n any way to one
whom the natives regarded as almost a demi-god. She looked after him
too, and kept his hut as clean as possible. One morning something
happened. The girl came running for me to go to her hut, and there lay
the mysterious stranger apparently stretched out for dead. I soon
realised that he was in a fit of some kind.

I now approach the momentous time when this unfortunate man recovered his
senses. When he regained consciousness after the fit Yamba and I were
with him, and so was his wife. I had not seen him for some days, and was
much shocked at the change that had taken place. He was ghastly pale and
very much emaciated. I knew that death was at hand. Just as he regained
consciousness--I can see the picture now; yes, we were all around his
fragrant couch of eucalyptus leaves, waiting for him to open his eyes--he
gazed at me in a way that thrilled me strangely, and _I knew I was
looking at a sane white man_. His first questions were "Where am I? Who
are you?" Eager and trembling I knelt down beside him and told him the
long and strange story of how I had found him, and how he had now been
living with me nearly two years. I pointed out to him our faithful
Bruno, who had often taken him for long walks and brought him back
safely, and who had so frequently driven away from him deadly snakes, and
warned him when it was time to turn back. I told him he was in the
centre of Australia; and then I told in brief my own extraordinary story.
I sent Yamba to our shelter for the letter I had found in his tracks, and
read it aloud to him. He never told me who the writer of it was. He
listened to all I had to tell him with an expression of amazement, which
soon gave place to one of weariness--the weariness of utter weakness. He
asked me to carry him outside into the sun, and I did so, afterwards
squatting down beside him and opening up another conversation. _He then
told me his name was Gibson_, _and that he had been a member of the Giles
Expedition of_ 1874. From that moment I never left him night or day. He
told me much about that expedition which I can never reveal, for I do not
know whether he was lying or raving. Poor, vulgar, Cockney Gibson! He
seemed to know full well that he was dying, and the thought seemed to
please him rather than otherwise. He appeared to me to be too tired, too
weary to live--that was the predominant symptom.

I introduced Yamba to him, and we did everything we possib