black for two breaths. Through sleet like the bars of a cage Ormond saw the great hump of the Lion Mountain stripped into naked lines and sleek with streams. Below, and brought forward to the eye, a thousand rivers gallopped through scrub and round bluffs; spilling sideways into the bubbling gullies, and coasting down the spurs with heads of foam. Somewhere in the midst of that hell the race was going out. Somewhere, in or below it, Bert Kiliat and a dozen more were racing for life.
“And not one of them thought of Paddy’s Gully!” said Ormond in a high fierce pride. “Not one! Oh, good God! Can’t the dark hold up? Just for ten minutes!”
Paddy’s Gully flume was under a mile in length, and the gully fell east to the river. A break in the big flume would send the whole torrent down Changing Creek. A break here would save more than the Lion.
Ormond swarmed up the flume cat-wise, and crawled out along the cross-ties. The wind plucked his hands loose more than twice, and the weight of his body as he snatched and swung took th6 skin from his palms. At his ear the flume was running full and steady, with no grate of boulders to jar it. The wild strange smell of flax blew up from the swamp to mix with the air that stank of sulphur and new-made mud. Ormond cast himself from tie to
