Penn ran after him, perceiving at once the meaning of this bold act. The woods were not yet fairly kindled; only now and then the loose bark of a dry trunk was beginning to blaze. Cudjo leaped over the line of flame that was running along the ground, and bore Virginia high above it to the other side. Penn followed, and Dan came close behind. They then had before them a tract of blackened ground which the flames had swept, leaving here and there a dead limb or mat of leaves still burning.
These little fires were easily avoided. But they soon came to another line of flame raging on the upper side of the burnt tract. They were almost out of the woods: only that red, crackling hedge fenced them in; but that they could not pass: the underbrush all along the forest edge was burning. And there they were, brought to a halt, half-stifled with smoke, in the midst of woods kindling and blazing all around them.
"May as well pull up hyar, and take a bref," remarked Cudjo, grimly, placing Virginia on a log too dank with decay and moss to catch fire easily. "Den we's try 'em agin."
A horrible suspicion crossed Penn's mind; the fanatical fire-worshipper had brought them there to destroy them—to sacrifice them to his god!
"Virginia!"—eagerly laying hold of her arm,—"we must retreat! It will soon be too late! We can get out of the woods where we came in, if we go at once!"
"Beg pardon, sar," said Cudjo, stamping out fire in the leaves by the end of the log,—and he looked up through the smoke at Penn, with the old malignant grin on his apish face.
"What do you mean, Cudjo?" said Penn, in an agony of doubt.
"Can't get back dat way, sar!"
"Then you have led us here to destroy us!"
"You's no longer trust Cudjo!" was the negro's only reply.