Fools' Harvest. Erle Cox

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СКАЧАТЬ was about to make some jest, but I think he read my face. He got as far as "Did you—?" and stopped awkwardly. I shook my head.

      "I was too late, Don." I was able to keep my voice steady.

      They looked at one another. "They're—" Everything was in the word the Dinker spoke.

      "One of the first shells," I replied.

      Thank goodness they understood, and did not try to say anything. The hands they gave me were enough.

      By a common consent we turned from the subject. "How about the office?" I asked.

      The Dinker summoned up a twisted grin. "Our jobs and the office vanished together. Don and I missed vanishing with them by a cat's whisker."

      "It must have been hell!" I commented.

      "Wally," said Don, "I don't know what you've seen, but just before the first salvo arrived, the streets were a packed mass of milling, panic-stricken people mixed up with the motor and tram traffic. And then it seemed as though a hundred earthquakes struck in."

      "They didn't fall straight," Dinker explained. "They came at an angle, and mostly burst low down throwing the walls out on the struggling mass of human life."

      "How on earth did you escape'?" I asked.

      "That was The Dinker's inspiration," Don answered, "We were dodging walls, and trying to keep our feet, when we came to where the Mayfair Theatre had been. Dink said they didn't hit twice in the same place, and we went and sat on a hill of wreckage till it stopped."

      "Did you know Mosman and Darlinghurst and Paddington are blazing'?" I asked.

      The Dinker nodded. "We just heard, but there is worse than that," he added.

      "How worse'?" I demanded.

      "It's been a hellishly clever job. The Richmond Aerodrome was washed up with time bombs jest as the Hawkesbury Bridge was, about 5 o'clock. There is only one plane left fit for service. All the water is cut off from the Prospect Reservoir, and the entire sewerage service is out of commission.

      "And one of the first things they did was to scupper the Bunnerong electricity works. Blew it to a scrap heap in ten minutes," added Don.

      "Mason, the Chief Secretary, was telling us, too, that at Canberra they're in no end of a stew because since last night they can get no communication of any kind either from West Australia or Darwin."

      "Any news from outsider I asked.

      "Nothing, so we hear," Don said. "Great Scot! We seem to be mopped up without a hit back."

      We stared at one another helplessly. In reply to my question, The Dinker told me that the Lord Mayor and the Premier were in conference on some plan to organise Red Cross work, and aid for the homeless. There must be thousands of injured here and in the suburbs untended. Then there would also be the necessity of recovering bodies, and preventing looting. "There is some form of sanitary system to be organised or we'll have the place rotten with disease," he added.

      Here Mason passed again, and told Dink that Melbourne was untouched, and that the R.A.F. from Point Cook was on its way here.

      "Well," I said, "I came in to offer for any job as long as it's work—sanitary if they like."

      "We're with you, Wally; let's hang round till something starts."

      Almost at the same moment the building shook to the crash of an explosion, and the shelling recommenced.

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