The response was instantaneous, and before the rapidly-spreading flames could reach him, the other four had literally dragged their comrade from the confused mass of poles and vines in which he had been imprisoned. If the work of rescue had been prolonged for even a minute more, it would have been too late, and Tom would have been burned to a crisp. As it was, he was choking with smoke, coughing with a violence that threatened the rupture of his breathing apparatus somewhere, and so nearly smothered for want of air as to be only half conscious.
A minute more, it would have been too late.
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A bucket of water which Dunbar had dashed over him “set him going again,” as he afterwards described the process of recovering breath and consciousness, and as the paroxysms of coughing slowly ceased he stood erect by way of announcing a recovery which he was still unable to proclaim in words.
At that moment a second shock of earthquake occurred, a shock less violent than the first, but sufficient to topple Tom and Larry off their feet again.
It did no harm, chiefly because there was no further harm to do, and the little company busied themselves saving what they could of their belongings from the burning ruins.
After they had worked at this for ten minutes, a third shock came. It was feebler than either of the others, but just as the boys felt the earth swaying again there was an explosion under the burning mass, followed by a rapid succession of smaller explosions which scattered shot about in a way so dangerous that at Cal’s command all the company threw themselves prone upon the ground.
This lasted for perhaps a minute, and fortunately nobody received a charge of shot in his person from the bursting cartridges that had made the racket. Fortunately, too, the box of cartridges thus caught in the flames and destroyed was the only one involved in the catastrophe. The rest had been kept, not in the hut, but in the Hunkydory’s lockers.
But when they came to take account of their losses, which they did as soon as the first excitement had passed away, they found that the damage done had been considerable.