And the frantic hope that was really a prayer was answered. How it rained! It was like a cloudburst. Down, down it came in torrents that seemed inexhaustible.
And as the floods descended, the boys watched with delight the effect it had upon the fire. At first it was hardly perceptible, and the flames still towered toward the skies. But after a few minutes the blaze began to lower and waver. The heart of the forest was still crimson, but at the outer edges, above and around, little columns of smoke began to dull the red welter. And it stopped spreading. The trees that had not yet caught were now beyond likelihood of catching. The red fingers that reached out for them found not dry timber but dripping, soaking trunks and branches on which the fingers slipped. The fire was beaten. It might be hours before it would admit defeat and slink out of sight, but it was beaten just the same. The beginning of the end had come!
CHAPTER XXV
SNATCHED FROM DEATH
But the jubilation of the Radio Boys at the victory of rain over the flames soon gave way to feelings of alarm at a new danger that threatened them.
The wind seemed to abandon the upper stretches of the air and swooped down on the lake. Soon it had become a howling gale that churned the waters into foam and tossed their frail craft about like an eggshell.
Had they been in a canoe or even in an ordinary rowboat, they could not have survived. But the broad surface that the raft presented to the water made it difficult to upset it, though at times it seemed as though it would throw a complete somersault.
Up and down it went sickeningly, at one moment on the crest and the next in the trough of the waves. Again and again the water came aboard and swept the raft from end to end, and the boys had to dig their hands and feet into the crevices of the raft and hold on for dear life.
Bob had thrown himself at full length on the raft, one arm flung about the radio set which otherwise would have been washed overboard.
Buck’s fears had again been aroused by the new peril, and he broke out into lamentations, which might have had an unnerving effect on the other boys had they not been half-smothered by the clamor of the wind and waves.
Suddenly a new sound broke through the din, a noise that the boys from their experience at Ocean Point recognized at once as the roar of waves beating on the shore.