“To sit on rocks, to muse o’er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest’s shady scene,
Where things that own not man’s dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne’er, or rarely, been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o’er steeps and foaming falls to lean,--
This is not Solitude: ’tis but to hold
Converse with nature’s charms, and view her stores unroll’d.”
It was about the middle of the forenoon, on the day marked by the
incidents narrated in the preceding chapter, when Claud Elwood, who had
become pretty well initiated into the sports of the locality, entered
his light canoe, with his fishing-tackle and fowling-piece, and pushed
out upon the broad bosom of the forest-girt Umbagog. Having had the
best success, when up on the lake the last time, on the western margin,
he pulled away in that direction, and, after rowing a couple of miles
up the lake, he laid down his oar, unrolled his elm-bark cable, and let
down his stone anchor, at a station a furlong or so from the shore.
It was a beautiful spot, and a beautiful day to enjoy it in. From the
water’s edge rose, deeply enshrouded in their bright green, flowing,
and furbelowed robes of thickly interwoven pines, the undulating hills,
back to the summit level of that long, narrow tongue of forest land,
which, for many miles, only separates the Umbagog from the parallel
Magalloway, the noble stream that here comes rushing down from the
British highlands, to join the scarcely larger Androscoggin, almost
at the very outset of its “varied journey to the deep.” Turning from
this magnificent swell on the west, the eye, as it wandered to the
right over the bright expanse of intervening waters, next rested on
the long, crescent-shaped mountain ridge, behind which slept, in their
still deeper and wilder seclusion, the broad Mooseeluk-maguntic and the
Molechunk-a-munk, which, with the Umbagog, make up the three principal
links in this remarkable chain of lakes. Still farther to the right
lay the seemingly boundless, rolling forests, forming the eastern
and southern rim of this basin of the lakes; whose gradually sloping
sides, like some old pinnacled city, were everywhere bristling with
the giant forms of the heaven-aspiring pine, and whose nearer recesses
were pierced, in the midst, by the long, lessening line of the gleaming
Umbagog; while around the whole circle of the horizon, scattered here
and there far back into the blue distance, rose mountain after mountain
in misty grandeur to the heavens.
After thus slowly sweeping the horizon, to note, for the tenth time,
perhaps, the impressive character of the scenery, whose everywhere
intermingling beauty and grandeur he was never tired of contemplating,
Claud withdrew his gaze, and turned his attention to the more immediate
object of his excursion. After a few moments spent in regulating his
hook and line, he strung his angle-rod, and threw out to see whether he
could succeed in tempting, at that unfavorable hour, the fickle trout
from their watery recesses. But all in vain the attempt. Not a trout
was seen stirring the water at the surface, or manifesting his presence
around the hook beneath; and all the endeavors which the tantalized
angler made, by changing the bait, and throwing the line in different
directions around him, proved, for the next hour, equally fruitless.
While he was thus engaged, intently watching his line, each moment
expecting that the next must bring him a bite, one of those peculiar,
subdued, but far-reaching sounds, which are made by the grazing of
the oar against the side of the boat in rowing, occasionally greeted
his ear from some point to the south of him; though, for a while,
nothing was to be seen to indicate by whom the sounds were produced.
Soon, however, a man in a canoe, who had been coasting, unseen, along
the indentures of the shore, and whom Claud instantly recognized as
Phillips, the hunter already named, shot round a neighboring point,
and, in a few minutes more, was at his side.
“Well, what luck?” cheerily exclaimed Phillips, a keen, hawk-eyed,
self-possessed looking man, with a round, compact, and sinewy frame.
“What luck to-day, young man?”
“None whatever,” replied Claud, with an air of disappointment.
“I suppose so, unless you began before ten o’clock.”
“But why did you suppose so?”
“O, I knew it from my knowledge of human nature,” said the hunter,
humorously. “Trout are very much like other folks, only a great deal
more sensitive to heat. Now, you don’t see men, who are well fixed
under a cool shade in a sweltering hot day, very anxious to run out
bare-headed in the sun, when there is no call for it; much less, then,
the trout, that can’t bear the sun and heat at all. Though there are,
probably, a ton of them within a stone’s throw of us, not one will come
out with this bright sun; they are lying behind the rocks and old logs
at the bottom, and won’t begin to circulate these three hours.”
“And are you not a-going to try them?”
“I? No; I would as soon think of fishing now on the top of these hills.
Besides this, I have a different object. I am bound to carry home
something that will pass for fresh meat, if it is nothing but a coon. I
shall haul up my canoe somewhere about here; follow up the lake-shore a
mile or so, with the idea of catching a deer in the edge of the water,
come there to keep off the flies; then, perhaps, cross over to the
Magalloway, down that, and over to this place; when, by way of topping
off, I will show you, by that time, if you are about here so long, how
trout are taken.”
So saying, the hunter dipped his springy oar into the water, and, with
a few vigorous strokes, sent his canoe to the shore, and, having moored
it to a root, he glided into the thickets, and disappeared with a tread
so noiseless as to leave Claud, for many minutes, wholly in doubt
whether the man was standing still in the bushes or proceeding on his
excursion.
It was now noon, and Claud, seeing no prospect of any immediate success
in his piscatory employment, which had been made to appear to him, by
the remarks of the hunter, more discouraging than ever, drew up his
anchor, and rowed to a point of the shore which was embowered by a
group of magnificent pines. Here, finding a cool spring, as well as a
refreshing shade, he drew out his lunch, and very leisurely proceeded
to discuss it, with the ice-cold water of the spring by which he
had seated himself for the purpose. His fare was coarse; but it was
partaken with a relish of which those who have never experienced the
effects of the air and exercise, incident to a life in the woods, can
have no just conception; and to which the palled appetite of the
“vain lords of luxury and ease,
Whom slumber soothes not, pleasure cannot please,”
is poor in comparison, though all the king’s banquets and metropolitan
feasts in the world should vie together to make good the substitute.
Claud’s life had thus far been, in the main, a quiet and commonplace
one; nothing having occurred to him to arouse those strong and
over-mastering passions to which it is the lot of most of us, at some
period of our lives, to become subjected. It had been checkered,
however, by one bit of romance, which, to say the least, had greatly
excited his imagination. About a year previous to the time of which
we are now writing, and one day while he was walking the streets of
Boston, a small, closely-enwrapped package was put in his hand by an
unknown boy, who, with the simple announcement, “_For you, Sir_,”
turned quickly away, and made off with the air of one who has completed
his mission, and would avoid being questioned. Glancing within the
wrapper, and perceiving it inclosed a small encased picture, or
likeness, of some female, which he thought must have been delivered to
him through mistake, Claud looked hastily round for the messenger, and,
not seeing him, he walked backward and forward along the street, and
lingered some time in the vicinity, still expecting the boy would soon
return to claim the package. But, being disappointed in this, he went
home, and, retiring to his room, undid the wrapper, which he carefully
but vainly examined for some name, mark, or other clue to the mystery;
and then, with much interest, fell to inspecting the picture. It was,
obviously, a well-painted miniature likeness of a fair, dark-eyed girl,
but representing no remembered face, except in the peculiar expression
of the strong and commanding countenance; which, he thought, either
in man or woman, he must have somewhere before encountered. The whole
likeness, indeed, together with the circumstances under which it came
into his hands, made, at the time, a lively impression on his mind;
and, keeping the affair wholly to himself, he often contemplated that
fair face in private; and, for months afterwards, he never was in a
public assembly, where the sex were present, without running his eye
over it in search of the original. But, as he never found it, the
impression gradually wore away, and, in the exciting changes that had
occurred in the fortunes of his family, it had been nearly obliterated
from his mind; when, that morning, while searching his trunk for some
implement belonging to his gun, he came across the miniature, and put
it in his pocket. And now, in the leisure that followed his repast,
he bethought him of it; and, laying it before him on the bed of moss
on which he was reclining, he contemplated it with renewed interest,
and that sort of dreamy enthusiasm which the sudden revival of old
associations in such solitudes is apt to awaken in the mind, especially
when those associations are connected, as now, with a matter of mystery
and romance.
After indulging in his reveries a while, he put up his miniature,
aroused himself from his day-dream, and rose to his feet, when, feeling
inclined for some kind of action, he decided on a short excursion in
the woods, in the direction of the Magalloway, where probably he would
fall in with Phillips, and return with him to the lake. Accordingly,
after loading his gun with ball and buckshot, so as to be prepared
for any large wild animals he might chance to encounter, he leisurely
took his way through the heavy, ascending forest that lay in his
course; here pausing to note the last night’s bed of some solitary
bear, and there to trace the marks of the death-struggle of a victim
deer, that, with all its vigilance and wondrous agility, had been
surprised and brought down by the stealthy and far-leaping catamount.
The ever-varying tenants of the forest, also, were constantly
presenting, as he passed on, some novelty to attract his unaccustomed
eye; now in the smooth, tall shaft of the fusiform fir--the dandy of
the forest--standing up with its beautiful cone-shaped top among its
rougher neighbors, trim and straight as the bonnetted cavalier of the
old pictures, among the slouchy forms of his homelier but worthier
opponents; now in the low and stocky birch standing on its broad,
staunch pedestal of strongly-braced roots below, and throwing out
widely above its giant arms, as if striving to shoulder and stay up
the weight of the superincumbent forest; and now in the imperial pine,
proudly lifting its tall form an hundred feet over the tops of the
plebeian trees around, to revel in the upper currents of the air, or
bathe its crowning plumes of living green in the clouds of heaven.
Proceeding in this manner, he at length found himself gradually
descending the western slope of the hill; when he soon arrived in
the vicinity of the river, a glimpse of which, together with a small
clearing and a tidy-looking cottage on its banks, he now caught
through the tops of the intervening trees. While still walking on, his
attention was attracted to a comparatively open place in the woods,
where, at some previous period, a severe fire had killed all the
smaller trees, and consumed the underbrush, which had been replaced by
scattering shrubs of the white poplar intermingled with a plentiful
growth of the black-raspberry, whose luscious fruit--the first to
reward the pioneer, and for which he has to contend sharply with the
birds and bears to obtain his share--was now beginning to ripen. As he
was entering this open space, which appeared to extend some distance
round the point of a screening knoll, he was suddenly brought to a
stand by a noise somewhere in the bushes or woods ahead, such as had
never before saluted his ears. It was like nothing else, or _if any_
thing else, like the wild snorting of a frightened horse prolonged into
the dying note of the steam whistle. Claud recoiled a step before the
unaccustomed sound, and involuntarily cocked and raised his gun to his
shoulder. But he was allowed no time to speculate. The next instant,
the loud and piercing shriek of a female, nearer but in the same
direction, rose and rang through the forest. With a speed quickened
at every step by the rapidly repeated cry of distress, he bounded
towards the spot, when, turning the point of the knoll, he suddenly
found himself in full view of the object of his solicitude,--a girl,
in the full bloom of youthful beauty, who, with bonnet thrown back
and her loosened hair streaming in wild disorder over her shoulders,
instantly rushed forward for his protection. Claud stopped short, in
mute surprise at the unexpected apparition; for the first glance at
her face told him that the original of his mysterious miniature was
before him,--before him, here in the woods! Breathless and speechless
in her wild affright, she pointed, with a glance over her shoulder,
to a thick, high tangle of large, strongly limbed, knotty, windfallen
trees, a short distance behind her, and fled past him to the rear.
Looking in the indicated direction, the startled and perplexed young
man distinguished the outlines of a monstrous moose madly plunging at
the woody barrier, and trying to force his enormous antlers through the
unyielding limbs preparatory to leaping it in pursuit of his victim,
who had eluded the infuriated animal, and barely escaped the fatal
blows of his uplifted hoofs, by creeping under the providentially
placed obstruction. Claud instantly raised his piece, when, feeling
uncertain of his aim, he withheld his fire, and stood waiting for a
fairer view. But, before he could obtain it, the moose, tired of vain
attempts to force his passage through the bristling barricade of logs
and limbs before him, disappeared for one moment, but the next came
crashing round the nearest end of it, and, with renewed demonstrations
of rage and hostility, made directly for the new opponent he beheld in
his way. Still unalarmed for his own safety, Claud waited with levelled
gun till his formidable assailant was within forty yards of him, when
he took a quick aim and fired. Reeling under the discharge of his
heavily loaded piece, and blinded by the smoke, he could not, at first,
see the effect of his fire; but when he did so, the next instant, it
was only to behold the monster brute, maddened, not stopped, by the
flesh wounds inflicted, rushing on him with a force and fury which
compelled him to leap suddenly aside, to avoid being beat into the
earth by those terrible hoofs, which he saw lifted higher and higher,
at each approaching step, for his destruction. Mindful, in his peril,
of the precautions already learned from the hunters, Claude, while
the moose, whose tremendous impetus was driving him straight ahead,
could break up, so as to turn in the pursuit,--Claud made, with all
the speed of which he was master, for a huge hemlock, luckily standing
at no great distance on his right; a course which he thought would
divert the monster from pursuit of the maiden, and, at the same time,
best insure his own safety. But, so prodigious was the rushing speed
of the foiled and now doubly exasperated moose, that the imperilled
huntsman had barely time to reach the sheltering tree and dodge behind
it, before the hotly pursuing foe was at his heels, rasping and tearing
with his spiked antlers the rough bark of the tree, in his attempts to
follow round it near and fast enough to overtake and strike down his
intended victim. Round and round then sped both pursuer and pursued,
as fast as the frantic rage of the one, and the keen instinct of
self-preservation in the other, could impel them. Although the moose,
from the great width of his interfering horns, was compelled to sweep
round the tree in a circle requiring him to go over double the distance
travelled by Claude, yet so much greater was his speed, that it called
for the utmost exertions of the latter to keep clear of the battle-axe
blows which he heard falling every instant with fatal force behind him.
His gun had already been struck, shivered, and beat from his hand; and,
as he glanced over his shoulder and saw the fierce and glaring eyes
of his ruthless pursuer, and his uplifted and forward-thrown hoofs
striking closer and closer to his heels at every bound, a sense of his
deadly peril flashed over his mind with that strange and paralyzing
effect which the first full conviction of impending death often
produces on the stoutest hearts. He felt his strength giving way, his
brain beginning to whirl, and he was on the point of yielding himself
to his fate; when a stream of smoke and flame accompanied the startling
report of a rifle, shot out from the edge of a neighboring thicket. The
moose gave a convulsive start, floundered forward on his knees, swayed
backward and forward an instant, then fell over broad-side into the
bushes with a heavy crash, straightened out, gasped, and died.
“Dunno but you’ll think I waited too long, young man,” cried Phillips,
now advancing with a quick, leaping step from his covert. “The fact
was, I felt, on seeing you getting into such close quarters, that I had
better be rather particular about my aim, so as to stop him at once;
besides that, I was at first a little out of breath. I had heard the
fellow blow when an hundred rods off,--then the woman scream,--then
your gun; and, thinking like enough there would be trouble, I legged it
for the spot, and got to my stand just as he treed you.”
“I feel very grateful to you, Mr. Phillips, for this timely rescue,”
responded Claud, recovering his composure. “This, I suppose, is the
far-famed moose?”
“Yes, and a bouncer at that,” replied the hunter, going up and,
placing his foot on the broad and still quivering flank of the huge
animal. “Good twenty hands high, and weighs well, not much short of
fifteen hundred, I should say.”
“But are they often thus dangerous?” asked Claud.
“Not very often, perhaps,” rejoined the hunter. “But still the bull
moose, at this season of the year, is sometimes, when wounded, about as
ugly a customer as you meet with in the woods. This fellow I judge to
have been _oncommon_ vicious, as he begun his tantrums before he was
touched at all, it seems. I dunno but ’twas the woman put the devil
into him, as women do into two-legged animals sometimes,--don’t they,
young man?”
“The woman? O yes, the young lady,” said Claud, reminded of his duty as
a gallant by the remark, though unwilling to appropriate to himself the
prophetic joke with which it was coupled. “Where is she? I must go and
see to her.”
“She has already seen to herself, I guess,” said the hunter. “As I
was coming up, I glimpsed her cutting round and running, like a wild
turkey, for the clearing, to which the moose had cut off her retreat.
She has reached the house by this time, doubtless; for it is hard by,
down on the river here, a hundred rods or such a matter.”
“Who is she? Do you know the family?” eagerly inquired the young man.
“No,” answered the hunter. “They are new-comers in these parts.”
“What could have brought her here so far into the woods?” persisted
Claud.
“The raspberries, very likely,” said the other, indifferently, while
taking out and examining the edge of his knife. “But come, we must
get this moose into some condition, so that he will keep; then be off
to let the settlers know of our luck. And early to-morrow morning, we
will, all hands, come up the river in boats, and distribute him. He
will make fresh meat enough to supply the whole settlement.”
The hunter now, with the assistance of his new pupil in the craft,
proceeded to dressing the moose, the process of which, bleeding,
disemboweling, and partially skinning, was soon completed; when,
cutting some stout green skids with the hatchet he ever carried in his
belt, and inserting the ends under the bulky carcass, the two contrived
to raise it, by means of old logs rolled up for the purpose, several
feet from the ground, so as to insure a free circulation of air beneath
it. This being done, the hunter kindled two log fires, one on each
side, to keep off, he said, the wolves and other carnivorous animals.
They then, after cutting out the tongue and lip, which are esteemed
the tidbits of this animal, took up their line of march for the lake,
which, with the long, rapid lope of the woodsman, measured off, as
usual, in Indian file, and with little or no interrupting conversation,
they reached in a short time, and without further adventure.
“Now,” said the hunter, as he reached the spot where his canoe was
tied, and turned round towards his lagging companion,--“now, sir, what
say you to taking a five-pound trout?”
“Perfectly willing,” replied Claud, smiling; “and I would even take up
with a smaller one.”
“Well, I won’t,--that is, not much smaller; and I think I’ll have one
of at least the size I named.”
“What makes you so confident?”
“Because, it being a hot, shiny morning, they took to their coverts
early, and must be sharp-set, by this time. Besides that, it is just
about the best time for them that could be got up: a deep cloud, as you
see, is coming over the sun, and this wind is moving the water to the
bottom. All sizes will now be coming out, and the big ones, like big
folks, will make all the little ones stand back till their betters are
served.”
Each now taking to his canoe, they pushed out some twenty or thirty
rods into the lake, cast anchor, and threw out their lines. Claud, who
baited with grubs, soon had drawn in two, weighing as many pounds
a piece, and began to feel disposed to banter the hunter, who had
baited with a flap of moose-skin, which he had brought along with
him, and which, to Claud, seemed little likely to attract the fishes
to his hook. But he soon found himself mistaken; for, turning to give
utterance to what was passing in his mind, he beheld the other dallying
with a trout, which he had hooked, and now held flapping on the surface
of the water, evidently much larger than either of his own.
“That is a fine one!” cried Claud. “Why don’t you pull him in?”
“Not big enough,” said the hunter, in reply to the question; while he
turned to the fish with an impatient “Pshaw! what work the cretur makes
of it! Hop off, hop off, you fool! There,” he added, as the trout at
length broke away and disappeared, “there, that is right. Now be off
with yourself till you grow bigger, and give me a chance at the fine
fellow whose tail I saw swashing up round here just now.”
The hunter then carefully adjusted his bait, and threw out the whole
length of his line. After alternately sinking his hook, and then
drawing it to the surface, for two or three throws, the line suddenly
straightened, moved slowly backward at first, then swept rapidly round
and round, or darted off in sharp short angles, with downward and
forward plunges so quick and powerful as to make the stout sapling pole
sway and bend, like a whipstock, in the steadying hands of the hunter.
For four or five minutes he made no attempt to draw in his prize, but
let the fish have full play to the length of its tether, till its
efforts had become comparatively feeble; when, slowly bringing it
alongside, he took the line in his hand, and, with a quick jerk, landed
the noble fellow safely on the bottom of the canoe.
“There, sir!” exclaimed the hunter, seizing the trout by the gills, and
triumphantly holding it up to view, “there is about what I bargained
for: two feet long, not an inch shorter,--seven pounds weight, and not
an ounce lighter! Now, being satisfied, I am done.”
“What, leave off with such luck?” asked Claud in surprise.
“Yes, young man,” said the other, “I hold it all but a downright sin to
draw from God’s storehouse a single pound more than is really needed.
This will last my family as long as it will keep, this warm weather,
with the plenty of moose-meat we shall have. Any thing more is a waste,
which _I_ will not commit. And _you_, sir, who have just hauled in your
third and largest one, I perceive, and have now nearly as many pounds
as I have,--what can _you_ want of more? Come, let us pull up and off
for our homes. It is nearly time, any way.”
Although loth to break off his sport, yet inwardly acknowledging the
justness of the hunter’s philosophy, Claud reluctantly drew in and
wound up his line, hauled in his anchor, and, handling his oar, shot
out abreast of the other, who had already got under way, into the
heaving waters of the now agitated lake. Side by side, with the quick
and easy dip of their elastic single oars, the rowers now sent their
light, sharp canoes, dug out to the thinness of a board from the
straight-grained dry pine, rapidly ahead over the broken and subdued
waves of the cove, in which they had been stationed, till they rounded
the intervening woody point which had cut off the view of the lower end
of the lake.
“Good Heavens!” exclaimed Claud, starting back, with suspended oar, as
now, coming out in view of the lake, his eye fell on the huge pillar of
smoke, which, deeply enshrouding that part of the distant forest lying
east of the outlet of the lake with its expanded base, was rolling
upward its thousand dark, doubling folds; “good Heavens, Phillips, look
yonder! Where and what is it? It looks like a burning city.”
“It is a fire, of course, and no small one, either; but where, I can’t
exactly make out,” slowly responded the hunter, intently fixing his
keen eyes on the magnificent spectacle which had thus unexpectedly
burst on their view in the distance. “Let me see,” he continued,
running his eye along the border of the lake in search of his old
landmarks: “there is the tall stub that stands half a mile down on the
west bank of the river, and is now just visible in the edge of the
smoke; but where is the king pine, that stands nearly against it, over
in your slash? Young man,” he added, with a startled air, “was your
father calculating to burn that slash to-day?”
“No, unless it looked likely to rain.”
“Well it _does_ look likely to rain, in the shape of a shower gathering
yonder, which has already given out one or two grumbles of distant
thunder, if my ears served me as well as usual.”
“Yes; but such a smoke and fire can’t come from our slash. It must be a
larger and more distant one.”
“So I thought at first; but I begin to think different. Do you see that
perpendicular, broken line of light, occasionally flashing out from
the smoke, and extending upward to a height that no ground fire ever
reached? That is your king pine in a blaze from bottom to top. Hark!
why, I can hear it roaring clear here, like a distant hurricane. It
must be a prodigious hot fire to make all that show and noise.”
“Can it endanger our buildings?” asked Claud, in alarm.
“I am afraid so,” replied the other, with a dubious shake of the head.
“But hark again! ’tis your father’s horn blowing for help.”
“Let us row, then, as for our lives!” cried the now thoroughly aroused
and agitated young man. “If any thing happens before I get there, I
shall never forgive myself for my prolonged absence, to the last day of
my life. You will join me in going there, will you not?”
“Yes, and outstrip you by half a mile. But that won’t be the best way.
Throw your anchor into the stern of my canoe, and fall in behind.
There; now keep the anchor-line slack between us, if you can,” rapidly
said the hunter, bending his sinewy form to the work, with a power
that sent his canoe half out of the water at every stroke of his
swiftly-falling oar.
Leaving them to bound over the billowy waters of the lake towards their
destination, with all the speed which strong arms and nerves made tense
with excitement could impart, let us anticipate their arrival, to note
what befell the objects of their anxieties, whom we so abruptly left
in their perils from the fire, to bring up the other incidents of the
day having an equal bearing on the story, with which we have thus far
occupied the present somewhat extended chapter.
The immediate danger to their house from the fire, with which we
left the alarmed Elwood and his wife contending, was, indeed, easily
overcome by dashing pails of water over the roof. But scarcely had
they achieved this temporary triumph in one place over an element
proverbially terrible when it becomes master, before it was seen
kindling into flickering blazes on the roof of the barn and the locks
of hay protruding from its windows and the crevices between the logs of
which it was built. Here, also, they soon succeeded in extinguishing
the fire in the same manner. They were not, however, allowed a
moment’s respite from either their labors or alarms. The fences were
by this time on fire in numerous places; and the chips and wood in the
door-yard were seen to be igniting from the sparks and cinders which,
every instant, fell thicker and hotter around their seemingly devoted
domicil. The fences, after a few vain attempts to save them, were given
up a prey to the devouring element, and the whole exertions of the
panting and exhausted sufferers were turned to saving their buildings;
and even at that they had no time to spare; for, so hot had the air
become from the burning slash, which, through its whole length, was now
glowing with the red heat of a furnace, that every vestige of moisture
had soon disappeared from the drenched roofs, and they were again on
fire.
“Is there no way of raising help?” exclaimed Mrs. Elwood, in her
extremity, as she witnessed these increasing manifestations of danger.
“I never thought of that,” said Elwood. “Hand me the dinner-horn. If
there are any within hearing, they will understand, with the appearance
of this fire, that we are calling for assistance.”
With a few sharp, loud blasts, Elwood threw aside the horn, and again
flew to the work of extinguishing the fires where they became most
threatening. And thus, for nearly another hour, the distressed settler
and his heroic wife, suffering deeply from heat and exhaustion, toiled
on, without gaining the least on the fearful enemy by which they were
so closely encompassed. And they were on the point of giving up in
despair, when the welcome shout of “Help at hand!” from the ringing
voice of the hunter, then just entering the opening, revived hope in
their sinking hearts. The next moment that help was on the spot; but
it was unnecessary. A mightier Hand was about to interpose. From the
bold, black van of the hurrying and deeply-charged rack of cloud, that
had now unheeded gained the zenith, a stream of fire, before which all
other fires paled into nothing, at that instant descended on the top
of the burning pine, and, rending it from top to bottom by the single
explosion, sent its wide-flying fragments in blazing circles to the
ground. A sharp, rattling sound, terminating in a cannon-like report,
followed, shaking the rent and crashing heavens above, and the bounding
earth beneath, in the awful concussion. Before the stunned and blinded
settlers had recovered from the shock, or the deep roll of the echoing
thunder had died away among the distant mountains, another and more
welcome roar saluted their ears. It was that of the rapidly-approaching
rain striking the foliage of the neighboring forest; and, scarcely had
they time to gain the cover of the house, before the deluging torrents
poured over it with a force and fury beneath which the quelled fires
speedily sunk, hissing, into darkness and death.