“Guess the breeze is blowing that up the mountain, too,” Harry said.
Then we started up the trail again toward the summit.
CHAPTER XXXVII
A VOICE
It was a jungle of underbrush, that’s what Harry said. Pretty soon the trail just fizzled out in the bushes. We poked around with our lanterns and found a spring there. I guess the wood between there and the summit must have been where the party got lost. Sometimes we could hear the crackling and sometimes we couldn’t, but we could smell the burning brush all the time.
“Guess we’re pretty near the summit,” Harry said; “let’s call that we’re coming. The breeze will carry our voices.”
So we all called together, “Hello, we’re coming.”
There wasn’t any answer, but anyway, we couldn’t have heard on account of the breeze blowing up the mountain.
That was the only thing we had to guide us now—the breeze. We kept the scarf in the air and just followed it, pushing through the brush. Sometimes we had to stop and tear away an opening, so as to get through. There must have been an easier way or those girls and fellows would never have managed it, but Harry thought it was better to push right up than to be groping around for a path.
All of a sudden, Ralph Warner said, “Look!”
Good night! A long line of fire was coming up the mountain, maybe a quarter of a mile in back of us. First it seemed like a dotted line, kind of, because there were dark spaces. But even while we looked some of these filled up. The thing it reminded me of most of all was soldiers; it seemed like a line of soldiers, all bright and fiery, charging up the mountain. It was coming fast and I have to admit it scared me. Because even if we could get through the brush fast enough, I saw we couldn’t get out of range of it. Kind of, the thought came to me that it was like soldiers who had just scrambled out of the trenches. That was just how suddenly we saw it. I remember I heard Harry say something about wind and fire being allies, but we didn’t stop to talk, only pushed up through the brush as fast as we could, but all the while it kept gaining on us.