from water, and
eighty from food, my messenger could hardly return before six days,
and I began to think it highly probable that I should be dead of
hunger and thirst long before anybody could possibly arrive. I looked
at the keg; it was an awkward thing to carry empty. There was nothing
else to carry water in, as Gibson had taken all the smaller
water-bags, and the large ones would require several gallons of water
to soak the canvas before they began to tighten enough to hold water.
The keg when empty, with its rings and straps, weighed fifteen pounds,
and now it had twenty pounds of water in it. I could not carry it
without a blanket for a pad for my shoulder, so that with my revolver
and cartridge-pouch, knife, and one or two other small things on my
belt, I staggered under a weight of about fifty pounds when I put the
keg on my back. I only had fourteen matches.

After I had thoroughly digested all points of my situation, I
concluded that if I did not help myself Providence wouldn't help me. I
started, bent double by the keg, and could only travel so slowly that
I thought it scarcely worth while to travel at all. I became so
thirsty at each step I took, that I longed to drink up every drop of
water I had in the keg, but it was the elixir of death I was burdened
with, and to drink it was to die, so I restrained myself. By next
morning I had only got about three miles away from the Kegs, and to do
that I travelled mostly in the moonlight. The next few days I can only
pass over as they seemed to pass with me, for I was quite unconscious
half the time, and I only got over about five miles a day.

To people who cannot comprehend such a region it may seem absurd that
a man could not travel faster than that. All I can say is, there may
be men who could do so, but most men in the position I was in would
simply have died of hunger and thirst, for by the third or fourth
day--I couldn't tell which--my horse meat was all gone. I had to
remain in what scanty shade I could find during the day, and I could
only travel by night.

When I lay down in the shade in the morning I lost all consciousness,
and when I recovered my senses I could not tell whether one day or two
or three had passed. At one place I am sure I must have remained over
forty-eight hours. At a certain place on the road--that is to say, on
the horse tracks--at about fifteen miles from the Kegs--at twenty-five
miles the Rawlinson could again be sighted--I saw tha