Walkabout by James Vance Marshall Page B

chamber, thermostatically controlled to a temperature of minus 15° (47° of frost). They slept well without any sort of protection; and, though they were naked, felt no cold. On the other hand, Aboriginals who are a hundred per cent physically fit have been known to die purely because a tribal medicine man has put the death curse on them. One such man was admitted to a state-capital hospital. Thorough tests proved that there was nothing the matter with him; psycho-analysts tried to instil in him the will to live, the will to fight. But in vain. The medicine man had said he was going to die. And die he did: of self-induced apathy.
    Death, to the Aboriginal, is something that can’tbe fought. Those whom the Spirit wants, he takes; and it’s no good kicking against the pricks.
    That was why the bush boy accepted the fact of his impending death without question, without struggle. There was in his mind no flicker of hope. The lubra’s terror, to him, could have only the one meaning. He had seen tenor like hers before: in a woman’s eyes after prolonged and unsuccessful childbirth; in an old man’s face when he had become too weak to walk and the tribe had passed him by, leaving him alone, alone in the waterless desert. And so he now stood; without hope; passively waiting; wondering, as he stared across the moonlit valley, how and when the Spirit of Death would come to claim him.

CHAPTER TWELVE
    A LL night the bustard baked in the ashes, and by morning it was tender as broiled lamb. The children ate it hungrily.
    Peter and Mary wanted to linger over the meal, would have liked to pick every succulent scrap off the bustard’s bones; but the bush boy was impatient to be off. Morning mist was still clinging to the sides of the rift valley, when he smoothed out the ashes of the fire, beckoned to the others and moved off along the fault. He set a fast pace.
    Mary, not knowing the cause of his hurry, wished he’d be more considerate: for Peter’s sake. But, in spite of her misgivings, Peter’s vitality – at least in the early morning – seemed to be limitless, quite capable of measuring up to the bush boy’s long loping stride. Indeed, he apparently had energy to spare. For he hopped around the bush boy like an exuberant puppy, his shrill questioning voice echoing back from the rocks. And strangely enough the Aboriginal seemed to be understanding – and answering - his questions.
    Peter had decided to learn the black boy’s language – it would be far more useful than the French his sister was always boasting about. He trotted up to the Aboriginal, holding a fragment of rock.
    â€˜Say, darkie! What you call this?’
    â€˜ Garsha. ’ The bush boy spoke with a grating harshness, hard as the flint itself.
    â€˜And this?’ The white boy plucked at a tussock of grass.
    â€˜ Karathara. ’ The word was whispered, liltingly, like the rustle of wind through a sea of grain.
    â€˜ Garsha. Karathara … Garsha. Karathara ,’ Peter’s reedy treble echoed down the valley. He went rushing on ahead. Presently he came trotting back, and handed the bush boy a lump of quartz. Hour after hour the questioning went on. Mary felt very much alone.
    For lunch they ate yams: queer-looking bushman-drakes that grew in dishevelled heaps beneath an outcrop of rock. Once again they rested through the midday heat – at least Mary rested; the boys chattered like gossiping kookaburras – then they were walking again, heading south-west across the red sandstone plateau.
    The plateau was not a pleasant place for walking. It shimmered with heat; the children’s footsteps kicked up a cloud of fine red dust, and there was no water. Soon even the ebullient Peter was reduced to a sober plod. The dust hung for a long time in the motionless air; so that looking back the children could see behind them a winding haze of redness stretching far across the plain. After a