“Never mind about me,” he said. “I can tell you my experiences later, after the fire is conquered. Looks as if we were pretty badly needed over there.”
It needed only one hasty glance over their shoulders to assure them that he was right. The fire, with the impetus of the wind behind it, was sweeping onward with renewed vigor. Once more the lodge and all the buildings along the lake front were menaced.
Led by Darry, the young folks returned once more to the fight. They longed to ask him questions and have them answered, but during that next strenuous hour there was time for nothing but concerted desperate effort to fight off the encroaching flames.
Where the fire had crept forward steadily, but slowly, before, it now leaped ahead, seeming to mock at the puny efforts of the men who sought to defeat it.
It ran up into branches of trees over their heads, reached scorching fingers across the trenches dug to stay its advance, crackled gleefully in the dry and brittle underbrush.
Once Jessie felt a touch on her arm and looked up to see Darry standing beside her.
“Better get back to the lodge,” he said. “It won’t be long before we’ll have to take to the water.”
“Things are all packed and ready to put into the boats,” she told him gaspingly. “Don’t want to go back—till we have to, Darry.”
“Good sports, you girls,” muttered Darry, and reached for the pick with which he had been helping dig a new trench.
It was all of no use. The girls realized that even before Miss Alling gave definite orders to return to the lodge. The fire was gaining so rapidly that it was only a matter of a short time before they would be forced to abandon the lodge.