Sam’s generalship had the virtue, at least, of not attempting
impossibilities.
It had been shown that by concentrating effort the boys could check the
fire for a comparatively few yards; but it was just as clear that such
a break in the line of its advance would figure little in the general
result. In short, so far as the club was concerned, the fire was out of
control. It was spreading rapidly. How far it already had extended Sam
did not know. To gain information on this point was one of the reasons
for the division of his forces. He had no expectation that Orkney’s
squad could accomplish more than he set as a task for the Shark and
himself; and this was to do a sort of picket duty, keeping watch on the
flames, hindering their progress, if possible, and preparing to report
conditions accurately, when reinforcements should arrive.
It quickly became evident that the fire was covering a wide area.
Sam and the Shark could catch the gleam of flames far to the right.
Seemingly, though, the progress of the conflagration was most
irregular. The ground was broken, with many little ravines and small
swampy patches; the growth varied in density; the wind apparently had
had much greater effect in some places than in others. The two boys
moved along at a fairly rapid pace, for the most part; though they
halted now and then to extinguish some blaze in bush or grass tuft,
where a flying brand had fallen. The smoke was annoying rather than
overpowering; for while it was rising in great clouds, these were
caught by the strong breeze and swept away. By keeping a little back
from the fire line the boys found that they avoided the worst of this
trouble, most of the smoke passing overhead. Of course, they could not
escape it wholly. Again and again the acrid gray fog closed about them,
and left them coughing and gasping for a moment, while the air was
again clearing.
Being bent on observation, Sam pressed on. He made mental note of what
he saw, and was little encouraged thereby. It was a big fire, and it
was going to be bigger still. The chances were excellent that the whole
district about the end of the lake would be burned over.
Of a sudden, the Shark plucked at his sleeve.
“Look! ’Most down to the shore we are.”
Sam obeyed the order, and saw that the Shark was right. A tiny bay cut
deeply into the land, bringing the water within a hundred feet of where
they stood.
“That’s all right--gives us a way out,” said Sam. “If worse comes to
worst, we can take to the lake.”
“Umph! Swimming job--water’s deep all along this shore.”
“Well, we can swim, then.”
The Shark nodded. “I guess that’s so, only----” Then he broke off;
stared hard at a clump of brush beyond the cove; whistled shrilly.
“What’s up?” Sam demanded curiously.
“Something’s moving over there.”
“What do you mean?”
“Just what I say. Something--or somebody--is stirring in that thicket.”
Sam peered in the direction indicated.
“I don’t see anything,” he objected.
“I don’t--now. I did see something, though.”
Try as hard as he could, Sam made out nothing except the shadowy
outlines of the thicket. The light, to be sure, was both faint and
trickily deceptive; one might easily be misled by a flutter of branches
in a sharp gust.
“What did it look like?” he asked.
The Shark hesitated. “Well--well, it seemed to me somebody was
wriggling through the brush.”
“We can settle it quick enough,” Sam declared. He strode to the clump,
and as he approached it had a suspicion that he glimpsed a flitting
form vanishing in the darkness a score of yards away. But it was only a
suspicion; certainly nobody was hiding in the cover he searched.
“Well, what do you think now?” he inquired.
But the Shark had a new point of interest. He had ranged down to the
water’s edge, and was staring at an object floating some distance from
shore.
“Boat--sure as you’re alive!” he declared.
“So it is--boat gone adrift!” Sam agreed, after a moment’s study of the
object.
The Shark meditated an instant. “Look here, Sam!” he said. “Take the
way the wind’s blowing--make note where that boat is--gives you one
thing sure: Boat must have been beached just about here.”
“You mean to have drifted as that boat’s drifted?”
“Just what I mean. Know what my notion is? Well, it’s that somebody
landed in this cove, left his boat, and went into the woods. When he
came back a few minutes ago he found that the boat had worked off, and
had been carried out into the lake by the wind. Then he saw or heard
you and me coming, and bolted through the bushes. That shows that he
didn’t want to be seen.”
Sam nodded. “That sounds reasonable. Only why should anybody be afraid
of us?”
“Nobody would be--if he wasn’t up to something queer. When things are
all right, and square, and aboveboard, everybody tries to pull with
everybody else in fighting a forest fire. That fellow--whoever he
was--ought to have joined us. Instead, he got away as fast as he could
travel.”
Again Sam inclined his head in agreement. “Shark, you’re figuring this
thing out right! I had my doubts if you really saw anybody; but the
boat makes it a different case. And I’m going to find out who that
skulker is. Come on!”
With that Sam plunged into the woods again, the Shark keeping with him.
The mystery of the stranger for the moment took precedence over the
task of watching the fire.
For a little the boys kept close to the shore, believing that the
boat’s owner naturally would try to work back to the cove, and thence
swim out to the drifting craft. The Shark had a theory that was just
what the stranger had been about to do, when he was frightened off by
their appearance; and Sam was disposed to accept it as a reasonable
supposition.
Five minutes’ scouting failed to reveal a trace of the fugitive. It
showed, too, that the fire in this quarter had spread more slowly, and
that the farther the boys advanced, the more distant the flames were
from the shore. The pair halted and took counsel.
“That chap’s escaped--for the present, anyhow,” said Sam. “We’d better
be turning firemen again.”
“Umph! I’d rather land that runaway,” objected the Shark. “What’s more
to the point, we’ve a better chance to do it than to stop the fire.”
Sam reflected briefly. “I guess you may be right,” he admitted. “All
the same, we can try to kill two birds with one stone--watch the fire
and look for that fellow at the same time. And let’s be at it!”
Again the two set out, this time putting the lake behind them and
moving inland. For a space the growth was heavier and the ground
“cleaner”--that is, there was less litter of dead leaves and branches.
Moreover, a low ridge for the moment hid the fire, so that there was
nothing to delay their progress.
Pressing on at a brisk pace, they strained eyes and ears for evidence
of the stranger’s presence. Twice or thrice Sam thought he saw or heard
something, but in each case it proved to be a false alarm. Once it was
a frightened rabbit crossing his path, and again the rustlings might
have been made by some smaller woods creature. Presently, though,
there was a sound which did not die away in a moment, as the other
sounds had died, but steadily increased in volume; a peculiar sound
that was like a low roar. Its explanation was not far to seek. The
ridge bent sharply to the left. The boys rounded the curve, and halted
aghast at the sight they beheld.
For a little the higher ground had concealed the spread of the flames,
but now, of a sudden, the pair could view the full fury of the fire.
Here it was burning on a scale far greater than any that had marked its
progress in other parts of the woods. The crackling of burning brush
was quite lost in the roaring of the sheets of flame. The boys seemed
to be looking into a huge furnace, in which trees and logs were swiftly
being consumed. The forward line of the fire was like a moving wall,
being pushed forward by some mighty, if irregular, force. And, as they
gazed, Sam and the Shark saw great brands caught up by a sharp gust of
the rising gale and carried along in gleaming arcs to fall in the dry
timber beyond. They saw vines burned from trees to which they had clung
and fall, writhing like serpents in their descent; they saw a resinous
pine burst into flame from root to top, as if it were some pyrotechnic
set-piece. A shower of sparks fell close to them; there came another,
and it was like a fiery rain upon their devoted heads.
The boys gave ground. Compared with this conflagration, the fire in its
earlier stages had been as child’s play. It was no longer a question of
checking or even hindering its progress. They fell back, reluctantly
but helplessly.
“If--if it’s as big--at the other end, they--they won’t be able to stop
it this side of the pavilion,” Sam said brokenly.
The Shark was the most undemonstrative of mortals, but now he was
wringing his hands in a queer sort of despair.
“Confound it! It--it isn’t fair--a fire like that--it won’t give a
fellow half a chance!” he moaned.
“A hundred men would be needed to fight it here.”
“They can’t raise half so many to save the settlement.”
“But the other neighbors----”
“Not enough of ’em to do any good. They’ll have to telephone to town
for help.”
Sam considered the case for a moment. “The folks at the pavilion will
think of that, of course.... And Step and Poke must have roused ’em by
this time. There’s nothing we can do about it.”
“Not a thing!” said the Shark. “And our camp’s as good as done for, I
reckon. Our little stop was all right in its way, but this”--he broke
off and waved a hand at the great fire--“this is big business, Sam.
It’ll burn over everything on this side of the lake.”
“I’m afraid so,” said Sam gloomily. “Maybe there’ll be time, though, to
work back and save some of our plunder.”
“Doubt it,” quoth the Shark crisply. “No harm trying, though,” he added.
Sam gave a parting glance at the furnace, and found it raging more
furiously than ever. It was a wonderful sight, fascinating if
terrifying. His fancy stirred; there were before him glowing arches and
long aisles reaching far back into the woods through which the flames
had spread; but in the foreground, where the fire was roaring toward
him, it was easy to picture a monster of savage destruction.
“I--I--it makes me think of a--a phrase I never really understood
before----” he began.
“Sure! Same here!” exclaimed the Shark. “It’s--er--er--it’s ‘A singed
cat’--or ‘A burnt child’--one or the other--‘dreads the fire.’”
Sam’s laugh was a little tremulous. “Ho, ho! ‘Devouring element’--that
was what I was thinking about. But you’re on the right track, too,
Shark. We’re in a fair way to be singed and maybe burned, if we try to
stay here longer.”
[Illustration: THE BOYS FELT AS IF THEY STOOD BEFORE AN ENORMOUS
FURNACE]
It was no more than the truth. So great was the heat that the boys,
even though they were at a considerable distance from the leaping
flames, felt as if they stood before the discharge pipes of an enormous
furnace. Sam retreated a pace. So did his companion. Then, together,
they turned and started back toward the lake.
It was their intention to keep close to the shore and make their way to
the camp--if that had still escaped destruction--in the hope of saving
the effects they had left in the tent, and then to rejoin the others of
the club. They made haste, running when the ground permitted; and
came in sight of the water, with no more serious incident than a tumble
for the Shark, whose foot caught on a root. On the lake shore, though,
they had a reminder of their still unsuccessful quest of the mysterious
stranger.
There was a clearly audible crashing of brush very near them. Both
boys stopped in their tracks. For an instant they peered into the dim
thickets, whence the sounds proceeded. Then, by a common impulse, they
sprang forward. The great fire was forgotten, and their one thought was
to overtake the person who seemed to be in such fear of detection.