"Too late, I'm feared," said Paddy, looking at the sky. "But we'll come, anyhow. Got 'ny tucker?"
"Whips," I answered; "just fetch your blankets."
We went back on the run, reaching my place at dusk, and, arming ourselves with green bushes, fired the grass round the humpy. The sun being off it, it went slowly, and was easily kept within bounds. In an hour we had the hut standing safely in a burnt patch of about a couple of acres. Then tea and bunk. But there was no sleep for me. The sky remained overcast, and the wind cold. I was in and out like a jack-in-the-box all night. About 2 a.m. there was a few minutes' slight drizzle, and my heart sank. At first streak of dawn ("sparrow-crack," in the vernacular) we were out, choked down some breakfast, then crossed into Braun's and drove Pardy's bullocks into a timber track in the scrub, cooping them up safely with a few bits of barb wire across the entrance. The morning was misty.
"Um!" said old Paddy. "Might be fine after all. That mizzle las' night won' 'urt. Wasn' 'nough ter but damp the top stuff; 'n if the sun comes out bright and 'ot bye and bye, it'll make the bark split on the big logs, 'n yer'll git all the better burn f'r it."
How anxiously I waited! At eight o'clock out sprang the sun in full strength. Nine—ten—then eleven o'clock came, and the day was one of the hottest I have ever felt up here. Half-past eleven!
"Now, me little frogs' ears," said Barker. "A few buckets of water ready at the hut; then away she goes a million!"
We got the water, then went up to the scrub, running along the edge of the falling and lighting up all round as we went, as quick as possible. Then back to the hut, fired all the grass round the burnt patch, and stopped there to watch the building. Before long we wished we hadn't stopped, but by that time we daren't try to cross the burning grass, roaring away in the daytime. It wasn't too bad the first half-hour. There was just the thin blue reek from the crackling grass, and in the background the thicker smoke, rapidly increasing, from the scrub. Every now and again a darting tongue of dark crimson flame, with a fresh volume of oily black smoke, told that the line of fire was quickly joining up round the clearing. A little while longer, then, as the air inside the sixty-acre patch got heated and rarified, a strong breeze rose, setting into the fire from all sides, and going upward in the heated area, as through a funnel. At once a steady muffled roar was audible, and some trees left standing in the falling had quite big branches torn off and whirled aloft.
The falling was now fired all over by flying sparks, and the fire speedily assumed the appearance of a huge waterspout of thick oily black smoke sky-high, shot with innumerable flickering tongues of crimson flame. It roared like a titanic engine under tremendous steam pressure. As the smoke bellied out overhead and slowly overspread the sky, the sunlight faded, and gave place to a dim yellow twilight, which had an inexpressibly depressing effect on the spirits—a sort of "something going to happen" feeling. The strong draught whirled and eddied the smoke clouds round, nearly suffocating us in the hut, but, with streaming eyes and mouths covered by cloths, we kept a sharp look-out, extinguishing any sparks that alighted on or near the house. At one time it struck awe to our hearts to see a billowing cloud of flame, like a crimson cloth being shaken out, some sixty feet right overhead.
In the midst of it all there came a wild yell from Braun's, "Hay! Hay!! Hay!!! You in that 'ut there. I see yer. Wer's me bullicks?" and there was Pardy dancing excitedly about on the creek bank. "Oh, lemme get atchyer. You wait, you Senex, yer —— cow. I'll burst yer fer firin'!"
"Yer bullocks" (cough, cough) "are all right. They're" (cough) "penned up in Ellison's" (cough) "track. Can't get out," I wheezed, eyes, nose and lungs full of smoke. "Fire caught by acci" (cough) "dent."