Tom looked up at the tangled treetops.
“Dunno as it’d burn—too wet. Might smoke ’em some, though.” He glanced overhead again, and half grinned. “No harm to try. It’s a good deal dead cypress and gum tree through here, after all. Pull down all the dry branches an’ vines you kin reach, an’ pile ’em against this here dead cypress.”
While Lockwood was doing it, Tom went back to the boat and secured a tin cup of gasoline from the tank. He poured this on the dead tree, lit a match and tossed it.
There was a flash like an explosion. Fire rushed up to the top of the tree and spread in a sheet. The hanging rick of moss and dead creepers seemed to catch like paper. A roaring flame went through the treetops like a blast, driven by the light breeze, and the two men scrambled hastily back to the boat with flakes of fire falling around them.
From the interior of the jungle came an intense popping and crackle. Volumes of smoke rolled up, mixed with jets of light flame, but it did not last long. The force of the conflagration seemed to fail; the smoke lessened.
“Gone out. I thought as how it was too wet,” growled Power.
It was not out, though. Smoke still rose persistently though not so dense; the sharp popping of twigs had died to a low crackle. Lockwood went ashore and looked through the thickets again. The whole jungled interior was dense with smoke, but he could see flickers of flame creeping along the cypress trunks and through the branches. The light stuff had burned away in one flash, but the dead treetops had caught.
He went back and reported. If the solid wood got well burning the fire would go right across to the house boat.
“They’ll have to cut loose an’ clear out. Let’s get back to where we was before, an’ watch,” said Ferrell.
Tom turned the boat, ran downstream, and into the twisting channel again, back to the spot where they had first stopped. By this time the fire was making visible headway. Clouds of smoke rolled over the position of the ambushed house boat and went drifting up the bayou.