THE BATTLE UNDER THE STARS
This is the homestead—the still lagoon
Kisses the foot of the garden fence,
Shimmering under a silver moon
In a midnight silence, cold and tense.
—W. H. Ogilvie.
SARAH, the housemaid, was at the big bell of the station, ringing it wildly. Long after every man and woman on Billabong was awake and busy, Sarah continued to ring. She said afterwards that it seemed to ease her!
A flying fragment from the burning loft had been carried by the wind across the gardens to the oldest part of the homestead—wooden rooms that were now used as storerooms and out-offices. In five minutes they were blazing fiercely.
Jim and Wally had raced for the garden fence, vaulting it, and landing in the midst of a bed of pansies.
“Lucky for us they weren’t roses!” gasped Wally, picking himself up out of the soft soil. “A fellow wants to have on more than pyjamas for this sort of a lark!” They tore on, ploughing over Hogg’s most cherished flower beds.
“Where is that blessed hose?” Jim uttered, wrathfully. He dived into various dark corners where taps existed. Then he stopped, frowning.
“Hogg was mending it. Confound the delay!” he said. “Start with the little one, Wal.; you know, it’s near that palm you were climbing. I’ll find Hogg.” Shouting, he ran round the corner of the house, and collided violently with the gardener, hurrying to meet him with the great rubber coil in his hands. The shock sent them both staggering, and Hogg sat down abruptly.
“Ye took me—fair i’ the wind!” he gasped. “Run on, laddie. A’ll get ma breath presently.”
Flames were shooting from half the windows upstairs when Jim at length got his hose to work. The fire had caught the wooden balcony, spreading from it to the upper rooms, and downstairs the kitchen was burning, and the back verandah had caught. Mr. Linton, running over after carrying Norah far out of the way of heat, and leaving her in Jean’s care, saw how the flames were being sucked into the house through the wide-open back door.
“Won’t do!” he muttered. Dashing in through the smoke, and gripping the almost red-hot door-handle with his felt hat, he managed to slam the door. He staggered off the verandah just as the flooring collapsed.
Black Billy, his eyes apparently starting out of his sable face, was at his elbow.
“Run round and shut the front door, if it’s open, Billy!” Mr. Linton said, coughing.
“Plenty!” murmured Billy. He disappeared round the corner of the house, a black streak of fear.
On the eastern side the window of Mr. Linton’s office stood open. The squatter swung himself through it with the lightness of a boy, and ran to his desk, which stood open, its roll-top flung back. It held papers that must not be risked—he thrust them into his overcoat pockets hurriedly; then, spreading the cloth from a little table on the floor, he emptied the drawers upon it, working by the dancing glow of the flames that lit up all the surroundings. Already the heat and smoke were almost unbearable.
“The safe’s fireproof,” he muttered, glancing towards its corner—“that’s a comfort, anyhow!”
The room was becoming untenable. Clouds of smoke rolled in from the windows and crept, snake fashion, under the door. On the side of the room nearest the fire the plaster began to crack, and the paper shrivelled on the wall. It was difficult to breathe—David Linton’s panting gasps seemed to choke him. He knew he could do no more. He added to the heap on the table cloth the portrait that always stood upon his desk—Jim and Norah’s mother, sweet and young, smiling from her silver frame. Then he gathered all into a bundle and groped his way to the window.
Every available hose was already at work. The hiss of the water, falling on the flames, sounded like snakes angry at being disturbed. Beneath the office window, flames were licking at the wall; the woodwork at one side was blazing and crackling. David Linton hesitated, one hand on the sill—it was hot, and his load made him awkward.
From the garden came Jim’s shout.
“Half a minute, Dad! Don’t try to get out yet!”
The stream of water from his hose played suddenly upon the burning woodwork, splashing on the sill, and sprinkling the man who stood waiting. Above him the flames died out sullenly. Jim played on the hot bricks of the wall for a moment, in fear less already the fire in the house should be finding its way into the office—then he shouted again, deflecting the stream, and Mr. Linton climbed out, bringing his bundle carefully after him. He carried it across the garden, nodding at his son.
Behind the house, Murty O’Toole and Brownie had organized a bucket brigade.
“I can’t carry buckets up to much,” Brownie observed, “but I can pump a treat!” She worked the force-pump manfully, never ceasing, though the heat from the burning house made the metal portions of the pump too hot to touch, and her plump old face was crimson, and her breathing pitifully distressed. Sarah and Mary were in the line, passing the brimming buckets to the men with the easy swing of young bush-trained muscles. Mr. Linton, arriving at a run, shook his head.
“There’s not a hope of saving this part,” he cried. “We’d better concentrate on the front. Brownie, you’re not to work like that—go over to the pepper trees and look after Norah. No—I’d rather you did——” as Brownie hesitated, unwillingly. “It would really be a relief to me to know you were with her—she said she had no burns, but I don’t see how she can have escaped without any.” Even at that moment a twinkle came to his eye, for at the hint Brownie uttered a dismayed exclamation, and fled away across the yard to her nursling. With Norah needing her, the house might burn, indeed!
“We’ll save what we can from the front rooms, Murty,” the squatter went on, leading the way with rapid strides. “Some of you get to work with the buckets—there are four of them hosing. It’s a mercy the water pressure’s good.”
They flung open the French windows in the front of the house. Already every room was filled with smoke; the men dashed in and out, holding their breath—bringing out silver and pictures and books first—the things that no insurance money could replace. Jim, from his post near the tap, smiled a trifle to see his father’s first load—his own silver cups, trophies of his years at school. Stopping at the edge of the lawn, Mr. Linton bowled them down the sloping grass, and hastened back for more.
From the window of the drawing-room came Dave Boone and Black Billy, staggering under the piano. At the edge of the verandah Billy’s end slipped and jarred heavily upon the kerb, the strings setting up a demoniacal jangle. Billy uttered a yell of terror, and bolted down the lawn, being recalled with great difficulty by Mr. Boone, who expressed a harassed wish to “break his useless black neck.” But the dusky one firmly refused to touch the piano again.
“That pfeller debbil-debbil!” he said. “Baal me hump him any more.” He rescued the drawing-room fire-irons with heroic determination, while Mr. Linton came to the assistance of the bereft Mr. Boone, whose wrath was tending towards apoplexy.
Lee Wing held the nozzle of one hose firmly directed upon a dangerous point. He was a peculiar spectacle. The prudence characteristic of the gentle Chinaman had induced him to put on as many clothes as possible before leaving his hut, and he was attired in at least three suits. They were uncomfortable, but he had the consolation of knowing where they were; and a spark might send his hut up in smoke at any moment. Upon his bullet head were four hats, each pulled down firmly. His pockets bulged with miscellaneous possessions, his pigtail floated behind him. If the worst should come to the worst, Lee Wing was clearly prepared to start back to China.
His hereditary enemy, Hogg, worked not far off. As a rule the feud between the gardeners did not slumber, but just now they were as brothers. Hogg’s mind was too full of woe over the destruction of his garden to be troubled by what he was wont to call contemptuously the Yaller Peril, and Lee Wing, his trim expanse of vegetables well out of harm’s way, felt something resembling pity for his competitor, whose flower beds were mere highways for trampling feet. Even as they looked, Billy dashed out of the house carrying a heavy carved box—Jim’s handiwork—and dropped it upon a delicate rose bush with a loud, satisfied grunt. At the spectacle of slaughter Hogg gave a heavy groan and a sudden involuntary movement of the hand that held the nozzle of his hose. It turned the stream of water from its course—a matter of which Hogg, gazing open-mouthed at the destruction of his hopes, was quite unconscious, until a wrathful shout brought him back to earth with a start. Then he realized that he was hosing Jim vigorously, deaf to his very justifiable remarks.
“What on earth are you up to?” sang out the dripping Jim. He burst out laughing at the Scotchman’s dismayed face. “I’m not sorry for the bath, Hogg, but the house needs it more!”
“Losh!” gasped Hogg, gazing at his handiwork—paralysed past any possibility of apologizing. He swung the stream of water again to the fire, muttering horrified ejaculations in broad Scotch.
The stable had almost burned itself out. A dull, red glow came from the smoking bed of coals that smouldered angrily between the broken and blackened brick walls. One of these had fallen, with a crash that echoed round the hills; the others still stood, black holes gaping in them where windows had been, like staring eyes that watched the ruin of the pride of Billabong—for there had been no such stables in the district. Harvey’s little plan had hit even harder than that ingenious gentleman had anticipated.
Beyond the fences the cattle stood in interested groups, fascinated by the fire; further off were the horses, thrilled with more fear than the stolid bullocks, but unable to tear themselves from the mysterious glow. But Monarch and Garryowen and Bosun were away at the farthest corner of the homestead paddock, quivering and starting yet, their hearts still pounding at the memory of the terrible moments in the burning stable; and on Garryowen’s quarter were round, burnt patches, while half of his tail was singed off. Yet pain was not so dreadful to the big thoroughbred as Fear—fear that he could not understand, that had come to him in the darkness, and was yet knocking at his heart.
At the house the fire was slackening. Billabong was built of solid brick, so that there was not a great deal of inflammable material for the flames to fasten upon; and they had been discovered soon—not allowed, as in the stables, to obtain a firm hold. The defence had been prompt and thorough. David Linton blessed the forethought, coupled with the love of his garden, that had made him equip the homestead with water laid on from the river as well as with many tanks. They had needed it all.
He was at the hose now, having relieved Jim, to whom the business of standing still and holding a nozzle had been no light penance, despite the necessity of the proceeding. One of the men had taken Wally’s place, and the boys had dashed off on a tour of the homestead, to look for any possibility of a further outbreak. David Linton looked at what remained of his house, his mouth stern—going back in memory to the time of its building, and the old, perfect companionship that had been by his side. Now the rooms that he and his wife had planned were black, smoking ruins, and the roses she had planted were shrivelled masses on the wall. There was no part of the house that did not have its memories of her, so vivid that often it seemed to him that he saw her yet, flitting about its wide corridors and the rooms that even until now had borne the magic of her touch. All the years the home had helped him to fight his loneliness and his longing. Now——. He stared at it with eyes suddenly grown old.
Then across the grass came a little odd figure—Norah, still grimy with smoke, and very shaky, with Brownie’s arm near her to help, and Jean not far off. Norah, her coat open over her blue pyjamas, and her hair, in her own phrase, “all anyhow,” about her, and her grey eyes swimming as she looked from the house to her father’s face. David Linton put down the hose and held out his hand to her silently, and Norah clung to him.
“Oh, Daddy, poor old Daddy!” she whispered.
Jim came round the corner with long strides; even odder than Norah, for he had not waited to put any overcoat over his pyjamas, and he had been drenched and dried, and blackened and torn, until he resembled a scarecrow in an advanced stage of disrepair. He gripped his father’s free hand.
“It’s not so bad, Dad!” he said, cheerily. “Lots of the old place left. We’ll all build it up again, Dad!”
David Linton smiled at his children, suddenly.
“Right, mates!” he said. “We’ll build it up again!”