ia.

* * * * *

The first day after they left Wills Burke was very weak, and complained
sadly of great pain in his back and legs. Next day he was a little
better, and walked for about two miles, then lay down and said he could
go no farther.

[Illustration: Death of Burke]

King managed to get him up, but as he went he dropped his swag and threw
away everything he had to carry.

When they halted he said he felt much worse, and could not last many
hours longer, and he gave his pocket-book to King, saying:--

'I hope you will remain with me till I am quite dead--it is a comfort to
know someone is by; but when I am dying, it is my wish that you should
place the pistol in my right hand, and that you leave me unburied as I
lie.'

Doubtless he thought of King's weak state, and wished to spare him the
labour of digging a grave.

The last of the misfortunes that had followed the enterprise from the
outset, misfortunes in many cases caused by the impatient zeal of its
leader, was drawing to its close.

Tortured by disappointment and despair, racked by starvation and
disease, he lay in the desert dying.

Flinging aside the last poor chance of succour, renouncing all hope that
he might yet live to reap the reward of his brilliant dash across the
continent, he met death

'With the pistol clenched in his failing hand,
With the death mist spread o'er his fading eyes
He saw the sun go down on the sand,
And he slept--and never saw it rise.'

King lingered near the spot for a few hours; but at last, feeling it to
be useless, he went on up the Creek to look for the natives.

In one of their deserted mia-mias he found a large store of the nardoo
seed, and, carrying it with him, returned to Wills.

On his way back he shot three crows. This addition to their food would,
he felt, give them a chance of tiding over their difficulties until the
blacks could again be found. But as he drew near the mia-mia where he
and poor Burke had left Wills a few days before, and saw his lonely
figure in the distance lying much as they had left him, a sudden fear
came upon him.

Hitherto the awful quiet of these desolate scenes had little impressed
him, and now it came upon him heavily. The shrilling of a solitary
locust somewhere in the gums, the brisk crackle of dry bark and twigs as
he trod, the melancholy sighing of the wind-stirred leafage, offered him
those in