“Keep it well under, but let it run,” was all he said, as, lighting a dried bush with a match, he ran the fire along the ground in front of the coming flames.
A stranger seeing it all would have felt sure that the remedy would have been as bad as the disease, for the fire which Harry himself made every now and again seemed to get the better of those who were endeavoring to control it. There might perhaps be a quarter of a mile between the front of the advancing fire and the line at which Harry had commenced to destroy the food which would have fed the coming flames. He himself, as quickly as he lighted the grass, which in itself was the work but of a moment, would strain himself to the utmost at the much harder task of controlling his own fire, so that it should not run away from him, and get, as it were, out of his hands, and be as bad to him as that which he was thus seeking to circumvent. The German and Jacko worked like heroes, probably with intense enjoyment of the excitement, and, after a while, found a fourth figure among the flames, for Mickey had now returned.
“You saw them,” Harry said, panting with his work.
“They’s all right,” said Mickey, flopping away with a great bough; “but that tarnation Chinese has gone off.”
“My word! Sing Sing. Find him at Boolabong,” said Jacko.
The German, whose gum-tree bough was a very big one, and whose every thought was intent on letting the fire run while he still held it in hand, had not breath for a syllable.
But the back fire was extending itself, so as to get round them. Every now and then Harry extended his own line, moving always forward toward Gangoil as he did so, though he and his men were always on Brownbie’s territory. He had no doubt but that where he could succeed in destroying the grass for a breadth of forty or fifty yards he would starve out the inimical flames. The trees and bushes without the herbage would not enable it to travel a yard. Wherever the grass was burned down black to the soil, the fire would stop. But should they, who were at work, once allow themselves to be outflanked, their exertions would be all in vain. And then those wretches might light a dozen fires. The work was so hard, so hot, and often so hopeless, that the unhappy young squatter was more than once tempted to bid his men desist and to return to his homestead. The flames would not follow him there. He could, at any rate, make that safe. And then, when he had repudiated this feeling as unworthy of him, he began to consider within himself whether he would not do better for his property by taking his men with him on to his run, and endeavoring to drive his sheep out of danger. But as he thought of all this, he still worked, still fired the grass, and still controlled the flames. Presently he became aware of what seemed to him at first to be a third fire. Through the trees, in the direction of the river, he could see the glimmering of low flames and the figures of men. But it was soon apparent to him that these men were working in his cause, and that they, too, were burning the grass that would have fed the advancing flames. At first he could not spare the minute which would be necessary to find out who was his friend, but, as they drew nearer, he knew the man. It was the sugar planter from the mill and with him his foreman.
“We’ve been doing our best,” said Medlicot, “but we’ve been terribly afraid that the fire would slip away from us.”
“It’s the only thing,” said Harry, too much excited at the moment to ask questions as to the cause of Medlicot’s presence so far from his home at that time of the evening. “It’s getting round us, I’m afraid, all the same.”
“I don’t know but it is. It’s almost impossible to distinguish. How hot the fire makes it!”