"Don't know," he said. "A big smoke came, and all turned dark."
"Do you think Sree was killed?"
"No. Sree too clever. Kill the men."
They asked no more, for, surrounded as he would be by foes, they could see no chance of the poor fellow escaping; so with their hearts sinking in despair, they remained gazing up at the floating flakes of fire and the spangled wreaths of smoke which whirled up over the palace, while the heat was reflected back upon them with such power that in spite of the rush of comparatively cool air caused by the rising fire and steam, they had to retreat and pass along to the corner where, some twenty yards away, they could stand and watch the burning tree.
They could hear nothing of the enemy, and were ready to go round to the terrace entrance; but something seemed to hold them there—a strange, undefined something in the form of hope that Sree might somehow have escaped, and that they might at any moment see his head rise up in the light where the dark top of the wall ran in a hard line.
Then, too, there was the excitement about the palace, as the fire waved to and fro and roared louder than ever, while the bigger boughs, as they grew super-heated, burst with loud reports to let out the compressed steam.
A dozen times over it seemed certain that the palace must go, for the wooden jalousies and exposed elaborate carvings, kept catching; but a few buckets of water, carefully distributed, extinguished the flames, and it became plain that the enemy had retired to a safe distance, hiding among the trees, for no more spears were thrown and no shots were fired.
At last it was evident that the fire had passed its culminating point, and the spectators gazed at a glowing skeleton whose framework kept on falling into the main body of the fire below. At first they were small branches which hardly reached the bottom, but were borne up again to pass away in fresh clouds of what looked like golden snow. Then heavier boughs were burned through and dropped, carrying down with them those below, and so on and on till the trunk, alone stood, with the stumps of branches rising high above the wall, one glowing tower of dazzling light doomed to burn on and on probably for hours, and then, fanned by the wind, slowly smoulder away into so much golden ash.
But before this could be achieved, and when it was certain that no danger could accrue to that part of the palace, Phra laid his hand upon his companion's shoulder.
"Come," he said abruptly, and he made a sign to Lahn for him to follow.