Directly in point of the position that Jake and I held, and close to the Indian line, a red flame was seen suddenly springing up from the earth. It rose in successive puffs, each leaping higher and higher, until it had ascended among the tops of the trees. It resembled the flashes of large, masses of gunpowder ignited upon the ground, and such in reality it was. We read the intention at a glance. The Indians were attempting to fire the forest!
Their success was almost instantaneous. As soon as the sulphureous blaze came in contact with the withered fascicles of foliage, the latter caught as though they had been tinder; and with the velocity of projected rockets, the flames shot out in different directions, and danced far above the tops of the tree. We looked around; on all sides we beheld a similar spectacle. That wild yell had been the signal for a circle of fires. The glade was encompassed by a wall of flame—red, roaring, and gigantic. The whole forest was on fire. From all points the flame appeared closing inwards, sweeping the trees as if they had been withered grass, and leaping in long spurts high into the heavens.
The smoke now came thick and heavy around us—each moment growing denser as the fire approached—while the heated atmosphere was no longer endurable. Already it stifled our breathing.
Destruction stared us in the face, and men shouted in despair. But the roar of the burning pines drowned their voices, and one could not hear even his comrade who was nearest. Their looks were significant—for before the smoke fell, the glade was lit up with intense brilliance, and we could see one another with unnatural distinctness. In the faces of all appeared the anxiety of awe.
Not long continued I to share it. Too much blood had escaped from my neglected wound; I tried to make into the open ground, as I saw others doing; but, before I got two steps from the tree, my limbs tottered beneath me, and I fell fainting to the earth.
Chapter Eighty Seven.
A Jury Amid the Fire.
I had a last thought, as I fell. It was that my life had reached its termination—that in a few seconds my body would be embraced by the flames, and I should horribly perish. The thought drew from me a feeble scream; and with that scream my consciousness forsook me. I was as senseless as if dead—indeed, so far as sensibility went, I was dead; and, had the flames at that moment swept over me, I should not have felt them. In all probability, I might have been burned to a cinder without further pain.