Could the Indians have heard us at that moment, they must have fancied as mad, or more likely dead, and that our voices were those of their own fiends, headed by Wykomé himself—rejoicing over the holocaust of their pale-faced foes.
Chapter Ninety.
A Conflict in Darkness.
The forest continued to burn throughout the night, the following day, and the night after. Even on the second day, most of the trees were still on fire.
They no longer blazed, for the air was perfectly still, and there was no wind to fan the fire into flame. It was seen in red patches against the trunks, smouldering and gradually becoming less, as its strength spontaneously died out.
From many of the trees it had disappeared altogether, and these no longer bore any resemblance to trees, but looked like huge, sharp-pointed stakes, charred and black, as though profusely coated with coal-tar.
Though there were portions of the forest that might now have been traversed, there were other places where the fire still burned fiercely enough to oppose our progress. We were still besieged by the igneous element—as completely confined within the circumscribed boundaries of the glade, as if encompassed by a hostile army of twenty times our number—indeed, more so. No rescue could possibly reach us. Even our enemies, so far as our safety was concerned, could not have “raised the siege.”
So far the old hunter’s providence had stood us in good stead. But for the horse some of us must have succumbed to hunger; or, at all events, suffered its extreme. We had been now four days without food—except what the handful of pine cones and the horse-flesh afforded us; and still the fiery forest hemmed us in. There was no alternative but to stay where we were until, as Hickman phrased it, “the woods should git cool.”