"I didn't hear if they were there or not, but Gleeson can go in himself to-morrow. They won't know him now, after the night they're having."
"If Walker's not there he's waiting for them somewhere," Gleeson said.
"Then it's good enough for you to get in and start the game before they come," Barber said; adding, "And maybe you'll have sense enough to hold your tongue after the last experience you had. And you too, Tap, d'ye hear? I'm boss of this show, and don't you forget it."
The two men addressed did not answer; and Slaughter, sitting in front of the fire and looking into the red mass with eyes that were dazed and lustreless, wondered what all the comings and goings and muttered conversation, which had so inexplicably supplanted the still solitude of the Three-mile, had to do with him and his selection.
CHAPTER XI.
BILLIARDS MADE EASY.
There was a lurid atmosphere at Birralong during the days that the diggers held high revel at the Rest. The sun blazed down pitilessly on the land, stricken sore by the drought; for it was the season of the year when the rain should have come in copious downfalls to moisten the parched soil, and when thunderstorms, accompanied by the vivid gleam of tropical lightning, should have come to cool and clear the air. But no rain came; not even a cloud obscured the blue of the sky for a moment, and not a suspicion of dew fell during the hours of darkness. Only the lightning came, as soon as the sun was down, blazing, flaring, and flashing round the horizon and high overhead; disturbing the darkness as the patter of a tattoo disturbs silence; punctuating the night into periods of sombre, awful blackness by moments of dazzling, blinding white fury, that made the eyes tingle through the succeeding moments of dark, and the ears shrink and tremble, anticipating the rending thunder-crash which never came. And always was the air hot and dry, and the wind, when it blew, was as a breath from the mouth of a volcano. The grass, withered and brown, fell away into dust; the leaves hung limp and flaccid on the trees; the cultivation areas of the selections were parched and dismal; and to add to the tribulation of the selectors, swarms of grasshoppers were abroad, swooping down in clouds, made up of myriads, upon everything that was green or bore the semblance of green, and never moving on until only the bare earth and the stripped tree branches were left.