The tornado lasted about three minutes—that was all—and then it passed, and all those tremendous sounds became muffled in the distance as it retreated.
Gradually the stunned senses of the boys began to recover, and they heard Peter speaking. "It missed us," he was saying. "It came pretty close, though. I thought the hotel was gone for a cert." Then he struck a match and held it to his pipe. The little light flared up steadily and showed two boys in pyjamas, the smooth cement walls of the tank, and the bushman in his shirt and trousers, but without his boots. It showed also a cat which had died a long time ago, and which had been dried up by the great heat. The sight of the squashed cat was so funny, down in the tank, that the boys started to laugh. It was a relief to do so after the strain of the last few minutes.
"We'd better get out of this," said Peter, throwing the match at the cat and starting to climb up an iron ladder. "Were you lads much scared?"
It was so evident that they had been very much scared that their emphatic denial of it made them all laugh again. "I tell you, I was," confessed the bushman. "I reckoned the whole town was going to glory. It would have, too, if the wind had struck it. The thing must have turned off before it got here."
Such tornadoes as the one described occur in Central Australia just before the breaking up of long droughts. Sometimes they are mere harmless willy-willies, which have not enough power to blow a man off his horse, but now and again a bigger one comes along, which travels at thirty or forty miles an hour at the centre and sweeps everything before it. These tornadoes may not be more than a quarter of a mile across, and look from the distance like huge brown waterspouts coiling up into the air till they are lost in the clear blue of the sky. Sometimes the whirling column of sand leaves the ground for a time and goes on spinning away high over the heads of everything, but it usually comes down again and goes on tearing across the country. The Central Australian tornado must not be confused with the tropical typhoon or cyclone, which is sometimes three or four hundred miles across.
Peter was right about the tornado turning off before it reached Hergott Springs. It came across the country from the Musgrave Ranges in the north-west till it reached the Dingo Creek. Here it turned and followed the dry depression, wrecked the Dingo Creek railway bridge, leaving it a mass of twisted iron and hanging sleepers, and then tore on down the line, doing a great deal of damage and making straight for the helpless township.
There is a very deep and wide cutting about a mile north of Hergott Springs, and the fury of the wind that night completely filled it up with sand from bank to bank. This undoubtedly saved the town, for, after this exhibition of its power, the tornado turned slightly to the east, and missed the houses entirely. The fringe of it, however, touched the end of the station yard, where the great water-tank stood. The wind caught this tremendous weight, lifted it from the platform, and threw it fifty yards, while the steel pillars of the stand were twisted together as if they had been cotton. A tool-shed which used to stand near the tank was moved bodily, and no trace of it was ever found. No doubt it was buried deep in one of the many sandhills which these terrific winds leave behind them.