In Quest of Gold; Or, Under the Whanga Falls

by Alfred St. Johnston

It was towards the middle of the afternoon, some little time after they had renewed their march, that the sky began to grow lurid at the horizon and the day to grow faintly dimmer. The sun still poured down its scorching rays upon them; the wind seemed to grow hotter and hotter till men and animals fairly gasped for breath, and the air, tremulous with the heat of the burning earth, was quivering to a height of twenty feet above their heads. Every moment the sky grew duller, and in the west a copper-coloured cloud rose slowly in the sky; gradually the light of day grew red, and thin films of cloud rapidly sweeping across the face of the sun changed his brightness to a dull blood hue.

All the members of the little party well knew what this meant. Some tribe of myalls had carelessly left their camp fire not quite extinguished, and the hot wind that was blowing had re-animated the dying embers in the early morning and set fire to the bush. Every blade of grass, every bit of scrub, and every leaf, were as dry as tinder, and leaped into flame the instant that the rapidly-spreading fire came to it. In a short time the whole district was blazing, and fanned by the strong hot wind, the fire spread in all directions with inconceivable rapidity.

Directly that Murri, who was the first to detect the ruddy tint in the western sky, had called Alec's attention to the fact of the bush fire, they came to a halt to consult as to what had better be done.

"With this strong wind the fire will travel much quicker than we can," said Alec, with a tone of anxiety in his voice that was very natural in their present danger; "or we could turn and ride back to our last camp, for there is water there, and no fire could reach us on that open sandy space."

"The horses couldn't travel that far under eight hours; they are almost done up as it is," said George. "Heavens, how hot it is! It is like breathing in an oven."

"No, I don't think they could; it has been a trying day for them, and they are pretty well pumped. We are unlucky beggars; everything seems against us; you nearly killed by the myalls, Prince Tom robbing us of our stores, and now all of us to be burnt up alive. There isn't a creek or a pool that we can get into, and the fire is quickly marching up to us. There! Didn't you smell the burning fern just then?"

"Yes; by Jove! it is coming near; but don't be so despondent, Alec. It isn't on us yet. Don't you think that by pushing on to the north or south, as fast as ever we can make the horses go, we might reach the end of the line of fire and head round it? Let us ask Murri."

But the native, who had been scanning, with the keenest anxiety in every line of his face, the advancing line of smoke, said that the fire was already too extended for them to think of doing that, and that in his opinion the only plan that offered them any chance of safety was to push ahead with the greatest speed and try to reach the rocks at Nooergup before the flames could meet them. He spoke with most unusual excitement, his quick, restless eyes expressing better than his words his sense of their imminent danger.

"Burrima, burrima" (quickly, quickly), said he with rapid utterance. "Nebbe mind um yarroman. Ride, ride, ride. Kill um yarroman, then you not dead. Plenty much slow go, all fellow dead along o' this place."

Seeing from his manner that he thought their peril great, and knowing full well the horrors of a great bush fire, the boys put their horses to their best speed and galloped on. It almost seemed like courting death to ride straight in the teeth of the advancing fire, but they knew that they might rely upon Murri's word, so they acted as he advised. The horses themselves soon became aware of their danger, for when they had crossed the next low ridge, after an hour's rapid riding along a fairly level stretch of scrub-covered country, the line of leaping flame could be seen, stretching as far as the eye could see to the north and south. The quivering limbs of the beasts, their dilated nostrils and wildly starting eyes, showed how greatly they feared the dreaded element.