one or other of the
gaunt, dry-lipped survivors stumbled a dozen pairs of hungry eyes
glittered, a dozen pairs of lips were wrinkled backward from as
many sets of fangs, and consciousness of this had a sinister
meaning for the stumbler; a meaning which brought a savage snarl to
his throat as he regained his footing with quick, threatening looks
from side to side and hackles bristling.

The pack was starving. Many times during the past week the thought
of turning in his tracks and making back for the river-bed had come
to Finn, but he had pressed on, fearful of the arid stretch of
country which he had already placed between himself and that spot.
He had no means of knowing that he was in a country of vast and
waterless distances. But, acting without knowledge, Finn had turned
in his tracks at length, after a fortnight's travelling in which
food had been terribly scarce and water even more scarce. Such
liquid as they had found would never have been called water by
men-folk. Here and there had been a little liquid mud in old
water-holes and stream-beds, and in other places the pack had sucked
up moisture through hot sand, after burrowing with feet and nose to
a depth of as much as eighteen inches from the surface. Their