THE PARTNERSHIP OF H. G.-S. AND T. J. S. 235 



delay perhaps for a week, perhaps for a month, perhaps for the 

 season ? or, on the other hand, a " burn " disfigured by patches of 

 green, marred by strips and tongues of unburnt stuff, areas of thin 

 fern unconsumed, breaks in the black at every trivial creek and 

 sheep-track, a crestfallen return clouded with misgivings as to the 

 wisdom of having attempted a fire, at not having waited for a better 

 chance ? 



Upon that March day, however, though, like Elijah, we scanned 

 the sky, no cloud even like a man's hand appeared. Although all went 

 well, and although it might be sufficient to leave it at that, some readers 

 may care to hear the details of such a day at any rate the writer 

 wishes to remind himself of pleasures past and gone. Towards noon, 

 then, the fateful match is struck, the smoke curls upwards blue and thin, 

 the clear flame, steady at first but soon lengthening and stretching itself, 

 arises like a snake from its cold coils. Then, as often seems to happen, 

 the draught of the fire summons at once the waiting wind ; out of the 

 hot calm bursts forth the new-born storm ; the circle of flame lengthens 

 into a streak which, widening at every edge, is pounced upon, flattened 

 to the ground, and furiously fanned this way and that, as if in attempted 

 extinction. A few minutes later a line of commingled flame and 

 smoke, moving ahead with steady roar, sweeps the hillsides. 



Few sights are more engrossing, more enthralling, than the play 

 of wind and flame. Wind in the hills, like water in its course, 

 never for an instant remains even in its force, but ceaselessly swells 

 and fails, waxes and wanes. In the very height of a gale the 

 rushing charge of fire will in an instant check, the flames previously 

 pinned down will erect their forked tongues like a crop, or lift as if 

 drawn upwards from the earth in the very consummation of their 

 burning embrace ; the smoke, a moment previously flattened into the 

 suffocated fern, will rise thin like steam through the winged fronds. 

 Upon slopes exposed to greater weight of wind the pace of the con- 

 flagration quickens, forked sheets of flame that singe and scorch the 

 shrivelling upper growth reach far ahead ; forward the conflagration 

 rolls sometimes grey, sometimes glowing, sometimes incandescent, 

 according to the changeful gusts. As a lover wraps his mistress in 

 his arms, so the flames wrap the stately cabbage-trees, stripping them 

 naked of their matted mantles of brown, devouring their tall stems with 

 kisses of fire, crackling like musketry amongst the spluttering flax, 



