"What then?"
"S.O.S."
"What-ho! The signal of distress at sea. But, I say, this is on land, old man."
"Yes; but I take it that it's a signal for help that any one knowing Morse might make."
"But who wants help? In my uncle's grounds? Wait a jiff. It was in the direction of the house. I have it! What a pudding-head I am! Of course, Rod's wife. You remember she tried to signal to you and Phil. She's in trouble. She's being ill-treated, or something. She's calling for help. We're to be knights-errant--Perseus rescuing Andromeda----"
"Oh, shut up! Is it likely that an innkeeper's sister would know Morse?"
"Mark my words, I'm right. A woman knows everything she wants to. Turn in, old chap. I wanted something to keep me awake, and I'll cogitate a plan for rescuing Molly Andromeda from the jaws of the Minotaur."
Pratt, however, found that cogitation was an ineffectual preventive against drowsiness. Three disturbed nights in succession was an experience unknown to him heretofore. He paced about for a little, sat down and lit a cigarette, dozed over it, started up and walked again. Once more he sat down, ruminated, nodded--and presently awoke, sniffing. What was that smell of burning? He looked on the ground, where the half-smoked cigarette lay. It was dead. He got up. The smell was in the air. He took a few steps, looking around. His eye caught a flicker of flame to windward--two, three flickers some yards apart. For a moment his drowsy intelligence failed to respond to his senses; for a moment only. Then he shouted--
"Hi, you fellows! Fire! Fire!"
Already the flickers had been whipped by the wind into a wall of flame, advancing with a hiss and low roar from the thicket across the little clearing. The heat of the last few days had dried the grass, which, though much trampled around the tent, was still long. The fire swept over it like a ruddy tide. Smoke surged across the open space; twigs and leaves crackled in the surrounding thicket. When Armstrong and Warrender, awakened by the shouts, the reck, the roar and crackle, tumbled out in their pyjamas, they choked and spluttered and fell back before the intolerable heat and smother.