This was intolerable. To escape the tyranny of thought she rose, slipped on her white dressing-gown, lit the lamp she had extinguished, and sat down to read a stiff book till she felt sleepy. The process was not a long one, for she was really fatigued, and ten minutes saw her turning down the lamp once more.
What happened next she scarcely knew; only this--a glare of light--a feeble crash. Then fire in her eyes, her face, her hands--fire at her feet, licking along the thin carpet, soaking up the folds of her filmy dress. The bed lay close at hand; she was on it in a second, wrapping the blankets round her, and beating out the runnels of flame, with eyes, brain, and body absorbed in the immediate personal danger. When that was over, and she looked up, she sprang to her feet on the bed with a cry. The fire was everywhere, creeping up the sides of the tent, filling it with suffocating smoke. She wound her trailing skirts round her and made a dive for the first outlet--for her only chance of escape! The thick wadded curtain swinging aside let in a wind, making the smouldering cotton flame; but the next instant she was outside, constrained to pause, wondering if by chance it was nothing but a bad dream. For the camp lay serene and peaceful in the moonlight; not a sound, not a sign, even from her own tent. She stood positively irresolute, staring back at what she had left. Was it a dream? Then, suddenly a faint drift of smoke rose through a crevice in the cloth.
'Mr. Gordon!--Mr. Gordon!' She burst through the thick, guided by the light in his tent to the nearest help. 'Your knife--quick! my tent is on fire! Quick, or the whole camp will catch!'
The blood was flowing from a cut over her forehead, one arm showed bare through scorched muslin, the draperies caught round her were singed and blackened, the stamp and smell of fire was on her from head to foot. Lewis, starting to his feet, stared at her.
'Oh, quick! please, quick! Your pen-knife--anything! Cut down the tents--Mr. Fitzgerald said it was the only----'
He had grasped the position ere she could finish, snatched up a hunting-knife and was out; she, with a pen-knife, close at his heels.
'Good God! how the wind has risen,' he muttered, as they ran. 'No, not mine!--The mess-tent first; the wind is that way.'
As they flew past her tent, the scene seemed peaceful as ever; but ere the guy-ropes of the next were reached, a swirl of smoke and flame, prisoned until then by the outer fly of canvas, swept straight up into the sky in the first force of its escape; then bent silently to the breeze. So silently!--not a roar, not a crackle--just a pyramid of fire splitting the taut canvas into long shreds, which the wind flung in pennants of flame on the mess-tent as those two hacked silently at the ropes. There was no time for words; no time for thought. A quiver came to the solid-looking pile, a shimmer in the moonlight. Another rope--another--then a sudden sway, a crash of glass and china from within. Down! but with a creeping trail of fire within its folds!
There was no lack of helpers by this time. Knives, hatchets were at work right and left upon the ropes lest the message of fire should find the tents taut. Colonel Tweedie was shouting confused orders in front. Dan Fitzgerald, after a quick inquiry if all were safely out, was back in the rear row, where the danger grew with delay. The din was deafening, yet the flames made no noise; it was the dark humanity yelling, as it capered over the big tent, treading out the curling snakes of fire. Seen against the glare of a burning pyramid behind, the figures showed like the demons in a mediæval Judgment beating the lost souls down to the worm which dieth not.
Rose, standing to rest, now that abler arms were at work, felt a hurried touch on her shoulder, and turned to see Lewis Gordon holding out an ulster which he had fetched from his tent.