Already the crackling of the trees announced that the conflagration was begun in the woods, and that no time must be lost, if they hoped to escape from it. Flights of white cockatoos, of bright-colored parrots, and glittering bronze pigeons, rose screaming from their desolated homes, and affrighted opossums sprang from their nests, swung on the trees, or fell senseless with the smoke on the ground. But in this time one canoe was completed and launched, with the women, all the baggage, and Mr. Mayburn and Hugh to direct it. They had been swept down the river to a considerable distance from the fire before the second canoe, imperfectly completed, whirled off with the rest of the family, who reached their friends at a point of safety, with wild looks and scorched hair.
Then they all rested a moment, to look back on the terrific and still spreading conflagration, by the red light of which they saw the frightful outline of the dark forms, among whom, though now naked, and scarcely less dark than the rest, they distinguished the muscular and ungraceful form of Peter, which strangely contrasted with the stately, slender, and agile forms of the natives.
"He's not lit on them t' other rangers yet," said Wilkins. "That's a good job, onyhow; for, ye see, they'd horses, and we'd fairly been hunted down like foxes."
Augmented by the recent rains, the river flowed in an uninterrupted course, and before the evening and the calls of hunger induced them to arrest their flight, the grateful family believed they must have progressed twenty-five or thirty miles to the south-east, with very slight exertion, through new and lovely scenes of hill, vale, rocky mountains, and rich forests.
Then, on the margin of the river, beneath the shelter of a thick wood, they landed, to thank God for their escape, and to take rest. Mussels, a sort of cray-fish, and the river-cod, formed their supper, which was cooked in fear and trembling, lest the smoke of their fire should bring on them the savages, or the flames should spread to the brushwood, a catastrophe they now regarded with horror.
Before they set out the following morning, the canoes were completely finished, and oars and paddles added: thus their progress was safe and easy, and for three days no accident arrested their course; but on the fourth day they were compelled to land, to repair a rent in one of the canoes, and were startled at their labor by the sound of the "_coo-ee_" and an alarming rustling among the trees. Without delay the canoes were carried to the water, and all embarked; nor had they proceeded twenty yards before a large opening appeared in the wooded bank, which had evidently been cleared by fire. Here they beheld the first permanent settlement of the natives they had yet met with. Many large huts stood round, formed of boughs, and thatched with bark. Several fires were burning, around which the women and children were gathered, and a number of men, armed with spears and clubs, advanced to the bank with threatening aspect, when they saw the canoes.