The Foot of Time: A Novel of Australia and the South Seas: (1933)

238 THE FOOT OF TIME
would the septic crows! He stepped out with quiet
confidence following the instinct of direction. But
the instinct of direction reposes in animals but in
few mortals. All think they possess it—all feel
they possess it, but they are mistaken in their view.
If your angle be but one degree out, you are not
far from home in five minutes. But carry the line
on a mile, then measure your distance between the
extreme points of the arms of your angle. Bruce
wasn't far out, but he was far enough, and before
very long he was as hopelessly, as fatally lost as
though he had been plumped down into the middle
of the Pacific, for it matters nothing whether you
be twenty yards from shore or twenty miles, if none
are near, and you be no swimmer and the water
beyond your depth, you are finished, as Bruce was.
The time came when, following habits of
all mankind, Bruce grew panicky, and that
began to exhaust him, mentally as well as bodily,
for now he was running, stumbling, falling.
The time came when a more complete realisation
of the real seriousness of his situation asserted itself—his
manhood came to his help. He stopped
and thought matters out. Making one of many
fatal mistakes, his instinct was to mount, mount.
Anything but go down. But upwards gets nowhere,
whereas down hill, which looks so awful
and so dark, so menacing, bog-strewn and hidden,
may, perchance, lead somewhere. It may lead to a
stream, and streams lead to the inhabitants of man,
but mountain heights lead nowhere. So Bruce
tramped and tramped, and being right-handed—
THE FOOT OF TIME 239
or, if you will have it, left-handed----the leg most
used (in his case it was the right) strode ever so
slightly the longest. And so the fatally bushed victim
was making a gigantic left-handed circle. He
thought he was walking dead straight—they always
do, but never are.
And at night, utterly spent, he fell in his tracks
and lay in the thick mountain bush but semiconscious.
At daybreak, refreshed, he was up and
on again. He couldn't keep still—had to keep on
moving.
No food passed his lips, utterly nothing, and,
what was nine hundred and ninety times worse, no
water.
About noon on the day following—that is,
nearly forty hours since leaving Mr. Burne's home
at Orange, and many hours had elapsed between
his visit to Edith and his previous meal—Bruce
reached an open plateau.
There are many such on the mountains of
New South Wales, waterless, shadeless. The spot
commanded a superb view, but the man couldn't
live on views. He should never have reached there,
but he would tramp uphill in wide, unconscious
circles, away from water, away from rivers, and
away from man.
High overhead an eagle saw him and wondered.
Lower down several eagle hawks also looked on
anticipatory. But lower still the crows began to
arrive out of nowhere! They cawed in glee—they
were in time. Their victim was still alive. One
bolder and heavier than the rest noticed the man