What remains to be told will not take long. Hardships naturally increased as the means of bearing them diminished. I have said the salmon held out for many days. We cut it in strips, and dried it as well as we could; but the flies and maggots robbed us of a large portion of it. At length we were reduced to two small hams; nothing else except a little tea. Guessing the distance we had yet to go, and taking into account our slow rate of travelling, I calculated the number of days which, with the greatest economy, these could be made to last. Allowing only one meal a day, and that of the scantiest, I scored the hams as a cook scores a leg of roast pork, determined under no circumstances to exceed the daily ration.

No little discipline was requisite to adhere to this resolution. Samson broke down under the exposure and privation; superadded dysentery rendered him all but helpless, and even affected his mind. The whole labour of the camp then devolved on me. I never roused him in the morning till the mules were packed—with all but his blanket and the pannikin for his tea—and until I had saddled his horse for him. Not till we halted at night did we get our ration of ham. This he ate, or rather bolted, raw, like a wild beast. My share I never touched till after I lay down to sleep. And so tired have I been, that once or twice I woke in the morning with my hand at my mouth, the unswallowed morsel between my teeth. For three weeks we went on in this way, never exchanging a word. I cannot say how I might have behaved had Fred been in Samson’s place. I hope I should have been at least humane. But I was labouring for my life, and was not over tender-hearted.

Certainly there was enough to try the patience of a better man. Take an instance. Unable one morning to find my own horse, I saddled his and started him off, so as not to waste time, with his spare animal and the three mules. It so happened that our line of march was rather tortuous, owing to some hills we had to round. Still, as there were high mountains in the distance which we were making for, it seemed impossible that anyone could miss his way. It was twenty minutes, perhaps, before I found my horse; this would give him about a mile or more start of me. I hurried on, but failed to overtake him. At the end of an hour I rode to the top of a hill which commanded a view of the course he should have taken. Not a moving speck was to be seen. I knew then that he had gone astray. But in which direction?

My heart sank within me. The provisions and blankets were with him. I do not think that at any point of my journey I had ever felt fear—panic that is—till now. Starvation stared me in the face. My wits refused to suggest a line of action. I was stunned. I felt then what I have often felt since, what I still feel, that it is possible to wrestle successfully with every difficulty that man has overcome, but not with that supreme difficulty—man’s stupidity. It did not then occur to me to give a name to the impatience that seeks to gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles.

I turned back, retraced my steps till I came to the track of the mules. Luckily the ground retained the footprints, though sometimes these would be lost for a hundred yards or so. Just as I anticipated—Samson had wound round the base of the very first hill he came to; then, instead of correcting the deviation, and steering for the mountains, had simply followed his nose, and was now travelling due east,—in other words, was going back over our track of the day before. It was past noon when I overtook him, so that a precious day’s labour was lost.

I said little, but that little was a sentence of death.

‘After to-day,’ I began, ‘we will travel separately.’

At first he seemed hardly to take in my meaning. I explained it.

‘As well as I can make out, before we get to the Dalles, where we ought to find the American outposts, we have only about 150 miles to go. This should not take more than eight or nine days. I can do it in a week alone, but not with you. I have come to the conclusion that with you I may not be able to do it at all. We have still those mountains’—pointing to the Blue Mountain range in the distance—‘to cross. They are covered with snow, as you see. We may find them troublesome. In any case our food will only last eight or nine days more, even at the present rate. You shall have the largest half of what is left, for you require more than I do. But I cannot, and will not, sacrifice my life for your sake. I have made up my mind to leave you.’

It must always be a terrible thing for a judge to pass the sentence of death. But then he is fulfilling a duty, merely carrying out a law which is not of his making. Moreover, he has no option—the responsibility rests with the jury; last of all, the sufferer is a criminal. Between the judge’s case and mine there was no analogy. My act was a purely selfish one—justifiable I still think, though certainly not magnanimous. I was quite aware of this at the time, but a starving man is not burdened with generosity.

I dismounted, and, without unsaddling the mules, took off their packs, now reduced to a few pounds, which was all the wretched, raw-backed, and half-dead, animals could stagger under; and, putting my blanket, the remains of a ham, and a little packet of tea—some eight or ten tea-spoonfuls—on one mule, I again prepared to mount my horse and depart.

I took, as it were, a sneaking glance at Samson. He was sitting upon the ground, with his face between his knees, sobbing.

At three-and-twenty the heart of a man, or of a woman—if either has any, which, of course, may be doubtful—is apt to play the dynamite with his or her resolves. Water-drops have ever been formidable weapons of the latter, as we all know; and, not being so accustomed to them then as I have become since, the sight of the poor devil’s abject woe and destitution, the thought that illness and suffering were the causes, the secret whisper that my act was a cowardly one, forced me to follow the lines of least resistance, and submit to the decrees of destiny.

One more page from my ‘Ride,’ and the reader will, I think, have a fair conception of its general character. For the last two hours the ascent of the Blue Mountains had been very steep. We were in a thick pine forest. There was a track—probably made by Indians. Near the summit we found a spring of beautiful water. Here we halted for the night. It was a snug spot. But, alas! there was nothing for the animals to eat except pine needles. We lighted our fire against the great up-torn roots of a fallen tree; and, though it was freezing hard, we piled on such masses of dead boughs that the huge blaze seemed to warm the surrounding atmosphere.

I must here give the words of my journal, for one exclamation in it has a sort of schoolboy ring that recalls the buoyancy of youthful spirits, the spirits indeed to which in early life we owe our enterprise and perseverance:

‘As I was dozing off, a pack of hungry wolves that had scented us out set up the most infernal chorus ever heard. In vain I pulled the frozen buffalo-robe over my head, and tried to get to sleep. The demons drew nearer and nearer, howling, snarling, fighting, moaning, and making a row in the perfect stillness which reigned around, as if hell itself were loose. For some time I bore it with patience. At length, jumping up, I yelled in a voice that made the valley ring: You devils! will you be quiet? The appeal was immediately answered by silence; but hearing them tuning up for a second concert, I threw some wood on the blazing fire and once more retired to my lair. For a few minutes I lay awake to admire a brilliant Aurora Borealis shooting out its streams of electric light. Then, turning over on my side, I never moved again till dawn.’

The first objects that caught my eye were the animals. They were huddled together within a couple of yards of where we lay. It was a horrible sight. Two out of the three mules, and Samson’s horse, had been attacked by the wolves. The flanks of the horse were terribly torn, and the entrails of both the mules were partially hanging out. Though all three were still standing with their backs arched, they were rapidly dying from loss of blood. My dear little ‘Strawberry’—as we called him to match William’s ‘Cream’ and my mare were both intact.

A few days after this, Samson’s remaining horse gave out. I had to surrender what remained of my poor beast in order to get my companion through. The last fifty miles of the journey I performed on foot; sometimes carrying my rifle to relieve the staggering little mule of a few pounds extra weight. At long last the Dalles hove in sight. And our cry, ‘The tents! the tents!’ echoed the joyous ‘Thalassa! Thalassa!’ of the weary Greeks.