Murray’s idea was that they would be able to keep on steadily in a well-ordered line, firing hut after hut as they went; but in a very few minutes, in spite of discipline, he soon found that it would be impossible to follow out his instructions. Once the fire was started it roared up and leaped to the next hut or to those beyond it. The heat became insufferable, the smoke blinding, so that the men were confused and kept on starting back, coughing, sneezing, and now and then one was glad to stand stamping and rubbing his hair, singed and scorched by the darting tongues of flame.
“Hold together, my lads; hold together!” shouted Murray. “We must look to ourselves; the others will do the same; but keep on shouting so as to be in touch.”
“Ay, ay, sir!” cried Tom May. “You hear, my lads?”
Half-heard shouts came back out of the smoke, but it soon became impossible to communicate with the men with anything like regularity, for the roar and crackle of the flames grew deafening, many of the bamboo posts exploding like muskets, and before long Murray had hard work to satisfy himself that the men were not using their pieces.
“That you, Tom May?” he cried, at last, as he became aware of a dimly seen figure emerging from the smoke.
“Not quite sure, sir,” was the reply, “but I think it’s me.”
“Where are the lads?”
“Oh, they’re here, sir, somewheres, only you can’t see ’em. I’ve just been counting of ’em over, sir, by touching ’em one at a time and telling ’em to shout who it was.”
“They’re all safe, then?”
“Hope so, sir; but I wouldn’t try to go no furder, sir. Now the fire’s started it’s a-going on like furnaces, sir, and it’s every man for himself. We can’t do no more. Can’t you feel how the wind’s got up?”