“THE RUSHING FIRE WAS NOW STEERING STRAIGHT AT THEM.”

Mr. Lawson and Sydney spirited up the men, most of whom were “astonied” like the sheep. They thought that a doom was coming down on them which it was hopeless to fight against, and so were inclined to hang down their arms helplessly. To the astonishment of all, John Jones—the “sheep,” as his fellows were fond of calling him—behaved more pluckily than any of the other men. Besides his own life, he had his wife’s and his children’s to battle for; he was conscientiously devoted to his master’s interests; and moreover, he seemed pleased at getting a chance of proving that, though he couldn’t sit a buck-jumper, he could play the man better than those who jeered at his clumsy, timid horsemanship, when he and they had to confront a common peril on equal terms.

On roared and rushed the fire. Where there was scrub the earth seemed to be belching smoke. In the bush the giant boles of the gum trees stood up, grimly showing through their winding-sheets of smoke, and holding flags of flame in their gaunt arms. If any water had been left in the creek, the inhabitants of Wonga-Wonga would have plunged into it, even if they had run the risk of drowning in it. But there was not enough water left in the creek to wet the sole of the foot. On and on, with a roar and a crackle like that of huge crunched bones, as the trees toppled over into the under-smoke, came the fire from the north-west; and in the opposite direction, and on both sides, the bush was also on fire.

Mrs. Laws on gathered her girls, and Miss Smith, and Mrs. Jones and her little ones, and the other woman servant, about her in the keeping-room, and there, in a voice clear, though it trembled, she prayed, in the midst of a chorus of wails and sobs, for resignation, and preparation for the apparently certain fate, and yet for help to her husband and her boys and the men, who had mustered to give the inhabitants of Wonga-Wonga their last chance. In the line of the on-rushing fire there was a dried-up maize-paddock, which, if it once fairly caught, would bring the fire right down upon the station buildings. If that could be kept unburnt, the fire might just possibly pass them by.

Harry and Donald, I heard afterwards from Mr. Lawson, were just as brave as Sydney (and that was a good deal for Mr. Lawson to say, since he was very proud of Sydney) in this “beating-out” business. Fence-rails had hardly been torn down for weapons to fight against the fire, before the sapless crop caught. Men and boys (Mr. Lawson, Sydney, Harry, Donald, the tutor, and John Jones, in the van) rushed at the flames, mowing right and left, and striking down, like Highlanders with their broadswords. Donald had Highland blood in him, and wielded his timber claymore so courageously, and yet so coolly, that those who saw him felt half inclined to cheer him, in the very face of the quickly crackling flames that were changing, as if by magic, the withered maize into red ashes. Harry was as courageous as Donald, but he was not as cool. He would have been smothered in the smoke into which he had heedlessly plunged, if Sydney had not dashed in to bring him out. Tall men as well as Harry were struck down by the heat of the fire and the heat of the sun combined. John Jones got a sunstroke that knocked him down as a butcher knocks down an ox. The horsebreaker took hold of poor John’s head, and the tutor took hold of poor John’s legs, and between them they dragged him off the blazing heap of maize-stalks on which he had fallen face downwards. Mr. Lawson, who had a great respect for honest John, rushed up then, and stopped beating-out for a minute or two, to carry him as far as possible out of harm’s way—if any place at such a time could be called out of harm’s way. Then Mr. Lawson rushed back again, slashing away and giving the “seventh cut” with his wooden broadsword, as if he wanted to make up for lost time, and after him, up to the thickest of the fire, dashed Sydney, and Donald, and Harry, still giddy from the smoke he had swallowed.

The men, too, fought the flames with almost desperate daring, but, in spite of what any one could do, they gained on the paddock. More than half of it had been consumed when the wind slanted to the N.E. farther and more suddenly than it had veered to the N.W. The fire went by the head-station buildings, gobbling up an outlying hut or two, and many a rod of fencing; but the house and most of the huts, the barn, store, wool-shed, &c., were only blistered.

Mr. Lawson, nevertheless, was a good deal poorer at night than he had been when the morning dawned through the ominous banks and wreaths of smoke; but when he gathered all his people together in the evening to return thanks to the good God for their great deliverance, he felt happier, perhaps, than he had ever felt before in his life. The house verandah was the place of common worship. The air was still stiflingly close, and poor little “salamander” Harry fainted as he leaned his scorched face against one of the half-charred verandah-posts. Sydney carried him to bed, and heroic Harry had to submit to the indignity—fortunately without being conscious of it—of being “tucked in” and kissed, not only by “dear mamma and the girls”—theirs he would have considered, perhaps, rather over-fussy, but still legitimate attentions—but also by Miss Smith and Mrs. Jones.

VII.
AN AUSTRALIAN FLOOD.

A few days after the great bush-fire I told you about in my last chapter, Harry and Donald came to spend a week or two with a friend of Mr. Lawson’s who lived just outside Jerry’s Town. The hut that was used for school-room at Wonga-Wonga had come to grief in the fire, not a bit of it being left standing, except the blackened brick chimney. The tutor was laid up, owing to his unwonted exertions at the fire, and it was thought that a little change would do the boys no harm. Accordingly, their saddle-bags were bulged out with changes of raiment (“creases” are not thought so much of in the Bush as they would be by Belgravian swells), and Harry and Donald cantered into Jerry’s Town on Cornstalk and Flora M‘Ivor.