midday
There was no visible sun , but a red and lurid glow filled the sky -- the sun struggling to fight its way through the smothering film that had grown thicker over the earth . Because they were in a `` pocket '' -- a sweep of tangled country lower than the surrounding country -- Neewa and Miki were not caught in this blackening cloud . Five miles away they might have heard the thunder of cloven hoofs and the crash of heavy bodies in their flight before the deadly menace of fire . As it was they made their way slowly through the parched swamp , so that it was midday when they came out of the edge of it and up through a green fringe of timber to the top of a ridge . Before this hour neither had passed through the horror of a forest fire . But it seized upon them now . It needed no past experience .