“Yes—we got them.” She put her tanned cheek against the baby’s soft face for a moment. “But when you got to choose between your man an’ the kids—” Her voice died away; and Robin had no words to offer.
Breakfast was a meal for which no one had much appetite, except Micky and Joe, who wore an air of awe-struck bewilderment at a world which held so many new and unexpected things to eat. The heat increased with a kind of bitter intensity. No animals were to be seen in the scorched paddocks: they had all sought the creek, where they stood with hanging heads, in dumb protest at the breathless stillness. Robin and Barry agreed that it was too hot to walk to the swimming-hole, with the prospect of a worse walk back, to destroy the effect of a bathe. Everyone seemed restless and uneasy; people jumped at a sound, without knowing why they jumped. It was as though the still air was charged with something mysterious and uncanny.
And, at eleven o’clock, came the wind.
It came with a far-off soughing, like the sound of breakers on a distant beach. They heard it for what seemed a long while before they felt it; but at the first sound Mrs. Ryan got up hurriedly and went into the yard, where she stood gazing towards the hills that she could not see. Nearer and nearer: and then it was upon them. The trees in the orchard bent suddenly, and one old pear-tree snapped with a sharp crack: Mrs. Ryan’s thin skirts whipped round her legs: an empty kerosene-tin was blown rattling and banging across the yard with the first wild gust. A burning wind, like the breath of a furnace: it caught the house and shook it, and, racing on, whirled the dust from the road into a dense, eddying cloud. They shut the house against it, closing every door and window; and the wind howled and moaned as it eddied among the chimneys, and swelled to a full-throated roar, sweeping down the valley. So it blew, unbroken in its scorching fierceness, for more than sixteen hours.
Borne on its fiery breath came the smoke: such smoke as made the valley settlers realize that the earlier haze, by comparison, had been but as a light morning mist. It came in a dense, unbroken cloud, blotting out the country, until it was impossible to see more than a hundred yards in any direction. The sun, a great ball of angry orange, seemed to hang framed in it. Like a wall of dull yellow the smoke marched across the land, turning every familiar object into an unreal ghost. The very flowers in the garden lost their colour before it: Robin’s crimson dahlias showed a dull flame-colour, the blue of the plumbago flowers a dirty grey. And ever the roar of the wind grew louder and louder, and its breath more laden with fierce heat.
They could not stay in the shut house. Even though the hot gusts parched the skin and choked the breath—even though they could see nothing but the dense smoke-wall that shut them in—no one could bear to remain indoors. There was worse yet to come, they knew: danger that must be watched for, out in the open. And presently, in the garden, came the first messengers from the burning ranges: ashes, falling thickly, charred fronds of bracken, half-burned twigs, and fragments of bark. No fire lived in them, but many were still hot. They came more and more swiftly, until the coverlets of the beds on the verandas were black with them: blown so fiercely that many were forced underneath the pillows.
The scorching wind grew wilder until it was a very hurricane of heat. A new sound began to mingle with its fury; a dull, far-off roar that made the Hill Farm watchers look at each other in voiceless fear. As they stood by the fence, they heard galloping hoofs, and David Merritt raced up on a sweating horse.
“That you, Mrs. Hurst? They’re bringing people here—the Gordon family and the Watts and Duncans. There’s no earthly chance for their homes. You must be ready to make for the creek.”
“Is the fire very near?” Mrs. Hurst asked.
“God knows where there isn’t fire! All the ranges are burning, on both sides of the valley, and the fire is coming down fast. There’s no fighting it, in this awful wind. Eh, Robin, that’s a good sight!”—for Robin had slipped away, returning with a long tumbler of cool drink. He drained it thirstily.