an't
afford to wait."

The other man sat up, and blinked wearily at the daylight, showing
a face to the full as haggard and gaunt as that of his friend.

"By God, I don't know!" he said bitterly. "I don't know whether we
can afford to do anything else. Afford! And us carrying a fortune!
I said out there that I'd never had good luck before, and--it was
right, too. Good luck's not for the likes o' me."

"Oh, yes, it is," said the other man, with an obvious effort at
cheerfulness. "You wait till we get our legs under a dinner-table,
my boy; then you'll tell another tale about luck. And it will be a
dinner-table, too, mark you; no tin pannikins, but silver and glass
and linen and flowers, and food----Man, think of the juicy fillet,
done to a turn; the crisp _pomme rissole_, and--yes, a little
spinach, I think, done delicately in the English way; none of your
Neapolitan messes. I'm not certain about the bread--whether little
crusty white rolls or toast. What? Oh, well, it's no use going the
other way, old man; cursing and growsing won't help us any. Come
on! Let's have breakfast and get on. I think you're perfectly right
about parting this morning. We can take that to be east, where the
scrub gets thick, and that to be south. We'll toss who takes which,
and one or other of us will strike something before nightfall, you
mark my words; and after that it will be easy to pick up the
other's trail. Better make the trail as plain as possible as we go
along. Come; buck up, Jeff, old man; this will be our last day
hungry. I'm going to take my breakfast now."

Imitating his companion, and with an attempt to look a little more
cheery over it, Jeff stood up now and carefully uncorked a
canvas-covered water-bottle. Each man filled his mouth full from
the gurgling contents of his water-bottle, and stood, swishing the
water in his mouth slowly, and allowing it to trickle little by
little down his parched throat. In this way several minutes were
devoted to the swallowing of a single mouthful of water, and that
was breakfast.

"If we hadn't have chucked the guns away we might have got a chance
at something to-day," growled Jeff, when his breakfast was done. "I
could make a roast dingo look foolish this morning, and I'm none so
sure I couldn't eat the brute raw if I got him. You said it was
dingoes got Jock last night, didn't you?"

"I suppose it must have been," said the other man. "I don't see
what else it could have been. And as