“When,” he said, “I reached the port, I telegraphed as you know, for more money. How puzzled you must have been. I sold my horse to the man from whom I bought it, at a loss of only about £10, and I left with him my saddle, saddlebags, small hatchet, my hobbles, and in fact everything that I had taken with me, except what they had impounded in Erewhon. Yram’s rug I dropped into the river when I knew that I should no longer need it—as also her substitutes for my billy and pannikin; and I burned her basket. The shepherd would have asked me questions. You will find an order to deliver everything up to bearer. You need therefore take nothing from England.”
At another time he said, “When you go, for it is plain I cannot, and go one or other of us must, try and get the horse I had: he will be nine years old, and he knows all about the rivers: if you leave everything to him, you may shut your eyes, but do not interfere with him. Give the shepherd what I said and he will attend to you, but go a day or two too soon, for the margin of one day was not enough to allow in case of a fresh in the river; if the water is discoloured you must not cross it—not even with Doctor. I could not ask George to come up three days running from Sunch’ston to the statues and back.”
Here he became exhausted. Almost the last coherent string of sentences I got from him was as follows:—
“About George’s money if I send him £2,000 you will still have nearly £150,000 left, and Mr. Cathie will not let you try to make it more. I know you would give him four or five thousand, but the Mayor and I talked it over, and settled that £2,000 in gold would make him a rich man. Consult our good friend Alfred” (meaning, of course, Mr. Cathie) “about the best way of taking the money. I am afraid there is nothing for it but gold, and this will be a great weight for you to carry—about, I believe 36 lbs. Can you do this? I really think that if you lead your horse you … no—there will be the getting him down again—”
“Don’t worry about it, my dear father,” said I, “I can do it easily if I stow the load rightly, and I will see to this. I shall have nothing else to carry, for I shall camp down below both morning and evening. But would you not like to send some present to the Mayor, Yram, their other children, and Mrs. Humdrum’s granddaughter?”
“Do what you can,” said my father. And these were the last instructions he gave me about those adventures with which alone this work is concerned.
The day before he died, he had a little flicker of intelligence, but all of a sudden his face became clouded as with great anxiety; he seemed to see some horrible chasm in front of him which he had to cross, or which he feared that I must cross, for he gasped out words, which, as near as I could catch them, were, “Look out! John! Leap! Leap! Le …” but he could not say all that he was trying to say and closed his eyes, having, as I then deemed, seen that he was on the brink of that gulf which lies between life and death; I took it that in reality he died at that moment; for there was neither struggle, nor hardly movement of any kind afterwards—nothing but a pulse which for the next several hours grew fainter and fainter so gradually, that it was not till some time after it had ceased to beat that we were certain of its having done so.
XXVII
I Meet My Brother George at the Statues, on the Top of the Pass Into Erewhon
This book has already become longer than I intended, but I will ask the reader to have patience while I tell him briefly of my own visit to the threshold of that strange country of which I fear that he may be already beginning to tire.
The winding-up of my father’s estate was a very simple matter, and by the beginning of September 1891 I should have been free to start; but about that time I became engaged, and naturally enough I did not want to be longer away than was necessary. I should not have gone at all if I could have helped it. I left, however, a fortnight later than my father had done.
Before starting I bought a handsome gold repeater for the Mayor, and a brooch for Yram, of pearls and diamonds set in gold, for which I paid £200. For Yram’s three daughters and for Mrs. Humdrum’s granddaughter I took four brooches each of which cost about £15, 15s., and for the boys I got three ten-guinea silver watches. For George I only took a strong English knife of the best make, and the two thousand pounds worth of uncoined gold, which for convenience’ sake I had had made into small bars. I also had a knapsack made that would hold these and nothing else—each bar being strongly sewn into its place, so that none of them could shift. Whenever I went on board ship, or went on shore, I put this on my back, so that no one handled it except myself—and I can assure the reader that I
