Colonial Born: A Tale of the Queensland bush

by G. Firth Scott

Her voice died down to a mournful monotone as she spoke—colourless, unimpassioned, melancholy. But to Dickson it was twice as terrifying as when she shouted and laughed. He looked as she directed towards the big column of smoke, which suddenly sprang up, as it were, from a bed of writhing, twisting tongues of flame.

"It's on us!" he shrieked in a sudden access of panic, and made a dash for the door.

She turned and faced him, and, as he came up to her, flung her arms around him, and held him.

"Leave go," he shouted, as he struggled; but she only raised her face to his—a calm, set face, pale to the lips, and showing the more ghastly from the dishevelled mass of dark hair that surrounded it. "Leave go," he repeated; and, as she still held, he raised his fist and brought it down on the upturned face, and tried to wrest himself free.

She buried her face against his shirt, seizing part of it in her teeth to aid her to keep her hold of him. He struck at her head, at her arms, at her body, anywhere, so long as he hit her, in his efforts to throw her off. But she held him, and at last, mad with fear, he tried to stagger out of the hut, dragging her with him.

The man on the stretcher made an effort to raise himself as the noise of the scuffle roused him. He also saw through the open door the rolling masses of smoke and the dancing line of flame.

"The bush is afire," he gasped. "Here, Willy, get me out of this. Help me to move. Willy! Willy! My God! I'm your father, boy; don't leave me."

But Dickson, dragging Nellie with him, had already gained the door.

"I'm all broken up. I can't move alone. Willy! Willy!" Tap cried as loud as he could, for the fall he had had the night before had given him a mortal hurt.

Dickson had reached the door and stood for a moment helpless to move at the sight which met his glance. The fire seemed to have swept down in two wide converging curves, rushing through the bush and setting it ablaze all round before it advanced on to the cleared land of the selection. It had just attacked the vegetation in the paddocks as Dickson got outside the hut, and which ever way he looked he saw a line of leaping flames sweeping towards him. The heat was scorching; the air stifling. The voice of the man in the hut fell on unheeding ears, for only one chance of escape appeared, and that was Slaughter's waterhole. With Nellie clinging to him he staggered towards it. Every second the heat was more intense, the smoke-laden air more stifling, and at the edge of the pool he swayed, even the strength born of his fear deserting him. With a wild, hopeless cry he fell forward into the water, and floundered towards the middle of the fence which Slaughter had built across it. As he reached the middle, breathless and exhausted with fear and the strain of Nellie's weight, a line of flame darted through the grass at the side of the track, and sprang, like a snake, up the wall of the hut, writhing out over the dried sheets of bark of the roof as, with a roar, the whole burst into flame. Other flames leaped out along the line of the fence; the heat came upon him with such fierceness that he felt his skin blister and crack; the smoke entered his lungs and made him choke as though a cord were tied tight round his throat, and with a glimpse of Nellie's face, upturned as her arms relaxed and she slipped down under the water, Dickson fell senseless across the rail of the fence.