“It might be worth trying. TheBorradales are good people to work for.”

“Then I’ll try them tomorrow. Good-bye and thank you.”

Having raised his hat, Fisher adjusted his swag, picked up the water-bag and continued his tramp to Nogga Creek, now to be seen dusty-green below the red canopy of whirling sand. All the way across the half-mile flat between the two creeks the wind roaring through the trees provided the overture for the coming night of dark terror.

The day was nearly done when Fisher reached Nogga Creek, crossed it, and then strode up along its far bank, hoping to see Carie and not greatly disappointed when all he did see was the netted fence and its barrier ofbuckbush disappearing into the menacing murk.

Thereafter, he followed the creek eastward for a quarter of a mile, when he arrived at the lower end of Catfish Hole, a long and narrow lagoon of sparkling water lying in the creek-bed. The tip of this waterhole touched a sand-bar, fine and white and dry, and here Fisher decided to make camp for the night.

Now, when the sun must be setting, and the high-flying sand, indeed the very air, was not transmuted for a few moments into the rich colour of blood, Fisher knew that the wind and the dust would be even worse on the morrow. When the rack overhead was tinged with dark grey, when it seemed that the very tree-tops supported this evil sky, he sat on his swag before the fire he had made and ate grilled mutton chops and stale damper, and now and then sipped hot black tea heavily laced with sugar.

With the coming of night the wind dropped to a moaning breeze. The leaden sky came still lower like a material weight threatening to crush the suffocating world. The fire-light painted the near trees against an even black when, an hourlater, he unrolled his swag, bunched the blankets into the form of a sleeping man, and then stole away beyond the fire-light to seat himself against a tree-trunk and watch.