“Ah! Yellow Devil,” the dwarf cried as he swung, “look behind you: there is another devil, yellower and fiercer than you.”
Pereira turned and all his company with him, and at that moment, with a crackling roar, a vast sheet of flame burst up from the morass. The reeds had caught at last in good earnest, and the strengthening wind was bringing the fire down upon them.
Chapter XIV.
VENGEANCE
“Treachery! treachery!” screamed Pereira. “The reeds are fired, and that witch has betrayed us.”
“Ha! ha! ha! ha!” cried Otter again from his airy perch. “Treachery! treachery! And what if the slaves are loosed? And what if the gates be barred?”
Hitherto the mob had been silent in their fear and wonder. There they stood closely packed, a hundred or more of them, staring first at Otter, then at the advancing flames. Now they found tongue.
“He is a fiend! Kill him! Storm the slave camp! To the gates!” they yelled in this language and in that.
For many it was their last earthly cry, since at that moment a sheet of flame burst from the rampart of the camp, followed by the boom of the cannon, and six pounds of canister swept through the crowd. Right through them it swept, leaving a wide lane of dead and dying; and such a shriek went up to heaven as even that place of torment had never heard.
Then they broke and fled this way and that, screaming curses as they went.
When Leonard and the priest had rolled down the rising bridge they found Juanna standing safely by the guard-house, surrounded by some of the Settlement men.