296 SPORT, TRAVEL, AND ADVENTURE 



for it, while the woman and child remained on the 

 track. The two disappeared among the gum-trees, and 

 the woman and her baby waited. Some time passed, 

 the men did not come back, and the woman grew 

 frightened. She fancied that she heard her husband 

 calling, and supposed that he was not able to see 

 her in the labyrinth of gums. She moved a little 

 way, but was afraid to leave the child lest it should 

 wander out of sight. By and by it cried itself to 

 sleep. No angel descended, as to Hagar in the wilder- 

 ness, and the poor woman, desperate with terror, thirst, 

 and anxiety for the child, determined to go herself 

 and look for water. 



So she tied the sleeping child to a gum-sapling 

 with a piece of cord she had with her, and set out on 

 her quest. She walked on through the forest ; it 

 seemed to her certain that she would easily find her 

 way back. Had she been a bushman, she would have 

 marked the trees and so ' blazed a track/ But that 

 did not come into her mind. The thickening trees 

 closed her in all alike, not a, landmark to guide her, 

 and after a while she knew that she was lost in the 

 bush. 



The men on their fruitless search for water were 

 lost too ; they had taken no precautions either, and 

 were without a compass to give them any clue to their 

 position. For a day and a night they roamed in the 

 bush, and at last found themselves again at the little 

 township. Search parties were sent out for the woman 

 and child, and very soon, by the side of the track, 

 the child was found ; but the horror of the thing was 

 that the soldier ants had attacked the defenceless baby, 

 and before it died the poor mite had gone through the 



