“Ominous, isn’t it?” Carroll said at length. “If this is the valley Hartley came down, and everything points to that, we should be getting near the spruce.”
Vane’s face grew set. “Yes,” he agreed. “There has been a big fire up yonder; but whether it has swept the lower ground or not is more than I can tell. We’ll find out early to-morrow.”
[CHAPTER XXVII—THE END OF THE SEARCH.]
The two men made a hurried breakfast in the cold dawn and not long afterwards they were struggling through thick timber, when the light suddenly grew a little clearer. Carroll remarked upon the fact and Vane’s face hardened.
“We’re either coming to a swamp, or the track the fire has swept is close in front,” the latter said.
A thicket lay before him, but he smashed savagely through the midst of it, the undergrowth snapping and crackling about his limbs. Then there was a network of tangled branches to be crossed, and afterwards, reaching slightly clearer ground, he broke into a run. Three or four minutes later, he stopped, breathless and ragged, with his rent boots scarcely clinging to his feet; and Carroll, who came up with him, gazed eagerly about.
The living forest rose behind them, an almost unbroken wall, but ahead the trees ran up in detached and blackened spires. Their branches had vanished; every cluster of sombre-green needles and delicate spray had gone; the great rampikes, as they are called, looked like shafts of charcoal. About their feet lay crumbling masses of calcined wood which grew more and more numerous where there were open spaces farther on and then the bare, black columns ran on again, up the valley and the steep hill benches on either hand. It was a weird scene of desolation; impressive to the point of being appalling in its suggestiveness of widespread ruin.
For the space of a minute the men gazed at it; and then Vane, stretching out his hand, pointed to a snow-sheeted hill.
“That’s the peak Hartley mentioned,” he said in a voice which was strangely incisive. “Give me the axe.”
He took it from his comrade and, striding forward, attacked the nearest rampike. Twice the keen blade sank noiselessly overhead, scattering a black dust in the frosty air; and then there was a clear, ringing thud. After that, Vane smote on with a determined methodical swiftness, until Carroll grabbed his shoulder.