Ed, too, was soon in the thick of the fight, for in beating at the fire below, the fighters on the ground sent aloft a constant shower of sparks which found their way to the dry log roof on which he crouched. Staggering about through the choking smoke, he beat out several patches of fire which had started from the glowing cinders. Fiery embers seemed to fill the air. They lit on his face and hands, and burned their way into the flesh before he could brush them off. He was unable to see his comrades below, and so loud had the roar of the fire become that he did not even hear their voices. Several times he found himself on the very edge of the roof, and he barely escaped falling off, for, blinded as he was by the smoke, he could not see where he was.
Suddenly he felt a hand clutch his arm, and turned abruptly to find George beside him. His eyebrows were singed, and his face streaked and sooty.
“I’ve been calling you till I’m hoarse,” he gasped. “Thought you might have smothered up here. Ben says the forest fire will be over that hill in a few minutes. Say, isn’t this an experience and a half?” he chuckled, wiping his inflamed eyes.
“What about the cabin?” Ed inquired, anxiously.
“Ben thinks it’s safe, except for the sparks and embers which he says will be dropping like hail when the real fire goes by. He and Bill will watch the walls, and you and I are to guard the roof. You see, our back-fire has burned everything off around the cabin, so the forest fire will have nothing to feed on and must go round us. Ben thinks it will travel around the lake. Say, it’s fierce work holding that back-fire.”
Then the woods were lighted as vividly as if thousands of great electric lights had been suddenly turned on. The boys looked toward the distant pine ridge in alarm, and saw a great barrier of leaping, red-tongued flame rushing toward the little cabin, whose sole protection was the thin line of wavering fire they had sent up the hill to meet and combat the destroying furnace bearing down upon them.
The roar of the flames through the trees and the crackling of burning brush echoed in their ears. Then the awful heat swept over them and stifled their very breath as they groped their way uncertainly about through the yellow pall of smoke.
“Here she is—lie low!” yelled Ben, from somewhere below them; but the rest of his orders were drowned by the noise.
A host of burning embers came glowing through the smoke and alighted on the cabin. A jet of flame started up near the peak of the roof, and the boys dashed water on the spot. Birds struck against them, cinders lit in their hair, and their heads reeled from the intense heat and suffocating smoke.
“Look! Oh, look!” screamed George, hysterically, as a solid sheet of flame flew from the top of a pitch-pine and caught again in a neighboring tree, which it consumed with a sullen roar.