CHAPTER XV
The fire did not reach the trees above the pool till it had swept theorchards, sheds, and house on the brow of the hill.
Mrs. Cameron watched it devouring them. Every line of the sheds andbarns, the eaves and corners of the home that Donald and she had made,was struck against the glare.
The stables fell with a crash. Flames went up from the new weatherboardcorner of the house.
"It's like watching someone you love die slowly," she cried.
A breath of wind brought a shower of blackened and burning leaves. By aflank movement the fire was sweeping towards them. The wind springing upgave it zest; it sprang in long brilliant leaps over the quivering topsof the trees. Davey and the Schoolmaster dropped from their horses. Mrs.Cameron, Deirdre and Jenny crouched in the water till the fury of theflames had passed over their heads. Davey had his hands full to keep thecows from breaking away, mad with terror. Socks, the most restive andmettlesome of the horses, started and whinnied as burning leaves struckhim. Deirdre threw her wet blanket over him and cowered next to himunder it, murmuring soothingly: "There now! Steady, old boy! Steady, mypretty!"
The Schoolmaster held his own horse and Lass, startled out of herpeaceful phlegm by the terrifying roar and heat.
Even when the flames had raced on over the tree-tops it was not safe toleave the pool. The men and women in it stood in water to their waistsfor hours, a red haze enveloping them. The blankets dried in a fewminutes. The bush behind them through which the fire had passed showedtrees stripped of their greenery and outlined with glowing embers. Someof the dead trees beside the pool burned dully, and fluttering red andblackened leaves drifted from the saplings.
Once Jenny had to dip to her neck as a spark of fire caught her dress.
"Look out, Mrs. Cameron!" Deirdre cried sharply, hearing a crack andseeing a glowing bough waver over Davey's mother.
The Schoolmaster brushed Mrs. Cameron aside, and the bough struck hisface. Deirdre uttered a low cry. Davey, too, had seen the Schoolmaster'smovement.
"Are you hurt, Mr. Farrel?" he asked anxiously.
"No, it isn't anything at all!" the Schoolmaster replied brusquely, witha half laugh.
Mrs. Cameron herself did not realise what had happened.
To the glare of the fire and the hot red mists, a few hours before dawn,succeeded a heavy darkness, lit only by the columns of dead treesburning to ember.
The night seemed endless. When the first wavering gleam came in theeastern sky it revealed the blackened fringe of the trees, their greenwaving draperies scorched and fire-eaten, where the fire, like aravening monster, had half-consumed them and passed on.
The wind had swept the haze and the smoke before it. The bosom of theearth lay bare of the light, dry, wanly-golden grass that had coveredit; and from the paddocks and blackened forest thin spirals and breathsof bluish smoke rose and drifted. The peaceful space of trees and thesummer-dried grasses about the Ayrmuir homestead were gone. Charredoutlines of sheds and what of the house was still left, stood on thebrow of the hill.
In the wan light, the pool mirrored the desolation and the haggard andweary men and women who stood in it. Chilled and cramped from being inthe water so long, exhausted with the anxieties of the night, theyventured warily back to the still hot earth.
Mrs. Cameron's eyes turned first to her son. His face was grimed withsmoke and leaf smuts. There were angry red flushes on it where scraps ofburning foliage had struck him. Deirdre's and Jenny's clothes hung tothem, scorched and dripping; there were burnt holes in Mrs. Cameron'sown dress. Farrel and Davey were drenched to the skin.
The Schoolmaster had tied a handkerchief over his face, covering oneeye.
In the first light of the dawn Deirdre exclaimed when she saw it.
"Father," she cried, "you're hurt."
"I'm all right," he said irritably.
She went over to him and lifted the handkerchief.
His face was curiously wrung with pain and blanched beneath the tan andsmoke-grime. A clammy sweat beaded on his forehead.
"Hold your tongue, Deirdre," he muttered. "It's only a bit of a burn."
Mrs. Cameron was gazing at the ruins of her home.
"What is it?" she asked, hearing his voice, low as it as pitched. "Oh,you've got a bad burn?"
She went towards him, distress in her eyes.
"It's nothing at all; it doesn't matter!" He edged away from her so thatshe should not see. "When you and Davey are fixed up, Mrs. Cameron,Deirdre and I must get along and see how Steve and the school fared."
They found some flour, bread and tea in stone jars among the ruins ofthe kitchen. Davey milked the cows. Mrs. Cameron and Jenny built a firein the yard, and when they had all breakfasted on the scorched bread andsome tea, Mrs. Cameron wanted to put flour on the Schoolmaster's burn.But he said that it was not worth bothering about and would have nothingdone for it.
The Pioneers Page 15