Unforgettable Journeys: Alone on a Wide, Wide Sea, Running Wild and Dear Olly. Michael Morpurgo
before us, it seemed, as wide as the ocean, and just as inhospitable too. We could see the gully winding its way through the bush, other gullies joining it to make one great swathe of sand through the scrub, but there was no glint of water anywhere, not a shimmer to be seen. Now I really was beginning to hope that Piggy Bacon would find us, and take us back to Cooper’s Station. I didn’t care about the beating I knew he’d give us. I thought only of the wash buckets on the verandah, of plunging my head in and then drinking all of them dry one by one.
Marty was not lost in reverie as I was. He had not given up so easily. He was pointing excitedly at what he swore must be a place where there was water, and certainly in the distance there seemed to be a patch of much greener, lusher vegetation around some very tall trees. It was miles away and did not look at all promising to me. I didn’t say so though. “If it’s green, then there’s got to be water somewhere,” Marty said. “Got to be. Come on.” Even if there had been a convenient rock from which to mount, I don’t think either of us would have had the strength to do it. We could only manage to walk now with the greatest effort. So we led Big Black Jack down the hill and into the gully again.
We found Marty’s promised oasis, but doing it drained us utterly of the last of our will power. There were trees, and it was green, but we could find no water. By now the sun had worked its worst on us. My head was swimming so much I often thought I would faint. I kept stumbling, and so did Marty. Breathing heavily now and lathered up, Big Black Jack wandered away from us into the deepest shade, put his head against the trunk of a tree and rested on three legs. Like us, he’d had enough. He could do no more. He was telling us in his own way that we should do it too, that we should never have ventured out in the heat of the day in the first place.
We lay down nearby. I curled up against Marty’s back for comfort. “We’ll be all right,” he said to me, but I knew how far we were from all right. Even so it cheered me a little to hear him say it. I tried not to think that if I slept I might never wake up again, but I thought it all the same. Sleep, when it came, was so welcome.
It was evening when I woke and I knew at once we were not alone. They were crouching a few paces away, a dozen of them perhaps, bushmen, men and boys. They were studying us intently, as still as the rocks around them. I shook Marty until he sat up and took notice. “It’s the same ones,” he whispered, “the same ones that brought Wes back. I recognise them.”
“Say something,” I said. “You’ve got to say something.”
“Drink,” Marty mimed it as he spoke. “Water. We need water. Understand?” That was when the tallest of them came forward and crouched down close to us. I recognised him then. It was the old bushman who had come to Ida’s house that day and treated my spider bite. He smiled at me like a stranger you’ve met before who is happy you’ve remembered him. He held out his cupped hands. His hands were full of fruit, red fruit, green fruit, like plums but rounder. We ate them. We drank them. We devoured them. I don’t remember the taste, but I remember savouring the juice of each one, sucking out every drop of it. They gave Big Black Jack some too, which he snuffled up eagerly.
Then they motioned to us to stand up, to mount up. We tried, but they soon saw we couldn’t do it without their help. I was lifted up effortlessly and sat astride Big Black Jack. So was Marty, who was sitting behind me now and hanging on. One of the bushmen took the reins, and led us along the gully. They were all around us, the children among them smiling up at us now. When I smiled back they laughed out loud, and I knew they were not laughing at me, but out of sheer delight. It touches me even now when I think of it. It was a little moment, and at the same time a great moment, one I have treasured always.
“They’re taking us back,” Marty whispered in my ear, “like they did with Wes.”
“Only we’re not dead,” I said.
Within an hour or so they brought us through some scrubby trees to a hidden pool, a basin of dark rock. A cool evening breeze rippled the surface of the water. We needed no invitation and nor did Big Black Jack. He trotted to the edge and was drinking even before we managed to tumble off him. We were alongside him then, all three of us, one muzzle and two mouths drinking in all we could. Then Big Black Jack was shaking his dribbles all over us, and the bushmen were laughing. They drank too, but they were in no hurry. They did not gulp greedily as we had. Instead they scooped it up one-handed and sipped. In no time a fire was going. They speared some fish and cooked them. I tried to eat slowly as they did, but it wasn’t easy. And there was more fruit afterwards, more berries. Big Black Jack browsed nearby. We could hear his jaws grinding, his teeth crunching. He was eating well too.
I expected we would sleep then because night was coming on fast, but we didn’t. Instead they lifted us up again on to Big Black Jack, and together we moved on into the gathering dark. When I looked up I found that the stars were up there again filling the sky from end to end. I thought then of the night before, of how happy we’d been to be free, how we’d sung to the stars. And now we were being taken back to Cooper’s Station, and there was nothing whatsoever we could do about it. I wondered why the bushmen were doing it, whether Piggy was paying them for hunting us down and bringing us back. But I thought that couldn’t be right, that after all these were the people I’d seen him driving away from the farm with his horse whip when they strayed too close. I did whisper to Marty that we could try to tell them we didn’t want to go back, but he thought it was pointless.
“They wouldn’t understand a word we said,” he told me. “So what’s the point?”
All night long I dreaded the morning and the first sight of Cooper’s Station, dreaded the thought of standing there on punishment parade, hand outstretched, trying to hold back the tears. The more I thought about it, the more I feared the coming of morning. That was why I took my lucky key out of my pocket and clutched it tight, so tight that it hurt me. I wanted to squeeze the luck out of it, to have all of it now because I needed it now more than ever before in my life.
But I began to worry that maybe even my lucky key would not be enough. So I prayed as well. I thought of Ida, then of all she had done for us, of the trouble she’d be in if Piggy found out she’d unlocked the door for us. I felt for the little wooden cross I wore around my neck. I touched it, remembering her. And then holding it I prayed for her. But if I’m honest, I think I prayed mostly for myself. Whether it was the key or the cross that did it I shall never know. I’ve been trying to work that one out ever since. I still am.
“Couple of Raggedy Little Scarecrows”
It wasn’t until a few more days had passed that Marty and I could begin to hope that the bushmen weren’t taking us back to Cooper’s Station after all. Neither of us could believe these people were lost. They seemed to know every root, every tree, every gully in this maze of a wilderness. The fruit they found was never a surprise, nor the roots they dug up, nor the pools they led us to. They knew exactly where they were. They belonged in this place.
They found their way through the bush with such obvious ease that it was quite impossible to think they could ever get lost here. So if they were not lost, and we were not being deliberately led around in circles, and if after all this time we had still not yet reached Cooper’s Station, then it stood to reason we weren’t going there. So where were they taking us then? Marty and I asked each other that question more than a few times. But we had no answers.
With every hour that passed, the bush around us looked less and less familiar. We were in much greener country. There were hills about us, and more farms and settlements in the valleys – which the bushmen seemed to want to avoid as much as we did. We knew now, for whatever reason, that they were not taking us back. And the longer we were with them the more sure we became that these people were absolutely no threat to us. They might not talk to us. They might keep their distance. They might still stare at us more than we liked, but there was never the slightest hint of hostility towards us. On the contrary they seemed very protective of us, and