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Pioneers, The

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<h2>CHAPTER XV</h2> The fire did not reach the trees above the pool till it had swept the orchards, sheds, and house on the brow of the hill. Mrs. Cameron watched it devouring them. Every line of the sheds and barns, 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 weatherboard corner 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 a flank movement the fire was sweeping towards them. The wind springing up gave it zest; it sprang in long brilliant leaps over the quivering tops of the trees. Davey and the Schoolmaster dropped from their horses. Mrs. Cameron, Deirdre and Jenny crouched in the water till the fury of the flames had passed over their heads. Davey had his hands full to keep the cows from breaking away, mad with terror. Socks, the most restive and mettlesome of the horses, started and whinnied as burning leaves struck him. Deirdre threw her wet blanket over him and cowered next to him under it, murmuring soothingly: "There now! Steady, old boy! Steady, my pretty!" The Schoolmaster held his own horse and Lass, startled out of her peaceful phlegm by the terrifying roar and heat. Even when the flames had raced on over the tree-tops it was not safe to leave the pool. The men and women in it stood in water to their waists for hours, a red haze enveloping them. The blankets dried in a few minutes. The bush behind them through which the fire had passed showed trees stripped of their greenery and outlined with glowing embers. Some of the dead trees beside the pool burned dully, and fluttering red and blackened 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 and seeing a glowing bough waver over Davey's mother. The Schoolmaster brushed Mrs. Cameron aside, and the bough struck his face. Deirdre uttered a low cry. Davey, too, had seen the Schoolmaster's movement. "Are you hurt, Mr. Farrel?" he asked anxiously. "No, it isn't anything at all!" the Schoolmaster replied brusquely, with a 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 trees burning to ember. The night seemed endless. When the first wavering gleam came in the eastern sky it revealed the blackened fringe of the trees, their green waving draperies scorched and fire-eaten, where the fire, like a ravening monster, had half-consumed them and passed on. The wind had swept the haze and the smoke before it. The bosom of the earth lay bare of the light, dry, wanly-golden grass that had covered it; and from the paddocks and blackened forest thin spirals and breaths of bluish smoke rose and drifted. The peaceful space of trees and the summer-dried grasses about the Ayrmuir homestead were gone. Charred outlines of sheds and what of the house was still left, stood on the brow of the hill. In the wan light, the pool mirrored the desolation and the haggard and weary men and women who stood in it. Chilled and cramped from being in the water so long, exhausted with the anxieties of the night, they ventured warily back to the still hot earth. Mrs. Cameron's eyes turned first to her son. His face was grimed with smoke and leaf smuts. There were angry red flushes on it where scraps of burning foliage had struck him. Deirdre's and Jenny's clothes hung to them, scorched and dripping; there were burnt holes in Mrs. Cameron's own dress. Farrel and Davey were drenched to the skin. The Schoolmaster had tied a handkerchief over his face, covering one eye. 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 and smoke-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 that she 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 of the kitchen. Davey milked the cows. Mrs. Cameron and Jenny built a fire in the yard, and when they had all breakfasted on the scorched bread and some 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 nothing done for it. <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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