And in five minutes there was a tap at her door, and in reply to her quick “Yes—what is it?” the boss’s voice came, steady and quiet as ever, but with just a trace of excitement and jubilation in it. “She’s up, Miss Lincoln—up over the ten and still rising—and your luck-bringer is under water.”
CHAPTER XX.
All that morning low clouds drifted across the sky, and Ess was in and out to examine them, and look long across the plain in the hope of seeing the rain clouds looming up.
And when a thin light shower drifted down, Ess sang for very joy, and ran to the old housekeeper, and begged her to come out in it and feel it falling. The housekeeper laughed at her and shook her head. “Wait,” she said, “wait, my dear. It’s soon yet to be rejoicin’. ’Tisn’t a shower like that we’re needin’, and I fancy the boss is countin’ more on the water from the river than from the clouds.”
“It’s going to rain; it’s going to rain,” sang Ess, and danced out to the verandah again to watch the moisture dripping slowly from the trees.
But within half an hour the shower passed and the sun came out again. Ess went down to the gate and looked across the plain. It was steaming like a cauldron, and when the boss drove up he pointed to the vapour and laughed. “There goes your rain,” he cried, “off back to the clouds again. But, never mind, that sort of watering-can sprinkle isn’t much good to us. Come and I’ll show you something, though—something that’s coming in over your luck-bringer.”
She jumped up, and he drove to where a silver streak was showing on the horizon, and when they came to it he pulled up, and Ess watched the trickle of water creeping slowly, so slowly, across the plain. She gazed at it in fascination—this fraction-of-an-inch-deep flood—that seemed so stealthy and deliberate in its movement. The dry earth yawned hungrily for it, and the hot sand drank it in, but still it crept on and on, widening and spreading towards their feet even as they watched.
“It’s like some beast crawling on its prey,” said the boss, “or a snake writhing across the ground.”
“It’s not,” she cried indignantly. “It’s an army—an army advancing bravely with banners flung and spears glancing in the sun. The army of the relief, marching to battle the drought, and the dry spell, and the heat, and bring succour to the parched land. Can’t you see it? Look, there is one of the enemy’s citadels,” she pointed to a clod of dry earth that the waters were slowly creeping round. “It is falling—it gives—it is down—” as the clod crumbled away “—and the army rolls on.” And indeed if one watched the edge closely, and the little drops of water gathering and running in the tiny scratches of channels, and filling them, and gathering again and surrounding another morsel of earth or pebble, it was easy to picture in it the rushes of armed men into the trenches, and their gathering and sweeping round the squares of the enemy, and attacking them fiercely and riding over them. One might be inclined to cheer the victorious advance—until one lifted eyes and looked across the vast plain, and things fell back into their true proportion—a thread of inch-deep water draining slowly across a Sahara desert.