The Narrow Road to the Deep North

A man named Sheephead Morton lights a cigarette and shares it with the men. He looks at Darky’s foot and sees that the webbing splits between the big toe and the next. Darky says that if he can get a new sole, he’ll make it last, adding, “There’s always a good thing if you think about it” (204). Darky thinks of the can of condensed milk and decides that he’ll drink it that night. He tries to stand twice but falls. He begins to babble about a fish shop that served food he loved. When he regains his wits, he tells them to keep moving or the Goanna will lay into them. They say they will wait until he is ready. Eventually they begin moving together again. 

Dorrigo makes his rounds at the cholera camp, where he meets with an orderly named Bonox Baker. They go into the first tent, which contains the sickest men. There are 48 of them, skeletal and rotting. Several are dead. Dorrigo thinks that death is often a relief: “To live was to struggle in terror and pain, but, he told himself, one had to live” (211). He feels that he is a fraud as a doctor in this tent because there is no help he can offer, yet he persists: “He refused to stop trying to help them live.