We tracked the creek from one end to the other, and then I sat on the bank to consider.
“Bill,” said I, “she can’t be drowned, thank God! Rhad can swim, and if he couldn’t have saved her, he would be somewhere about. Besides, her basket would float, and we should see some signs.”
And then a thought flashed into my mind. “Bill, have you been to Teddy the Tyler?”
“Great Lord! Do you think—”
“I don’t think anything. Let’s go and see him.”
We walked to Teddy’s tent, calling and listening to imaginary answers as we walked. It was late in the evening by this time, and Teddy was sitting outside his tent smoking his pipe. He barely looked up as we approached; but I noticed that he hitched close to him with his foot an axe that was lying on the ground.
“Good-evening, mate,” I said, by way of commencement, though I felt more inclined to spit in his face than be civil to him.
Bill shook with excitement, and there was a dangerous gleam in his eyes.
Teddy did not reply to my “Good-evening,” but sat still, smoking. He had his eye on the axe, though; I didn’t miss that.
“Are you deaf?” I asked.
“No,” he snapped. “Are you?”
“Look here, mate,” I said.
“And look you here, mate,” he interrupted; “I don’t want any of your “Good-evenings” or any of your company. What are you loafing in my gully for? I’ll split your skull open if you stop here much longer.”
“We’ve come here for a purpose,” I said. “I am going to ask you a question or two—that you’ll have to answer, my lad, if you wish ever to answer another.”
“You can ask a thousand,” said Teddy. “Fire away. You won’t get me to answer one.”
“We shall see. We are in search of little Liz. She hasn’t been home all day. Have you seen her?”
Teddy gave us both a sharp, quick look, and did not answer. Bill never took his eyes from Teddy’s face.
“Have you seen our Liz?” I repeated. “Has she been here today?”
Still no answer.
Without any warning, Bill made a spring at him; but Teddy was on his legs like lightning, brandishing the axe over his head. Bill avoided the blow, catching the handle on his arm, and, closing with Teddy, had him on the ground in no time, with his knee on his chest, and his hand at his throat.
“Hold off!” Teddy choked out. “Take this madman off, or he’ll throttle me!”
“Answer that question,” said Bill, with set teeth; “if you don’t, I’ll kill you!”
“She hasn’t been here to-day,” the fellow gasped.
“Have you seen her anywhere, you devil?”
“No,” was the sullen reply.
“You may get up,” said Bill, rising. “Let me find that you are lying, and I’ll tear your heart out. Mark me, Teddy the Tyler! If I discover that you have seen my child to-day, and have been telling us lies, you shall do what you threatened I should do, and what I am doing, God help me! You shall cry blood. Come away, Tom; the sight of him turns me sick.”
We had a weary night of it. We searched in every likely place; we lighted fires on every rise, so that they might catch the child’s eye, if she was anywhere near; but when the morning came, we were as far off finding her as ever. What puzzled me most was the absence of Rhadamanthus. We could find no trace of him. If anything had happened to the child, I thought, the dog’s instinct would surely have led him home to the tent. We trudged back, sore and disheartened. We had not eaten a morsel the whole night. Bill, I believe, hadn’t put food to his lips since he first missed little Liz. He hadn’t even smoked a pipe. I was thinking to myself, what shall we do next? when my mate, who had thrown himself on the ground, whispered to it in a voice so low that he seemed to be afraid of my hearing him,
“The old shafts—the deserted shafts—we haven’t looked there for her!”
The idea that our little girl might be lying at the bottom of one of the deserted holes, dying perhaps, made me dizzy for a moment.
We turned out of the tent in silence, and recommenced our search, Bill trembling like a man with the palsy at every hole we stopped at. I went down myself, to save him the first shock of the awful discovery, if she were lying there. But I discovered nothing.
“Let’s go to the old gully again,” said Bill.
The sun was rising over the hills, bathing them in seas of gold and purple, and the laughing jackass was waking everything up with its gurgling laughter. Teddy the Tyler was not out of bed, and I went down the shaft he was then working. The noise disturbed him, and he came from his tent, half dressed, and, with a death-like scare on his face, asked us what we were up to now.
“It’s only fair to tell him,” said Bill. “We’re looking for my child. She might have tumbled down a shaft, you see.”
We searched every hole in the gully without result, and then we went away.
And now, mates, something happened that I have thought of over and over again with wonder. I was a better man then than I am now, for I had the impression of those peaceful and happy Sundays, with the readings out of the Bible, and the quiet walks with little Liz, full upon me. And I believed at that time that God Almighty had sent some little birds to assist us to the end of our search. We had got away from Teddy’s gully, fully a mile from it, and were passing a cluster of gum-trees, upon one of which half a dozen laughing jackasses were perched. As we passed they set up a chorus of mocking laughter, which so grated upon me, that I threw my stick at them, and sent them flying away. Going to pick up my stick, which had fallen some distance off, I observed an abrupt turn in the ranges, leading to a chasm in the hills which neither of us had ever trodden before. But for these birds, we should not have discovered it. I called out to Bill, and he followed me into the declivity.
“Here’s a shaft sunk,” I said; some one has been prospecting.”
The shaft was about twenty feet deep, and, holding on to a rope that I tied to the stump of a tree, I lowered myself down. Before I reached the bottom, I saw that our search was at an end. There lay our little Liz, with her face turned upwards, as though she was sleeping. I could not distinguish her features, and indeed I was so startled that I did not pause to think or look more closely.
“Liz!” I whispered.
No answer came, and I called to her again. All was silent. The rope to which I was clinging was not long enough to tie a slip-knot by which we could raise her. Another and a longer rope was in Bill’s hands above. I climbed into the sunlight, and, taking the rope from Bill, prepared to make a sling of it.
Bill allowed me to take the rope, and looked at my fear-struck face with a terrible twitching of his features. He was trying to utter words, but for a moment or two he had lost the power. With a sound that was like a shriek and a sob he regained it.
“For the good God’s
