The following day seemed foredoomed to be unlucky; it really appeared as though everything must go wrong by a natural law.  In the first place, while making a hobble peg, while Carmichael and Robinson were away after the horses, the little piece of wood slipped out of my hand, and the sharp blade of the knife went through the top and nail of my third finger and stuck in the end of my thumb.  The cut bled profusely, and it took me till the horses came to sew my mutilated digits up.  It was late when we left this waterless spot.  As there was a hill with a prepossessing gorge, I left Carmichael and Robinson to bring the horses on, and rode off to see if I could find water there.  Though I rode and walked in gullies and gorges, no water was to be found.  I then made down to where the horses should have passed along, and found some of them standing with their packs on, in a small bit of open ground, surrounded by dense scrubs, which by chance I came to, and nobody near.  I called and waited, and at last Mr. Carmichael came and told me that when he and Robinson debouched with the horses on this little open space, they found that two of the animals were missing, and that Robinson had gone to pick up their tracks.  The horse carrying my papers and instruments was one of the truants.  Robinson soon returned, not having found the track.  Neither of them could tell when they saw the horses last.  I sent Mr. Carmichael to another hill two or three miles away, that we had passed, but not inspected yesterday, to search for water, while Robinson and I looked for the missing horses.  And lest any more should retreat during our absence, we tied them up in two mobs.  Robinson tied his lot up near a small rock.  We then separately made sweeps round, returning to the horses on the opposite side, without success.  We then went again in company, and again on opposite sides singly, but neither tracks nor horses could be found.  Five hours had now elapsed since I first heard of their absence.  I determined to make one more circuit beyond any we had already taken, so as to include the spot we had camped at; this occupied a couple of hours.  When I returned I was surprised to hear that Robinson had found the horses in a small but extra dense bunch of scrub not twenty yards from the spot where he had tied his horses up.  While I was away he had gone on top of the little stony eminence close by, and from its summit had obtained a bird’s-eye view of the ground below, and thus perceived the two animals, which had never been absent at all.  It seemed strange to me that I could not find their tracks, but the reason was there were no tracks to find.  I took it for granted when Carmichael told me of their absence that they were absent, but he and Robinson were both mistaken.