“My stars! is it as bad as this, and do we have to run for our lives? Will the mills blow up like magazines, Rob, and send everything sky-high?”
“Listen!” snapped Ralph. “Rob here’s got a scheme. He’s asked me to go along with him and help out. Now tell us, Rob, what it’s all about?”
“We must get the car out, you and I, Ralph, and make for your place like the wind. Don’t you understand, it’s that dynamite your father’s got stored there, together with the battery for exploding the same, that we’ve got to have.”
“What, dynamite? Haven’t we got fire enough as it is without trying to blow up the poor old town?” cried the amazed Andy.
“You don’t get on to my meaning,” pursued Rob, feverishly. “If we only get back in time to make use of the stuff, we could shut off the fire from the other section of the town, where all the mills and workshops are.”
Ralph gave a whoop. Evidently something like the truth must have flashed athwart his active mind.
“Oh! Rob, you’ve got that old abandoned building in mind, haven’t you?” he demanded in turn, with a note of exultation in his voice.
“Nothing else,” came the incisive reply, as all of them continued to run on.
“To blow it up would leave a gap, wouldn’t it?” continued Ralph.
“Just what I’d expect to make by destroying that long rambling building,” Rob explained. “If any fire jumped across after that, we could take care of it; but the main lot would be held in check at the gap. That’s what they sometimes do when a great fire is raging in a big city. It is the last resort of desperation.”