Page:The New Arcadia (Tucker).djvu/247

Rh At length the knoll is gained. Across the bare rock limps the almost hairless 'Salamander.' "Co-ee!" shouts the singed and blackened rider emerging on the hill-top. The universe seems wrapped in smoke and flames.

Again and again—between the roar of the flames, the scream of the kangaroo enclosed in the fire, as snakes crawled away between the horse's feet to die, and the iguana hung to the blazing bark unable now to dodge the rider, as if playing "hide and seek" round the smoking trunk, as the hot rocks beneath his feet seemed to quake, and the hill reverberated with the crash of giant gums—the rider staggered round the little knoll, calling with thicker, choking voice—

"Mary! Coo-ee! Hullo—o!"

Ah! there, surely, is a response!

Only the death-cry of the opossum, awakened from dream of gum-leaves galore to find that for it "the end of the world" had come.

Hark! a moan of pain! Only the wombat that has dug, with bandicoot and rabbit, its own grave, and is being buried and cremated at the same time.

There, indeed, is a step behind! Only the emu singed, frightened no longer of aught save the fire, with native companion, blackened and graceful of gait no more.

The flames creep on. Soon the little oasis in the desert of fire will be swept by the devastating flames. Here already they have found entry. There is no beating them back. They have seized, with wild joy, the wattle-clump, and are leaping from its silver boughs to the pine-tree top above. Another moment and the bushy knoll will be wrapped in one sheet of roaring fire!

Ah! what is this, nestling in the heather?

"My God, I thank Thee! The child! The child!" cries the choking rider. He reels from his horse.