“I’m sorry I haven’t any seasoning for these beauties, but you’ll have to get along the best you can without it,” he said. “This fish is done now, and I’ll whack it up the best I can. If there isn’t enough, we can easily fish one or two more out of the lake.”
In spite of Jimmy’s apology the fish tasted good, although before they were all eaten the boys were in the water again, seeking relief from the suffocating heat. After that there was not much they could do but keep their raft well away from the blazing shore and pray for rain, which they all did fervently.
CHAPTER XXIV
THE BLESSED RAIN
Through the blazing forest the wind tore its way, gathering up as it went the blazing crowns of trees and throwing them, like a baleful giant at sport, high up in the air, where they separated and fell like thousands of skyrockets at once.
At any other time it would have been a spectacle of such magnificence that it would have held the boys spellbound. But there was nothing in it now but terror and deadly peril to life.
The Radio Boys braced themselves to meet the ordeal, and for the sake of the others held their fears under control. But in their secret hearts they believed that none of them would come out of that fiery furnace alive.
But there was one on the raft who had no hesitation in letting his fears be known, and that was Buck Looker. He crouched down on the raft, his usually red face blanched with fright, whimpering and whining and mumbling incoherently.
It takes an ordeal like that through which the party on the raft were passing to bring each one out in his true colors. There was no question as to Buck’s color. It was undeniably yellow.
A great mass of branches, all aflame, was carried out by the wind and fell in the lake not more than twenty feet from the raft. Had it fallen on it, the party would have been enveloped in flames in a moment. Even at that distance, the heat seared their faces as though with a hot iron, and to save their eyes they covered their heads with their wet coats.
Buck gave a wild shriek as the blazing mass came down.