When the Wolf was at the Door.


There had been a long stretch of dry weather, and we were cleaning out the
waterhole. Dad was down the hole shovelling up the dirt; Joe squatted on
the brink catching flies and letting them go again without their wings--a
favourite amusement of his; while Dan and Dave cut a drain to turn the
water that ran off the ridge into the hole--when it rained. Dad was
feeling dry, and told Joe to fetch him a drink.

Joe said: "See first if this cove can fly with only one wing." Then he
went, but returned and said: "There's no water in the bucket--Mother used
the last drop to boil th' punkins," and renewed the fly-catching. Dad
tried to spit, and was going to say something when Mother, half-way
between the house and the waterhole, cried out that the grass paddock was
all on fire. "So it is, Dad!" said Joe, slowly but surely dragging the
head off a fly with finger and thumb.

Dad scrambled out of the hole and looked. "Good God!" was all he said.
How he ran! All of us rushed after him except Joe--he could n't run very
well, because the day before he had ridden fifteen miles on a poor horse,
bare-back. When near the fire Dad stopped running to break a green bush.
He hit upon a tough one. Dad was in a hurry. The bush was n't. Dad
swore and tugged with all his might. Then the bush broke and Dad fell
heavily upon his back and swore again.

To save the cockatoo fence that was round the cultivation was what was
troubling Dad. Right and left we fought the fire with boughs. Hot! It
was hellish hot! Whenever there was a lull in the wind we worked. Like a
wind-mill Dad's bough moved--and how he rushed for another when one was