"Oh, dear me, yes; he's Rawdon's chief men. I wouldn't lose him fer a hendred dollars. Rufus, do you mind blowing his brains out if he attempts to escaype?"
The good-natured Rufus said he didn't mind watching the prisoner, but he imagined clubbing would be kinder than blowing out his brains.
"All right!" answered the detective, "all right, so long as you keep him safely."
So Mr. Bangs went back to the house, followed by Sylvanus, Timotheus and Bill Richards, the last of whom resumed his post, namely the trunk on which Pierre Lajeunesse had rested.
When the encampment was reached, Mr. Bangs asked Coristine if he had been smoking on guard or lighting matches, but he had not. He asked Mr. Terry the same question, which the old soldier almost took as an insult. "An' is it to me ye come, axin' av Oi shmoke on guarrd, an' shpind my toime loightin' matches loike a choild? Oi've sane sarvice, sorr, and nobody knows betther fwhat his juty is."
"I sincerely beg your pardon, Mr. Terry. Please excuse my enxiety; I smell fire."
"Don't mintion it, sorr, betune us. Faix, an' it's foire I shmill an' moighty sthrong, too."
The detective came back to the front of the house, and saw the fire that had broken forth in a moment, and was flaming in every room of basement and upper storey, a fire too rapidly advanced to be got under, even had the means been at hand.
"Quick, Sylvanus, Timotheus, get out the horses and any other live stock," he cried; but the lawyer had been before him, and the two Pilgrims and he were already leading the frightened animals past the house and on to the road, where they turned their heads outward and drove them along. Forgetting their watch, Mr. Terry and Bangs himself helped, until every living creature, as they thought, was safely away on the road to the Lake Settlement. Then, two figures, that the guilty Sylvanus knew, came out of the door of the boarding house, and the flames leaped out after them. The woman came up to Coristine, and said: "I know you; you helped to carry poor Steevy, who is not awake yet. He said it was cold down there, so Monty and I have made a fire to keep him warm." The lawyer thought she meant that her dead brother was cold. As to the fire, when he saw Monty, it did not astonish him; but how came they both there through the guard?
The frame buildings, their light clapboards dried by the summer sun, burned furiously, and the flames roared in the rising wind. The sheds and stables caught; the fire ran over the ground, in spite of the dew, catching in shrubs and fallen timber, and even climbing up living trees. Back the beholders were driven, as far as Bill Richards' post, by the terrible glare and heat of the conflagration. Leaving Bigglethorpe on sentry, and Rufus over the prisoner, Harry came running up to learn what was the matter, and to tell of noises like human voices and hammer blows behind the slab of rock. Then, as the fire in the house burned down to the ground, there was an explosion that seemed to shake the earth, and a column of fire sprang up the standing chimney, side by side with another less lofty and more diffused from the right of the building. Report after report followed, and the whole party, half terror-stricken, descended to the beach. Rufus, with Bigglethorpe's help, had considerately transferred his prisoner to the punt, and guarded him there. The store-keeper, taking chisel and mallet in hand, was striking off chip after chip of rock, in answer to muffled cries from within; and now the big rock had moved half an inch. Still the brave man worked away amid the continued explosions, and in spite of the advancing fire. The block continued to slide, and Bigglethorpe cried: "Take the boats out of the way, and get back from me, or you will all be crushed in a minute." The punt was out of danger, but Bill Richards, with a single movement, shoved off the skiff, and, kneeling on her stern, sent her far out into the lake. Then he rowed the boat rapidly back into a place of safety. The slab was still sliding, and had cleared the rock out of which it had been cut by an inch. A human hand was thrust out, a dumpy, beringed hand, bleeding with the effort; a most audible voice cried "For God's sake, 'urry!" and then there came a perfect Babel of explosions, and the gallant deliverer was forcibly drawn out of a fierce river of liquid fire that streamed down into the lake, and burned even out on the water. The fisherman was badly burnt, hair, beard and eyelashes almost singed off; but still he thought of rescue. "Fire at that miserable little chip that holds it," he cried; "fire, since you can't hit it otherwise. Oh, for an asbestos suit, and I would have styed." They fired pistol and gun with no effect, till the lawyer, out in the skiff with Bill, got his rifle sighted to the point in the blue flame, where he thought the preventing ridge ought to be. He fired at close range, the ball hit the rock projection, and at once the great block slid away into the lake, with a splash that damped the flames with a column of spray, and revealed an awful corridor of fire. No living creature was there, but the detective, dipping his feet in the lake, took a boat hook out of the returning skiff, and then, standing in the flames, hauled out two charred masses, and extinguished them in the shallow water by the shore.