Then he penetrated into the shed, from which suffocating smoke was already whirling towards him.
“Who is coming with me?” he shouted.
Two laborers from the village presented themselves.
“Forward!”
Into the smoke and flames they went.
“Here is the shaft—seize it—out quickly!”
Creaking and rattling, the locomobile came staggering out into the yard. Behind her and those who had saved her the roof of the shed fell in.
The morning dawned. The gray twilight intermingled with the smoke of the ruins, from which here and there flames sprang up to sink down again immediately exhausted.
The crowd had dispersed. Leaden silence weighed upon the farm; only from the scene of the fire there came a soft creaking and hissing, as if the flames, before subsiding, were holding once more murmuring intercourse.