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Barney came back from receiving the message, and the first truck took off into brownish, water broken by fallen twigs and small branches. By the time the final truck ventured out to join the contingent the water was swirling into small waves, and it was deep yellow. They watched it until it, too, like its predecessors, disappeared from sight. .

The sky had grown bleak again. Lightning danced in the distance and there was a faint rumble of far-off thunder. Or was the thunder the engine of one of the trucks protesting at what was being asked of it, then finally coming to a grinding halt?

"Tea,’ Isabel said. They had let Ludy go. She had offered to stay, but her anxiety for her family had been very obvious. The last they had seen of her was on the third truck with her husband and her children. Isabel now put down the big pot.

How many times did they have tea that day ? Every time a sense of failure encroached on them, a desperation, an urgency, Isabel called “Tea!” and produced the big pot.

The will-o’-the-wisp lightning continued, the distant thunder. And the hours dragged on.

But the water did not drag. It rose as steadily, thought Gemma, aghast, as though a giant tap had been turned on. She stopped making mental markups, such as how far up a selected wall, how high up a certain tree, because it only frightened her. How fast, she wondered, can a flood rise? How high? Yet she knew part of that already She had seen aerial photos of people sitting desolately on the roofs of houses . .. some houses no longer showing at all. She glanced at Chris. Just now he was being swept along with the responsibility and the excitement of it all, but how long could it last? And even if his spirit kept up could his frailer body keep pace? She saw Isabel looking, too, and knew she was wondering the same.

The rain had paused, but it made no difference to the steady rise of the water The will-o’-the-wisp lightning ceased, but the sky remained its dirty beige.

Gemma stood at a window disbelieving that the sheets of water that were steadily covering everything in sight actually entailed the terrain that had greeted her when she first had arrived here. Then it had been green-grey country, green from the last wet, grey from the bullock bush standing in twisted clumps in the paddocks. A green-grey world.

But now it was silver, the silver of the insidiously encroaching water. Even the dirty beige of the sky seemed to be altering to silver as well.

Feeling suddenly imprisoned, Gemma opened a door and went out to one of the verandahs. One of the bright chintz cushions must have been dislodged by last night’s wind, and now it lay soaked and mud-encrusted on the bottom step. She went down to retrieve it, her feet wallowing in mud even at the top rise. When she reached the cushion it looked so soaked and dirty she decided to leave it there after all. She came carefully up again, noting, to her horror, that already one more rise was half covered. Why, at this rapid rate ...

Now the air they breathed felt like a damp blanket, the windmill that had always fascinated Gemma was deeply implanted in water. It stood quite motionless in the wet blanket air.

Gemma looked next in the direction of what had been the lagoon, that shallow expanse of water fed subterraneously from some hidden source. The aboriginals said it was the great snake, she thought, and that whenever the waters soared or widened it was the great snake who did it. Well, the great snake was certainly performing now! The lagoon not only stretched as far as you could see, it was wave-capped, filled with discarded logs and newly dismantled green branches. Water, water, water. Water coming from nowhere, going nowhere.

A great splash took her by surprise. In her absorption she had not seen the huge truck arrive.

At first she thought she was looking at some prehistoric monster, and then she realized it was the contrived front end of an articulated road train. If there are thirty-six wheels to a train, her befuddled brain tried to work out how many are there to a front articulation ?

Tim Torrance swung out of the high cabin.

Isabel and Chris must have seen Tim coming. They were on the verandah, too.

“Your trucks got through all right, Chris,” Tim greeted. “But only just. It’s no good out there any more.” He nodded his head to what had once been a track.

Chris said: “Why in heaven have you come, Tim? You must have known you’d never get out again.”

“I thought you could do with another man around the house. Well, aren’t you going to invite me in? Put on the billy?”

“You were a fool,” Chris said, but gratefully.

“A nice fool,” said Isabel.

Gemma said nothing.

They all went inside again.

“My main purpose,” said Tim Torrance over tea, “is to tell you, Christopher and Isabel, that you're not forgotten. A helicopter is on its way.”

“A helicopter?”

“It’s the only answer. There’s no other way out. Also, there’s a lot more water coming. This is only the start. Then you mustn’t forget, either, that you have that freak lagoon to add its extra volume.”

Chris nodded, but Isabel looked away. For the first time Isabel looked slightly nervous. Before she had taken everything as it happened, but now she barely repressed a shiver. “I’ve never been in a helicopter.”

“We simply winch you up, darling, it’s nothing,” Tim assured her. “It depends on how high the water is when we decide from where we winch you, and from the look of the rise it could be from the roof. But don’t worry, don’t get alarmed. It’ll be a cinch.”

With the arrival of Tim, something seemed to desert Chris. He lost his sense of responsibility, he lost the anxiety that previously had kept him going. He grew older, perceptibly older. He seemed only too eager to pass everything over to the younger man.

But with the shedding of the load he had been carrying, he also turned instinctively again to Gemma. He followed her wherever she went, sought her out, let his arm rest on her shoulder. At one time he even called: “Don’t go without me, darling.”

Across the room Tim Torrance stiffened, looked incredulously at Gemma, looked at Chris, looked back at Gemma, then wheeled and strode outside.

One hour later they heard the distant cut of the helicopter. By the increasing noise they knew it was coming their way. Tim was on the verandah already, waving a white cloth.

They saw the big bird hover. Several minutes afterwards a winch came down. As the water was still only top step high, there was no need to climb on to the roof, so Isabel at least was spared that.

Gemma was near Tim as the ladder descended. A man came down with the winch and Gemma heard him say in a quiet voice to Tim: “Two only, mate, we’ve a load on already. Sorry, but that’s how it is. Now which one first?’’

Tim turned to Isabel. Isabel, pale and strained but trying to be brave, was helped in and borne up.

Now the ladder was descending again, and Gemma was saying in a low but distinct voice, distinct for the Territorian:

"It has to be Chris. You do know that?”

Torrance turned and gave her a cool look. “There is a traditional saying, women and children first.”

“
It
has to be Chris.
He’s ill. Gravely so.”

“Is that why you’re being so sweet? Having lost yourself Mannering Park have you now set your sights on—”

“Be quiet! It has to be him. I’ll explain later.”

“Then explain later, too, to Isabel, Miss Glasson. She’s in this as well, in this estate, I mean, and sister Isabel is charity-minded and may have other ideas. Though perhaps you’ve persuaded her to make
you
her charity.” He paused. “Have you ?”

“Put Chris on, please!” Gemma begged.

“I shall damn well do what I think is right.”

The ladder was almost down now. Chris was being edged firmly towards it by Gemma. She was leaving no room for Tim Torrance to intervene. She was calling : “Next trip, Chris, and I’ll be with you, dear. In just a few minutes. Not long.”

She waited until the winch had left, then she quickly escaped to the other end of the verandah. She was shaking with anger. How dared he go on like this with Chris, with her? How dared he say the things he had?

She stood at the very edge of the verandah, so furious she could see nothing at all. It was even a while before she
felt
anything . . . and by then it was too late. The weatherboards at the end of the verandah were giving way, slowly at first, and then the entire soaked, drenched top end of the balcony was collapsing drunkenly.

Gemma, alerted too late, tried to twist desperately backwards to safety, but everything seemed to be disappearing from under her feet.

Suddenly she was in water, her feet grabbed by some irresistible force. All at once everything went dark, but even in the darkness she was aware of motion, of everything sliding by at a furious pace, though it would only be her own body, she knew, sucked by the swirling waters. Again she tried to resist, to grab something, anything, to hold her back. Then she went dark as well.

Her next moment of lucidity was not long afterwards, but to Gemma it seemed like hours. Gemma opened her eyes and found she was tied with rope to the double chimney of the homestead, every cushion, every rug Tim had evidently been able to grab wrapped round her to make the harsh imprisonment less severe.

“The rope was to keep you there while I went up and down for provisions,” Tim said, “in case we have a long wait. I didn’t want to come back and find I’d grabbed you out of the water only to lose you again.”

“I didn’t jump in,” Gemma told him dully. She felt she had to say that.

“In the drink?”

“Yes. I didn’t do it to—to—”

“To escape me? No, I didn’t think even you could be as stupid as that. In your filthy temper you just went too far to the edge. I happened to see you as you fell and grabbed you in time. If I’d been looking the other way . . .” He made a final gesture with his big brown hands.

“Chris had to go first.” Again Gemma said it. For some reason she knew she had to vindicate herself.

“Yes, I think you’ve established that. But perhaps you won't l>e so pleased when you know that the ’copter has signalled that the light now is too bad for any more rescues, meaning you’ll have to spend the night up here with me.”

“Still, better me than Chris,” was all Gemma replied.

“That,” Tim said without expression, “remains to be seen.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“If you think,” he shrugged, “I’m going to balance like I am balancing now on sloping iron, you are mistaken. When the time comes to sleep—”

“Sleep?”

“One of us will sleep at some time through the night, even both of us. At such time I wish to be secured as well. And” ... a pause . . . “there’s only one rope, so ii will have to be a case of closer settlement. It seems, Miss Glasson, that this time you
will
find yourself hitched.”

“Hitched?” she queried.

“Hitched. You’ve had rotten bad luck in the hitching game so far, haven't you?”

“I don’t understand you,” said Gemma.

“You do, though,” he said. “First Mannering . . . or were there failures before him and he wasn’t the first ? ... and now Chris.”

“You’re mistaken there,” she said. “In Chris.”

“No,
you
are, if you think you’re going to get away with it.”

“Away with what?”

“With what usually comes with long looks and all the sickening what-have-yous you displayed down there in the house. My God, I’ve never been so nauseated in my life!”

“You’re quite wrong in what you’re thinking... that is if you were thinking—”

“Oh, I was thinking it all right.”

“You’re wrong, then, though I still don’t see why you are objecting. Chris is not old.”

“Nor is he young. Also, he’s only flattered by your attention, and don’t try to tell yourself anything else, you mercenary piece. In his rosy daze, he can’t see your wiles, he can only see—”

“See Neroli,” finished Gemma quietly for him. She paused. “Chris thinks I am Neroli. It was Isabel who asked me to go along with that. You see, Chris has very little time left.”

The man on the roof looked stupidly at Gemma for several moments as though he could not understand what she was saying. Then he ran his fingers through his hair, making it stand up quite ludicrously if Gemma had felt like laughing, which she had never felt less like doing in her life.

“Neroli...” he echoed.

“Chris’s dead young wife, yes.”

“And Chris had been thinking—”

“Yes.”

“So you—”

“Yes.”

“And Chris—hasn’t long?”

This time Gemma said No, then followed it all up with what Isabel had reported from the doctors.

“I’ve just made a fool of myself, haven't I?” Tim said in a low, shamed voice.

“You have.”

“I made a rotten mistake.”

“You did.”

“Gemma—Gemma, move over. I’m coming up there, too. I want to explain—I have to explain. I have a hell of a lot to say to you—Gemma—”

But Gemma was not listening.

“It’s coming back!” she called excitedly. “The helicopter is back. We’re going off after all!”

*

Thirty minutes later they had been winched to safety, taken to some high and dry , place and found billets.

Gemma's hostess was young and friendly. She could not do too much for Gemma.

She had her in bed in a very short time, then plied with hot milk to ensure rest.

“I don’t even know your name,” smiled Gemma gratefully, halfway already to sleep.

“Jenny,” said the woman. “Now rest, dear.” She went out of the room and shut the door quietly behind her.

“Jenny,” thought Gemma exhaustedly... it had been a totally exhausting day . . . “Jenny. Where did I hear that before? Jenny. . . Jenny?”

Gemma slept.

MORNING came with an attractive breakfast tray set with everything from fruit juice to coffee, toast and marmalade.
And a small vase of Salvation Jane
.