The rangers, almost exhausted, were fighting the fire desperately, hoping against hope, when the cyclone—it amounted at times almost to that—struck the forest. Then they knew that the fight was lost for the time being.
It was now a question of escaping from the flames they had been battling with. The chief foresters knew very well that there was a way to safety, but they had under their command many rangers who had joined the service merely for the adventures they anticipated meeting, and these, they understood, would be hard to manage.
When the order came to drop everything and fall back some of the new men accused those in authority of cowardice and kept on in the course mapped out for them under entirely different conditions. Two of them even insisted on starting back to the rough shanty and preparing dinner. They lost their way in the blazing inferno, and their bones were found two weeks later, at the foot of a tree which had been burned into a stub, but which had not fallen.
When the danger became apparent to Green who was in charge of the company found by Nestor, he ordered his men into a “burn” of half a dozen acres in extent. By “burn” is meant a patch of forest which has been cleared by fire the previous year. This “burn” was entirely stripped of trees. The fire had done its work well, but had been checked before spreading.
The men could hear trees falling as they dashed along. The fire was screaming, the wind whistling and roaring. Coals of fire, driven like arrows by the wind, hit the men in the back as they rushed toward safety. At last the “burn” was gained, and the men threw themselves face down on the ground. At the eastern edge there were large logs which had not been entirely consumed, and some of the men lay down behind them.
The air was so hot that it cut the lungs like acid. Above, across the old “burn,” streamed a river of flame, now racing like a mountain torrent, now dropping sullenly back to the west, like a fiery ceiling which had been rolled away. On such occasions the fainting foresters below could catch a breath of fresh air and a hazy view of the sky.
Some of the men, half crazed by their sufferings, arose to their feet and shook clenched hands at the blazing forests, at the brassy sky, and the green hills away to the east. Green crept from one to another and whispered that the only hope of life lay in keeping on the ground.
Once when he was creeping toward a man who was moaning in anguish and despair he turned his eyes upward to the sky, clear for an instant, for the wind was wayward after a time, and saw a speck sweeping out of the west, dropping lower and lower, whirling in the wind, racing like an express train.
“Dan,” he whispered to the man he was trying to comfort, “get a brace! There’s no use of giving up now. Why, man, the fight is won, and Nestor is coming back with water!”
“Impossible!” grunted the other. “Impossible—in this wind!”