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.
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The first week they were in the township the weather was as hot as ever. Although the doors and windows were all wide open, we gasped for breath at church; and though the clergyman’s surplice looked cool, his face was so red that you could not help fancying that he wanted to pray and preach in unbuttoned shirt-sleeves. If he had been obliged to wear a thick black gown, I think he would have been suffocated. But when the boys’ second Sunday in Jerry’s Town came, a good bit of Jerry’s Town was under water, Jerry’s Flats were an inland sea, and some of the worshippers who had hung up their horses on the churchyard rails the Sunday before had had to take refuge in the township with scarcely a shirt or a gown that they could call their own.
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On the Wednesday night after that first Sunday we had gone to bed as late as we could in Jerry’s Town, outside the bed-clothes, and with as little covering of any kind as was practicable. After tossing and tumbling about, and getting up every now and then to light pipes to “cool ourselves,” and drive away the humming, bloodthirsty mosquitoes, we had at last fallen asleep at the fag end of the “small hours” of Thursday morning. When we awoke, with a chill on, the rain was coming down as if it did not like its own business, but wanted to get it over, and let sunlight reign and roast once more. It had knocked off shingles, and was pouring into rooms in gallons. Imagine a shower-bath without a perforated bottom—the whole of the mysteriously upheld water coming down bodily the instant the string is touched—and then, if you imagine also that the shower-bath is constantly refilled for a week or so, and that you are obliged to stand under it all the time, you will get some faint notion of the suddenness and force of Australian rain. More “annual inches” of rain, I have read, fall in sunny Australia than in soppy Ireland, and therefore, when the Australians have learnt—perhaps from the Chinamen, whom they tried hard to keep out of their country, but to whom they are grudgingly grateful now for “summer cabbage,” &c., that they could not get from any British-blooded market-gardener—when they have learnt, I say, to wisely manage and husband their bountiful water supply, by damming rivers, and draining what would otherwise be flooded country into reservoirs, Australia will become, in many a part where it is now barren, one of the most fertile lands that the sun shines on. With such a reserve fund of water to use up, the hot Australian sunbeams will be a boon instead of a bane. In my time, however (and, according to the Sydney Morning Herald and the Melbourne Argus, things are not very different now), up-country Australia periodically suffered from a fast from water or a feast of it—the feast, in some respects, being even worse than the fast.
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We were glad at first to hear, and see, and smell, and feel the rain, but when it steadily poured on we began to feel alarmed. Part of Jerry’s Town stood on a little rise, but more than half of it was nearly on a level with Jerry’s Flats; and those, according to black fellows’ tradition, had once been the bottom of a lake. There was good reason, therefore, to feel anxious when the rain kept coming down in an almost unbroken mass, and we could tell, from the rapid way in which the Kakadua and the creek rose, that up the country, too, the rain was falling in the same wholesale fashion. The people who lived in the huts on the Flats, and who had pitched their farmhouses along the river-banks for the sake of the rich alluvial soil, had still more reason to be anxious. By Thursday night there were great sheets of water, constantly getting closer to one another, out upon the Flats; the ferry-punt at the mouth of the creek had been swept away; and the muddy flood was washing up into the town. Mark Tapley would have found it hard work to be jolly on that Thursday night, if he had been in Jerry’s Town. The flooded-out people from the lower part of the township and the outlying huts came crowding up, like half-drowned rats, to shelter in the church or the Court House, the police-barracks or the inns, or wherever else they could find refuge; and the waters came after them at a rate that made it doubtful whether they had not merely postponed their doom. Dim lights twinkling far off over the waste of dimly-seen waters were only comforting for a minute. How long—you thought the next minute—will they be able to go on burning? In spite of the rush of the down-pouring rain, the wail of the wind, and the roar of the ever-rising flood, we heard every now and then the crack of an alarm gun, and fancied at any rate that we heard a wild “cooey” for help or a wilder woman’s scream.
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Just as dawn broke on Friday the new bridge across the Kakadua went with a crash. (The flood had risen as high as the flooring, and eddied across it, the night before.) The swollen river dashed the big trees it had pulled up like radishes against the bridge like battering-rams. The middle of the roadway caved in; down dropped the arches above the roadway, taking suicidal “headers;” on rushed the heavily-laden river; and in a few minutes a momentary glimpse of a truncated bankside pile was all that was to be seen of the fine bridge which “the hon. member for the Kakadua” had made the Colonial Treasurer pay for in his “Budget.” The remembrance that they had not paid for it themselves comforted the Jerry’s Towners a little when the bridge was whirled away, but it had scarcely ceased to be visible before they began to denounce the Government for squandering the “people’s money” on scamped work like that, and the hon. member for Kakadua sank as rapidly in the opinion of his Jerry’s Town constituents as the Kakadua rose before their eyes. He was a “duffer,” after all, they said, and only shammed to look after the “estimates.”
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But that was no time to go into politics. More than half of Jerry’s Town was under water; and Jerry’s Flats were a huge lake, with here and there a clump of trees, or a single tree-top, a chimney, a roof, a yard or two of fencing, or a tiny island of higher ground, showing above the troubled water. Dead horses, bullocks, sheep, pigs, poultry, and bush beasts and birds, little trees, big trees, rafts of branches and brushwood, great mats of withered grass and weeds, rushes and reeds, large clods of red earth, harness, furniture, bark roofs, slab and weather-board sides and fronts of huts and houses, verandah-posts, stray stacks, and wrecks of all kind, were everywhere tossing and jostling; but in the current of the river they were hurried on in such a grinding bumping mass that, even if the water had not run so rapidly, it would have been a most perilous task to pull a boat across the stream. A boat or two did manage to cross it, however, thanks to bold clever steering, although they were whisked along like chips for a mile or so before they could get out of the current. Every boat left unswamped in Jerry’s Town was out soon after daybreak on that Friday morning. The police-boat got away first, and it was queer to see it steering between the roofs that alone marked out the lower end of George Street, pulling right over the pound at the bottom of Pitt Street, and then giving a spurt into the open water across the drowned butcher’s paddock. All the boats had adventures that, I think, would interest you but, of course, you guess that Harry and Donald formed part of a rescue party, and therefore I will tell you their adventures, as I heard them, partly from the boys, and partly from the men they went with.
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Harry and Donald had begun to despair of getting afloat, because, of course, when crews were made up, stronger arms than boys’ were picked, and the boats had no room for outward-bound passengers, every inch of room being needed for the poor people they were going to rescue. But the Doctor had a ramshackle old four-oared tub, in which he sometimes pottered about in the creek by himself. It was rowing under difficulties, for the Doctor found it hard work to lug the heavy old literal “torpid” along, and every now and then he had to stop pulling, and set to work at baling. For some reason, however, the Doctor was very proud of his tub; and, the instant the creek began to rise, he had her hauled up his garden, which sloped down to the creek, and laid up in ordinary in his verandah.

There she was lying when the boys came upon two men, who were looking at her somewhat disconsolately. One was the landlord of the “General Bourke,” and the other was the Jerry’s Town shoemaker.
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“I doubt if she’d float, Tommy,” said the landlord; “and besides, she hain’t got ne’er a rudder.”

“Oh, we could stuff summat in here and there,” answered the shoemaker, “an’ we could steer her better with a oar, an’ some little cove will be game to bale.”

Harry and Donald at once offered their services, but just then the Doctor came out.

“I’m willing to risk the boat,” he said, “but I must pull stroke.”

“No, Doctor, you must stay ashore,” replied the landlord with a grin. “There’s plenty as can pull a oar your fashion, but you’re the only one than can do doctor’s work. An’ it ain’t so much about risking the boat, as risking the lives of them as goes in her. Hows’ever, one o’ these young coves from Wonga-Wonga will do to bale, an’ then we only want two to pull and another to steer—that’s three; an’ surely there must be three men besides yourself, Doctor, in Jerry’s Town game enough to jine us, though it ain’t much better than a sieve.”
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But such was the reputation of the Doctor’s tub that the three were not forthcoming. Harry and Donald, however, were more eager than ever to embark.

“Do you know anything about a boat, boys?” asked Boniface solemnly, as if he was putting a question out of the Catechism.

“I should think we did,” answered Harry, “a precious sight more than a good many of your Jerry’s Town loafers; we’ve got a boat of our own at Wonga-Wonga.”

“Ay, but can you do anything in her?”

“We can pull her, and steer her, and sail her,” answered Harry, proudly; “I’m not bad in a boat, and Donald is better.”

Boniface scratched his head for a minute in perplexity, and then said,
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“Tommy and me will risk it, Doctor. We’ll cobble her up a bit, an’ one on ’em can bale, an’ t’other try his hand at steerin’, an’ p’r’aps, at a pinch, both on ’em can pull a bit. Lawson ain’t a bad sort. He won’t mind us takin’ his boys, will he, Tommy? Anyhow, I don’t like to see anything that calls itself a boat a-doin’ nothing, an’ them poor critturs squealin’ out yonder—good customers o’ mine some on ’em is, ain’t they, Tommy? So you come along, young gentlemen, if you’re willin’, an’ we’ll bring you back as sound as a roach, if you’ll be sure to mind what I tell ye.”
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The boys were sharp enough to see that “Dutch courage” had something to do with the landlord’s heroism, and with Tommy’s too; but they could see also that the men could tell well enough what they were about; so, as soon as the boat had been hastily caulked with an old hat or two, and dragged and pushed down the few yards that then separated her from the water, off the four started. In spite of all they could do, however, their craft floundered about in a very tublike fashion, and was nearly wrecked at starting against a hut flooded up to the bark eaves. The water eddied round this hut, and banged the boat up against it, and then, as soon as she was got off again, she ran foul of a floating Chinese hog, so swollen that it looked like a little hippopotamus; and next she was caught in a float of driftwood, and she had to run the gauntlet between all kinds of snags and sawyers. But at last she got away into more open water, and all four pulled with a will over the muddy, scummy waves towards a roof on which they fancied they could see some people clustered. It was the roof of a little farmhouse, and when the boat’s crew reached it, they found the farmer clinging to the chimney, and waving his shirt as a signal of distress (he had cooeyed! until he had cracked his voice and was almost black in the face). His wife was crouching at his feet, doing her best to shelter her youngest girl against the still heavy rain, and the other poor little children were huddled on the roof-ridge, like a row of draggle-tailed roosting fowls. It was hard work to get the boat alongside without staving her in, and still harder to get all the family on board without capsizing her; but all at length were safely embarked, and then the farmer said:

“THEY FOUND THE FARMER CLINGING TO THE CHIMNEY.”
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“There’s a poor thing out yonder with a kid—can’t we take her?” He pointed to a woman in her night-dress, up to her shoulders in water, on the top of an old honeysuckle, and holding her baby above the flood in her poor aching arms. But there was no room in the boat.

“We must come for her next trip,” said Boniface.

“The tree will be gone before then,” cried Donald; “we’ll stay on the roof here—won’t we, Harry?—and then you can come back for us when you’ve got the rest ashore.”
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“No, that won’t do, will it, Tommy?” said the landlord; but the boys were quite positive, and said it was a currish thing to leave the woman there, and that they would make a fuss about it, if the boat didn’t go for her. Then the farmer said that, if anybody ought to stay, he supposed he ought to; but he didn’t seem very willing to stay, and his wife cried, and said that he ought to think of his children, if he didn’t care for her; and the boys settled matters by scrambling on to the roof.

“It warn’t my doin’s, mind,” growled Boniface, as the boat pulled off for the honeysuckle. The poor woman and her baby were saved, and only just in time. A few minutes after they were taken off, the tree flung up its roots as a diving duck flings up its feet. It was weary, dreary work for the boys to cling to the chimney, watching the boat pulling for the town, and waiting for it to come back for them. After all, it was not the landlord and the shoemaker who rescued them. Boniface and Tommy had worked off their “Dutch courage” in the first trip, and, besides, the Doctor’s tub would certainly have foundered if she had tried to make another. But the police-sergeant had heard the story, and he had helped to capture Warrigal in his private-trooper days, and had a great respect for Harry.
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“We’ll go first for that game young Trojan,” he said to his men; and the farmer volunteered to take one policeman’s place in the boat, that there might be no mistake about the house. Harry’s heart, and Donald’s too, gave a great leap of joy when they saw the police-boat steering as straight as it could for them, over the brown waters, through the grey rain. But, pleased as they were at getting on board the boat, they could think of others. They told the sergeant that they thought they had seen a fire and some people far away on a bit of dry ground.

“I’m out of my reckoning, now,” said Harry; “but Donald thinks it must be the top of Macpherson’s Hill, on the Cornwallis Road; anyhow, Macpherson’s inn has gone.”
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“Give way, lads,” cried the sergeant; and he steered the long police-boat towards the spot his young passengers had pointed out. It was a long hard pull, and the boat took up other passengers before she got to the end of it. She took off a man from a shea-oak, and a woman and two children he had lashed to branches higher up. The man had been made quite stupid by the terrible time he had had. It was as much as two policemen could do to drag him off the branch to which he clung, and then he tumbled into the boat like a sack of sand. When the poor scratching, screaming woman was got into it, she had to be tied again, because she had gone mad. About half a mile farther on, the boat came to a hut flooded up to the eaves; and “Whisht!” cried Donald (as if the rain and wind and chopping waves would mind him), “there’s a body in there.”
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Nobody else had heard anything to show it, but the sergeant steered the boat alongside the roof, and then they all heard thumps against it, and muffled shouts of “Holy murther! Hooroo! Bad luck to ye!” They pulled the sheets of sodden bark off, and pulled out an old Irish shepherd, who had been bumping up against the rafters, astride upon a box, with a rum-bottle in his fist, like the publican’s Bacchus on his barrel.

The water shoaled as the boat neared the top of Macpherson’s Hill. On the sloppy ground a score or two of men, women, and children had congregated and had managed to light a fire. They had two or three pannikins and some bottles and quart pots amongst them, and were drinking and handing one another tea and grog in a strange, stupefiedly tranquil fashion. There were snakes on the little island also, but they were too scared to bite; and drenched native cats, and quail, and bush-rats, and swamp-parrots, and bandicoots, and diamond-sparrows, and lizards, and spiders, and scorpions, and green and yellow frogs, and centipedes, and praying Mantises, were muddled up in a very miserable “happy family.”
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As soon as the people on the little island saw that the boat grounded within a couple of yards of its brink, they woke up from their trance, and rushed into the water, clamorously demanding that either themselves, or somebody they cared for more than they did for themselves, should be carried off first. The sergeant had to make his men back water, and threaten to carry nobody, before he could quiet the poor bewildered creatures, made drunk by sudden hope. Then they, together with the Irish shepherd, were carried over by instalments to a point of undrowned land nearer than what remained above water of Jerry’s Town (Harry and Donald meanwhile staying on the island, and tucking into the tea and stale damper given them, for they were as hungry and thirsty as hunters). Then the boat at last came back, and carried them to Jerry’s Town, with the man and woman, and two scared shivering little children that had been taken off the shea-oak.
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The rain did not cease until the following Thursday, and although, when it did cease, the flood went down almost as rapidly as it had risen, a fearful amount of damage had been done on and about Jerry’s Flats. Several lives had been lost. Scores of acres had been washed away bodily, or smothered in white sand. Houses, huts, sheds, fences, had utterly vanished. The flooded buildings that had stood out the flood looked like sewers when the waters went down. A good many of the “cockatoo settlers” were temporarily ruined, and had to petition the Government, through the hon. member for the Kakadua, for seed-corn; living, and re-making some kind of a home meanwhile, on the alms they got from the relief committees. But on the other hand, some of the river-side farms were made richer than ever by the shiploads of fat soil that had been left on them, and it was like magic to see how rapidly the bush, that had been as dry as a calcined bone a few days before, became green again when the sun shone out once more.
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“A nice climate yours is, isn’t it?” I said to Harry, when we were talking over our flood adventures.

“Look at the country now,” he retorted, triumphantly. “You couldn’t beat that in slow old England, where it’s always dribbling. It does rain here when it does rain, and then it’s over.”

“Hech, lad! we should be nane the waur o’ a little mair equal division,” commentated the more cautiously patriotic Donald, who talked mongrel Scotch when he became philosophical. “It wasna sae gey fine when we grippit the lum out yonder.”