Tired as he was, Sam was sleeping badly. He was dreaming, and the
dream was peculiarly annoying; for it was very like a repetition of
the day’s events, enacted over and over again. He was tramping through
woods which seemed to have no end; then he was fighting brush fires,
which broke out anew as fast as he could extinguish them; then he
was coming back to the camp, and supper was to be made ready, and a
squabble between Poke and Step over possession of the coffee-pot was to
be settled half a dozen times; then when his weary mates had stretched
themselves out and were already dozing, something impelled him to leave
the tent and revisit the scene of the fire. Sam, tossing and turning,
had visions of that trip repeated a score of times. Back and forth
he seemed to be trudging. There was moonlight. In it the tent had a
ghostlike effect, while the burned-over tract was a weird scene of
desolation. There was nothing to indicate danger of the fire reviving,
and this was comforting; but the dream, presently, began to include
strange and ominous sounds like the beat of great wings, suggesting
dragons and other marvelous creations of unchecked fancy. In his waking
hours he was not an imaginative chap, but, once his eyes were closed,
he could see as wonderful sights as even Poke, who rather specialized
in nightmares, could conjure up. Yes, and he could hear sounds quite as
strange as Poke ever attempted to describe to a skeptical audience. He
was hearing them now; the beat of the wings was almost directly over
his head.
Sam sat up with a start. He dug his knuckles into his eyes. He peered
about him. There was a wavering patch of faint light--that would be the
play of moonbeams before the tent, he told himself. There were shadowy
forms about him, where the other members of the club lay asleep. Two
or three of them were breathing heavily; snoring, in fact, like good
fellows; but he realized that other sounds had awakened him. Then came
explanation. The flaps of the tent had been insecurely fastened, and
were fluttering in a strong, if fitful, breeze.
Sam crawled out from his blankets. He picked his cautious way to the
door of the tent, stumbling over somebody’s shoes, but recovering
balance and escaping a fall. He looked out. There were scurrying clouds
overhead, fleecy clouds which did not completely hide the moon; the
branches of the trees were swaying in a sharp gust. Half sheltered as
he was by the canvas, he felt the force of the wind.
“Lucky it wasn’t blowing this way in the afternoon,” he reflected. “It
would have been a bad job, if----”
He didn’t finish the sentence. He had not shaken off the influence
of the dream, and there was, besides, the ugly doubt concerning the
accidental cause of the fire. A moment he stood there, trying to set
his wits in order, as he himself would have phrased it. Then, of a
sudden, he was as thoroughly awake and alert as fresh alarm could make
him.
A thin, grayish vapor was filling the space before the tent. His
nostrils caught the pungent odor of wood smoke.
Sam wasted no time, once he had warning of the reappearance of the
peril. He sprang back into the tent to rouse his mates; but, even as he
did so, he was making swift calculation of the hour. The position of
the moon gave him his best hint. Midnight had passed; of that he was
quite sure.
“Up, everybody!” he shouted. “Turn out! Fire, fire, fire! Hustle! Get a
move on! The fire’s started again, and this time it’ll travel this way!
Up with you, everybody!”
There was varied response to the summons. Herman Boyd, a light sleeper,
seemed to reach awakening and understanding together; for he was out
of bed and on his feet in a second. Tom Orkney sat up and yawned
cavernously. The Shark’s voice rose sharply:
“Confound it all! What’s the row about?”
“Row enough!” cried Sam. “Woods afire again!”
“Umph!” growled the Shark; but he reached for his spectacles and having
put them on, began to wriggle into his trousers most expeditiously.
The Trojan and Step tried to rise at once, and collided. Both went
down, Step falling across the still recumbent Poke, who groaned
abysmally, and struck out wildly in the dark. Whereat Step, in
self-protection, grappled with his plump friend, and the pair rolled
from bunk to ground, adding immensely to the confusion in the narrow
space.
For two or three minutes pandemonium reigned. Then Sam, using voice and
arm vigorously, succeeded in restoring order, of a sort.
“Hurry, hurry!” he urged; and the exhortation was not wasted. The boys
scrambled into their clothes; they dragged on shoes, without much heed
to ownership of the articles. Poke and Step, freed from each other’s
embrace, made as good time as the rest.
Led by Sam, the club swarmed out of the tent. Once in the open, there
was no need for him to declare the danger. Clouds of smoke were driving
by them, and beyond the smoke the yellow flicker of flames was visible.
Sam caught up the spade they had used in digging a ditch about the
tent. Step noted the action, and gave a shout.
“Hurrah! I know where there’s another--over by the old shed. It’s
broken, but it’ll help.”
“Get it!” cried Sam; and away went Step on the run, bounding along
with a queer, kangaroo-like gait, which covered ground amazingly.
Tom Orkney and Herman armed themselves with axes. The Shark took a
hatchet; the others laid hold upon clubs which might be of use in
beating the burning brush. Then they sallied forth for battle.
They had not far to go. Apparently the new fire was close to the tract
burned over in the afternoon; but, except in the matter of locality,
the situation was entirely changed. The first fire had started when
almost a dead calm prevailed; its spread had been slow. Now a strong
breeze was blowing, and the line of flame was advancing swiftly. It was
sweeping toward the camp, and had gained such headway that Sam, at a
glance, realized that the club had its work cut out for it, if it was
to save the tent and its contents.
As has been told, the woods near the lake offered plenty of fuel. Sam
and his fellows, charging up to the fire, quickly discovered that
the beating-out process, which had served well enough in the earlier
instance, was no longer effective. Here and there, to be sure, it was
possible to check the enemy on a narrow front; but, beyond this, the
leaping, yellow tongues continued to gain on either flank.
A spectator, free of anxiety for results, could have found the scene
sufficiently picturesque. The wavering illumination played strange
tricks with lights and shadows. The moving line of flames suggested
a march of torch-bearers, straggling and out of step but always
advancing, even if irregularly. Here a tree-trunk stood out in the
full glare; there dense, overhanging boughs were like the roof of a
cavern. For a dozen yards, perhaps, the fire seemed to frolic in the
undergrowth; beyond was a stretch where it raged savagely. The wind
sent the smoke swirling through the trees, sometimes in great, rolling
volumes, sometimes whipped to streaming ribbons. Blazing twigs and bits
of bark sailed away merrily to fall in the thickets and become fresh
centers of destruction.
The boys had scant time for such observations, but they did not need to
make them to grasp the extent of the danger. Their first attack, as has
been related, succeeded in halting the fire for a space of half a dozen
rods; but on both sides the yellow tongues advanced, and, indeed,
threatened to creep in behind them. Sam marked this peril. He called
to Step, who had come up, bringing the broken spade from the old shed;
and with him fell back to a comparatively open space well behind the
present fighting line--and uncomfortably close to the camp, for that
matter.
Sam’s plan was simple, but held promise. It was a rough and ready
adaptation of the method often used by farmers in fighting grass and
brush fires by plowing furrows across the track of the approaching
flames, the freshly turned ground, of course, offering no fuel for
them. The boys had no plow, but with the spades, plied desperately, it
was possible to dig a shallow trench, which served a double purpose,
in that it not only broke the continuity of the carpet of rubbish,
but gave chance to widen the safety band by throwing dirt from the
excavation over the dead leaves and branches beside it. By great
good fortune there was a sort of pathway along which Sam and Step
could work, and here they made the dirt fly, while the others did
their best to hold back the fire on their immediate front. In this
they succeeded, to the extent, at least, of enabling Sam and Step
to complete their “safety zone” for a distance which meant a real
lessening of the danger to the camp.
Poke, too, had an inspiration. Its source may have been in a quantity
of smoke which he had inhaled, and which forced him to fall back,
gasping for breath. At all events, as he stood, coughing and rubbing
his eyes, a flaming brand fell close beside him. In an instant a new
little fire was started. Poke was about to stamp it out, when he took
second thought, and permitted it to burn for a moment, not interfering
until a patch four or five feet long and half as wide was ablaze. Then
in vigorous fashion he plied his club. The result was a patch where
fire would not travel again because fire had already ravaged the little
space.
It was another instance of hitting upon an old device--that of setting
“back fires”; but Poke was vastly pleased by his discovery. He shouted
to his friends, who, to tell the truth, were quite ready to try any new
move. To put it in military phrase, they had been fighting a rear-guard
action, which had its discouraging aspects because of steady, if slow,
retirement; and they rallied with a will to Poke’s assistance. The
safety zone widened and lengthened; the “back fired” strips bordering
the trench extended almost as far as it did. So much accomplished, the
boys paused for a little in their labors. They stationed themselves
behind the defenses, whose strength was about to be put to the test.
The fire swept up to the barrier. It seemed to beat upon it as surf
beats upon a beach. There was no need of a lively fancy to picture
a succession of waves; for with the fluctuations of the wind the
flames rose and fell like so many combers; while the hint of spray was
carried out by tiny showers of glowing embers, which sailed over the
obstruction. To these the boys gave prompt attention, with all the
greater zeal because they saw that they were holding back the main
fire. Five minutes showed their success in this respect. So far as
the ditch ran, the great danger was over; they were able to cope with
flying sparks falling behind their line. It remained for the Shark to
give timely warning of the limits of their success and of the menace
still existing on either hand.
“Look! There!” He was tugging at Sam’s arm with one hand and pointing
with the other. “It’s getting ’round us! Whew!”
The Shark was pointing to the left, but what Sam saw there made him
glance swiftly to the right as well. In both directions was abundant
cause for alarm.
What had happened, and was happening, required little explanation. The
boys had devoted themselves to blocking the path leading straight to
the camp, and had been forced to neglect the flanks of their defenses.
There the fire had an unobstructed way. Already it had lapped the ends
of the ditch, and was moving on, edging in upon the sheltered area
behind the barrier. In other words, the camp now was threatened from
both sides, if not from in front. Older heads might have foreseen
the situation, but it is probable that the club, with its available
force, had done as much as it could have accomplished with the most
experienced leadership. The simple fact was that the fire was too big
to be fought and beaten by half a dozen boys or men.
Sam kept his head. He made a hurried calculation.
“Fellows, we’ve got to have help. This thing is getting ’way beyond us.
And it’s getting beyond a case of saving the camp. It’s going to be a
question of stopping the fire before it works around the end of the
lake and reaches the pavilion and the cottages.”
The Trojan voiced the complaint that was in the minds of all of the
club: “Confound the folks over there! Why haven’t they turned out and
given us a lift? Fire fighting’s everybody’s business.”
“If everybody knows about the fire,” Sam amended.
“Geeminy! How can those people help knowing? The smoke is blowing right
in their direction. Then there’s the glare. They can’t all be dead over
there!”
“But they can be asleep.”
“That’s right,” Poke broke in. “Remember, we were right on the spot,
as you might say, and mighty little we worried till Sam happened to be
bothered by an uneasy conscience or something. And so----”
Sam cut short Poke’s philosophical observations.
“Never mind that, now! Step, you’d better hustle over to the other
side of the lake and wake ’em up. Poke, go along with him, and rout out
any neighbors you can find. The rest of us will stay here and hold back
the fire as well as we can till help comes. Orkney, take Herman and
the Trojan and work along to the left. The Shark and I will go to the
right. And Step and Poke, hurry--both of you!”
Step needed no urging. Away he went, on the run, with Poke close at his
heels.