A MAN was hunting Robinson and George Fielding, and they were hunting
him. Both parties inflamed with rage and bitterness; both master of the
other's fate, they thought.
A change of wind brought a fall of snow, and the fall of snow baffled
both parties in five minutes. Down came the Australian flakes large as
a woman's hand (I am not romancing), and effaced the tracks of the
pursuing and pursued and pursuers. So tremendous was the fall that the
two friends thought of nothing but shelter. They drew their blankets
over their heads and ran hither and thither looking for a friendly tree.
At last they found an old tree with a prodigious stem that parted about
ten feet up into two forks. With some effort they got up into this
cleft, and then they were on a natural platform. Robinson always carried
nails in his pocket, and he contrived to nail the two blankets to the
forks so as to make a screen. Then they took out their provisions and
fortified themselves with a hearty supper.
As they were eating it they were suddenly startled by an explosion so
tremendous that their tree seemed to have been struck by lightning. Out
went Robinson, with his mouth full, on to a snowdrift four feet high.
He looked up and saw the cause of the fracas. A large bough of a
neighboring tree had parted from the trunk with the enormous weight
of the snow. Robinson climbed back to George and told him. Supper
recommenced, but all over the wood at intervals they now heard huge
forks and boughs parting from their parent stems with a report like
a thirty-two-pounder ringing and echoing through the wood. Others so
distant that they were like crackers.
These sounds were very appalling in the ghostly wood. The men
instinctively drew closer to each other; but they were no chickens; use
soon hardened them even to this. They settled it that the forks they
were sitting on would not give way, because there were no leaves on them
to hold a great burden of snow; and soon they yielded to nature and fell
fast asleep in spite of all the dangers that hemmed them.
At his regular hour, just before sunrise, Robinson awoke and peeped from
below the blanket. He shook George.
“Getup directly, George. We are wasting time when time is gold.”
“What is it?”
“'What is it?' There is a pilot in the sky that will take us out of this
cursed trap, if the day does not come and spoil all.”
George's eye followed Robinson's finger, and in the center of the dark
vault of heaven this glittered.
[Southern Cross constellation]