The smoke was driving fiercely through the green trees on the slope, and the line of fire was not far in the rear. Every moment the wind gained force, every minute the flames leaped higher and faster.
The foresters felling trees and clearing a space at an advantageous point some distance in advance of the flames were working blindly, mechanically. The heat was intense, the smoke suffocating, irritating, blinding. The shirts of the workers were open at the throat, their coats had long ago been lost as they had been beaten back from one stand to another.
Now and then a worker dropped senseless in his tracks, his lips cracked with the heat, his face blistered, his tongue lolling from his smarting mouth like that of an overworked horse. Then the men who were able to move and understand would carry him back to a spot of supposed safety and return to re-engage in the almost hopeless fight, the battle which the flames were winning in every charge and sally.
The aeroplane, after a narrow escape from destruction, landed on a little rise of ground back of the working line when the wind lulled for an instant, and hope shone in the faces of the astonished men who gathered about to greet the unexpected arrivals.
“We can master it,” Green, the leader, said, after many questions had been asked and answered, “if we can be supplied with water. We wasted our supply wetting our clothes a long time ago, and are suffering.”
“Get us water,” shouted another, “and we’ll win yet.”
“There’s a spring three miles away,” Green went on, speaking in Ned’s ear, for the roaring of the flames drowned all ordinary conversation. “If you can take our water bottles there and fill them we can beat this blaze. If you can’t we’ve got to retreat and let the whole district burn over.”
“I have very little gasoline,” Ned replied, “but I’ll try.”
“We sent two men out not long ago,” Green continued, thrusting his scorched face close to the boy’s. “We sent them out with water bags, but there are no trails, and It will take them hours to make the spring and return. With your aeroplane you ought to do it within half an hour.”
“Fire fighters marooned without a supply of water, or a trail cut to a spring!” shouted Frank, scornfully. “Great head some one in authority has!”