“I know I haven’t treated you fellows right,” whimpered Buck. “But if you once get me out of this I’ll never do anything against you again.” Bob did not reply, for at that moment he felt upon his face what seemed like drops of rain. At first he thought that it was spray from the rough water on which the raft was tossing. But he held his face upturned and felt several more large drops come pattering down.
“Hurrah, fellows!” he cried, in wild jubilation. “It’s raining!”
“What!” yelled Joe unbelievingly.
“You’re fooling!” cried Herb.
“More likely it’s water from the lake,” asserted Jimmy.
“It’s rain, I tell you!” exclaimed Bob. “Hold your faces up and feel it. Glory, hallelujah!”
A moment more and doubt was impossible, for with a swish and a roar the rain began to come down in torrents.
How they welcomed it! How they gloried in it! In a few minutes they were drenched to the skin with water colder than that of the lake, but it seemed to them that they had never had such a delightful sensation.
For that blessed rain meant salvation, salvation not only for them but perhaps for scores of others who, like themselves, had been trapped in that ring of flame. It meant the conquering of the fire fiend, that red demon who for hours past had been threatening them with a terrible death.
“If it only keeps up, if it only keeps up!” they found themselves repeating again and again.