rs comes through the
clear dry air of the desert more brilliantly than it does in any other
part of the world. Consequently it needed only a hurried glance to
tell Sax that Vaughan was not in the camp. His clothes were still
lying where he had thrown them, and the boy soon found the tracks of
bare feet leading away from the camp into the scrub.

Vaughan had gone away to die.

Sax listened. The absolute stillness of death was around him on all
sides. Not a leaf moved on any of the scraggy mulgas standing near.
Even the star in the deep, deep blue of the night sky seemed to stare
down at him with unblinking eyes. What did they care for one white boy
dying in delirium in the desert, and another white boy who had to keep
tight hold of his mind to save it from slipping out of his control, and
who would also die of thirst, if not to-day, then surely to-morrow?
There is nothing so unpitying, so absolutely unconcerned, as the desert
is to a perishing man.

Sax was a boy of unusual courage. He was the son of a pioneer, a
member of that race of men who have opened up the centre of the
Australian continent, and have laid the foundations of the future
Australian nation. Though he had been reared in the comfort of cities,
the cattle-plains, the scrub, and the desert were his true home, and he
now showed the stuff he was made of by determining to follow after his
friend. He did not stop to wonder what he would do when he found him;
he only knew that he could not bear to leave him out there to die
without making an effort to save him.

Suddenly he remembered the quart-pot and its precious contents. He had
made up his mind to find Vaughan before he remembered the tea, and now
this sudden glad thought seemed to confirm his decision, and filled him
with hope. He would have something to give to the perishing lad when
he found him. Sax could hardly walk. The whole middle part of his
body felt as if it was dried up, and when he moved, such terrible pains
shot through him that he could hardly keep from crying out; but he set
his teeth and went over to the quart-pot and dug it out.

Only those who have actually been in the same circumstances as Sax was
that night can have any idea of the temptation it was for him to drink
some of that tea. The very sound of it swishing about inside the
smoke-blackened pot nearly drove him mad with thirst. He dared not
open the lid and look in, for, after all, he was so frantically thirsty