"Hold your breath for your work," Mr. Bradby advised. "You might need it all yet."
They had made good headway by this, and the path that they had picked out took them every hour deeper into the unexplored heart of the country. On every side of them stretched the unbroken fastnesses of the primeval wilderness, sheer precipices dropping suddenly into infinite space, jagged peaks towering dizzily into the misty vault of heaven, quaintly situated valleys so masked by timber and brushwood that one came across them only by accident. There is something in the naked face of Nature, in the sheer magnificence of incredible heights and the marvellous massiveness of big timber that somehow dwarfs man into insignificance and makes him realise the puniness of his strength. There was something in the scenes now opening up before the rangers that subdued them and beat them into silence. There was beauty in the sight, the soft eternal beauty of an unravished land, but over and above that was the suggestion that the travellers were fighting not merely against their kind but against the untrammelled forces of an all-powerful wilderness.
The time was early December, and the golden wattle in full bloom. From end to end the ranges were a blaze of color, near at hand deep gold, fading away in the distance into that hazy blue-grey peculiar to Australian mountains. Hour by hour the men rode on in silence, at times galloping down the slopes, at others crawling slowly and painfully up hills that stretched apparently to heaven, hills that yet dropped suddenly into space when one had almost given up all hope of ever reaching the summit.
They had lost all sight of the pursuers, though once Bradby caught a glimpse of smoke far away to the east, smoke that he fancied came from the mid-day fire of the troopers.
They halted at sunset in the shadow of a clump of red gums and made the first meal since morning. As a result of a hurried consultation they decided to press on until midnight. But the horses were wearied with the rough and constant travelling, and it took the better part of two hours for them to cover a little under three miles.
"They've got to have a rest and so have we," Bradby said finally. "The pace is killing, and I'm quite satisfied that the police are taking it fairly easy. We've got scared over nothing. They might not even be on our track. At any rate I suggest we finish for the night and get what sleep we can."
Abel Cumshaw raised no objection to this—as a matter of fact he was almost falling from his mount out of sheer saddle-weariness—so a halt was called, the horses were unsaddled, the men unrolled their blankets and settled down to slumber just as the silver ghost of the moon flooded the place with its cool white light.
It was broad daylight when they awoke, and the sun was already high up in the heavens.
"Somewhere about nine or ten o'clock," Cumshaw guessed. "We've slept in, Jack."
Bradby ruefully admitted that this was so, but excused it on the ground that they would be better fitted for the day's work.