“If the creek rises we shall be cut off from the horses,” thinks Claude, as he hears the awe-inspiring mutterings of thunder echoing down the valley.
“Suppose I must go out and turn the brutes back this way myself,” he says to himself, adding in a louder voice, “Here, Joe, you young rascal. Come, turn out and lend me a hand.” But the youngster sleeps on, or pretends to do so, and Angland, hearing the heavy drops of rain that, like skirmishers before the advance guard of the shower, begin to pat, pit-pat, plop around, thinks that it is a pity to disturb the boy, and determines to go alone, as the horses are at no great distance, and so save the youth a ducking.
Angland therefore rakes up the fire into a blaze, so that it may serve as a beacon to guide him on his way back to the camp, and as he steps forth into the darkness he hears the buzz of a heavy tropical rainfall coming nearer and nearer over the forest leaves.
Stumbling down the hill the best way he can in the darkness, over awkward boulders and through detaining brushwood, Claude soon finds himself upon the plain. The horse-bell sounds delightfully near at hand, and crossing the bed of the creek with some difficulty, he finds it already knee-deep in water, although quite dry when he passed it three hours before. Another minute or two and he is alongside of the bell-horse, and by stooping can distinguish the heads of several of the others standing out against the lighter sky on the horizon like inferior silhouettes. Then, as if some one had pulled the string of an enormous shower-bath suspended in the great black cloud overhead, down comes the rain in one mighty cataract that floods the plain around with tons of water per acre in as many seconds,—a true tropical shower that will fill the half-empty water-holes in a few minutes to overflowing. It is not long, however, before the downfall lessens in violence, and then, using old Rupert as a blind, Claude drifts gradually towards the other horses, which are momentarily revealed by the white glare of lightning flashes. Some of the animals are naturally rogues at any time, and now are doubly difficult to approach, having become timid and treacherous under the combined effects of heaven’s fiery and watery display.
After a hard fight, however, a series of highly scientific strategic movements brings the work of unhobbling to a close, and mounting his own mare barebacked, which Claude knows he can reckon on as a good swimmer, he drives the little mob of horses across the level ground, now six inches deep in water, towards the river. An almost constant succession of lightning flashes shows to the rider the frightened animals before him for the first hundred yards,—then, suddenly, the electric display ceases, and the rain pours sullenly down; and Claude finds himself sitting on a wet, trembling steed in perfect darkness, without the slightest idea of which direction he ought to pursue in order to find the camp, whose fire he has long lost sight of.
Our young friend, whose bush experience has not been lengthy enough to teach him to trust his steed rather than himself in such an emergency, now goes through the usual bewildering tactics of a new “hand.” One minute pushing on hurriedly, the next stopping to listen for Rupert’s bell, anon trying to retrace his steps, till he is completely lost, and as cold and miserable as he was jolly and warm half an hour before.
By-and-by the storm begins to withdraw from off the face of the sky like the black edge of a magic-lantern slide, and a patch of starlit heaven shows towards the east, shining all the brighter apparently for having had such a washing.
Claude now gradually makes out that he is close under a cliff, and strains his eyes into the darkness to see more; when, hiss! and the blackness before him is suddenly dissolved into fire. A blue-white column of flame has leapt from the cloud above and struck the earth close in front with frightful force, and everything around whirls into sparks, chaos, then silent darkness.
For, unconscious of the mighty crash of thunder that, like a thousand exploding shells, follows instantly upon the flash, Claude is lying stunned and bleeding beneath a tree against which his frighted steed has thrown him, on the other side of the valley to that where his camp amongst the rocks is situated.