CHAPTER XIII.
HOW THE ARK WAS SAVED.
If the wind had been blowing from across the river, so as to hold the Ark close to the bank against which she was moored, nothing could have saved her from destruction by the torrent of blazing oil that rushed down the slope. Even her occupants would have stood but a slight chance of escaping. The stream of leaping flame was so wide, and came toward them with such extraordinary swiftness, that, before they could have reached the shore and run beyond its limits in either direction, it would have been upon them. Their only chance would have been to throw themselves into the swift current of the river from the opposite side of their boat, with the hope of gaining the bank at a safe distance below.
Uncle Phin was helpless with terror and completely bewildered by the suddenness of the peril that threatened them. Thus it was entirely owing to Arthur’s presence of mind and quick wit, that their boat was saved and they escaped the necessity of taking the desperate plunge that would probably have drowned one or both of them. The boy had noticed that the storm came from over the hills on their side of the river, and how, as the fierce blasts swept down and struck the broadside of the Ark, she tugged and strained at her moorings. Now he remembered this, and was quick to turn his observations to account.
Seizing the axe he severed at a single blow the rope holding the boat at one end, and then, running to the other, cut that with equal promptness. Next, thrusting a long pole into Uncle Phin’s trembling hands, he bade the old man shove off from shore with all his might, at one end, while, with a lighter pole, he did the same thing at the other. Their feeble strength would have availed little but for the powerful aid lent by the favoring gale. While this hurled the advancing flames fiercely toward them, it also drove them, at first slowly, then more rapidly, beyond reach of the danger.
There were hardly ten feet of open water between the Ark and the shore she had just left when the flames sprang down the bank and began to spread over the surface of the river, the oil burning here as readily as on land. For a minute it seemed as though the fire must catch and devour them after all. Its flames leaped eagerly forward, like a million writhing serpents, with red-forked tongues, darting after their prey.
“Push, Uncle Phin! Push for your life!” shouted Arthur from his end of the boat, where he was breathlessly exerting every ounce of strength that his sturdy young frame could yield.
“I’se a pushin, Honey!” answered the old man, with the veins of his forehead standing out like whipcords. “I is a pushin; but onless de good Lawd pushin wif us, we hain’t got no show.”
But the good Lord did push with these, his helpless ones, and his strong wind bore their drifting boat forward faster than it did the hungry flames. The current, of course, set them down stream at the same time, and thus, moving in a diagonal direction, they soon found themselves in safety. They were beyond the limits of the sea of fire, that extended for a mile down the river, and a quarter of that distance out toward its centre. Then the old man and the boy laid down their now useless poles and watched the wonderfully beautiful but fearful sight, while they recovered their spent breath.
The great tank was still vomiting forth sheets of flame and clouds of smoke. None of the others had caught fire, and an occasional gleam of light, reflected from the white walls of the Chapmans’ cottage, showed them that it was still safe.
At length, as they were rapidly nearing the opposite side of the river, the current bore them around a sharp turn that almost instantly hid the whole glowing scene from them, and plunged them into a darkness, the more intense on account of the recent glare.