"Oars out!" cried he as the boat swept into the angry and turbulent river. Save for shipping some water, and drenching the crew with spray, the little craft weathered the river plunge. An involuntary "Oh!" came from the boys as the boat shot the rapids and soused into the river. Immediately she came under the influence of two currents; that going outward from the chute, and the swift down-river stream.
This effect was to take them instantly well out toward the centre of the flood, with a strong drift which carried the boat into the vicinity of the Bend. The river bend gave the current a direction which set across to the other side. This diagonal movement was accelerated by the chute waters, which retained their impetus, in a measure, for a considerable distance.
Downward then, and cross-wise to the northern bank, the frail craft sped, the sport and play of the watery element. Dangers stood, or rather, drifted thick around the adventurers. Picture for a moment a tiny vessel, some fifteen feet over all, whose timbers are of the proverbial egg-shell thickness, shot into an angry, bubbling cauldron, whose tumultuous waters heaved and swirled, hissed and roared, in inarticulate sound and motion.
That, in itself, were an experience of sufficient magnitude to quicken the blood, test the nerves, and try the courage of the hardiest waterman. Add to the perils of that situation a thousand floating dangers, any one of which might crush that tiny, drifting cockle-shell out of existence, and you have the position which faced and surrounded the affrighted lads on the demon-ridden waters.
CHAPTER VII
THE DEATH OF THE FOREST MONARCH
"There's the white-box and pine on the ridges afar,
Where the iron-bark, blue-gum, and peppermint are;
There's many another, but dearest to me,
And king of them all is the stringy-bark tree."
HENRY LAWSON.
As several years had intervened between the present and the last flood of considerable dimension, every creek, gully, and river-flat of the upper reaches were contributing their quota of fallen timber, which in the interval had encumbered the earth. In addition, the flood-waters had torn many a giant eucalyptus, roots and all, from its earthhold, and had borne it on its heaving and rebellious bosom, a mere plaything of its vengeful humour.
Up to the present a monarch of the forest, whose rugged bole bears indubitable evidence of its antiquity, stands skywards with its head in the clouds. The Philistines are upon it. Its innumerable roots, lateral and vertical, hold with frantic clutch to mother earth, as it grimly wrestles with its Gargantuan foe. But the earth, which for years innumerable has mothered the forest lord, furnishing his daily portion of meat and drink, nourishing and cherishing him till he bulks in girth and height as Saul among the prophets, proving faithful in every tussle with wind and flood heretofore, now turns traitor. The soil dissolves in the swirling waters as they ravish the earth. Above and underneath the roots it melts, and is carried away in the thickening stream. The hold of the old monarch is weakening. His limbs are trembling. His strong body, that has withstood the pressure of a thousand fights with the hereditary foe, vibrates and sways now, as his remorseless antagonist grips him in cruel embrace.
His old comrades higher up, who have fallen earlier in this battle of giants, come drifting along, battered and torn; veritable shipwrecks, dismantled and broken. One floating leviathan, flood-driven, sweeps onward full upon his writhing form ... a violent shock and shudder that runs from root to topmost leaf ... a last wrestle, strong, heroic, and pitiful! ... Then, betrayed and spent, under the last straw, as it were, of the fateful impact of his wrecked mate—now converted into a battering-ram—the grand old hero-king yields. His foe has sought and found, like one in the olden time, his vulnerability in his heel. Overborne at last, but not yet broken, he shakes his lofty head in the quiver of mortal spasm. Suddenly he topples, lurches, staggers, and falls with a mighty crash, which is, indeed, a resounding death-cry. Striking the enemy with a last, concentrated, savage blow, he splits her bosom, and sends great spurts of her muddy blood, spray-like, a hundred feet in air. But the wound heals as speedily as delivered, and from thence he passes quickly, in company with his defeated brothers, an inert mass of strewn wreckage, to form, farther down upon the skurrying waters, a floating barricade of death-dealing timbers. And so on and on, till the blue sea is reached, where it is heaved to and fro, a rudderless hulk upon the bosom of the ocean; until it is stranded at last as flotsam and jetsam upon the beach.