“I am quite ready.”
The detective got up, paid the bill for his dinner, and took another cigar, while M. Havard, faithful to his usual habits, refused the Havana Tom Bob offered him and drew a cigarette from his case. The two police-officials left the restaurant and made for the landing, where the ferry-boat was again putting in.
“Get in,” M. Havard urged the American.
“After you!” protested the Head of the Criminal Bureau. “Halloa, have you a light about you? Will you pass me a match, I haven’t got one.”
Tom Bob looked at his cigar. “I’m not well alight myself,” he said, and pulling a box of vestas from his pocket, he lit one, handed it to M. Havard, then took it back and applied it to his own cigar; then, as the match was beginning to burn his fingers, he tossed it into the lake.
But then, suddenly, with terrifying intensity, with an incredible rapidity, a fantastic, unheard-of, appalling thing happened. The very instant the burning match touched the water, the lake caught fire and blazed up fiercely, giving off dense clouds of smoke and sending up huge flickering flames of red and blue that instantly covered the whole surface with a sheet of fire.
Fortunately Tom Bob had managed to grip M. Havard by the arm and drag him back from the boat he was just getting into, and both started running breathlessly for the middle of the island, accompanied as they went by the various employés of the Azaïs, the manager and a few customers who were still on the premises, all flying headlong before the flames. The sight was fairylike, unforgettable
, but tragic to the last degree. The whole lake indeed was a veritable sea of fire, which the eye could not pierce. From this gigantic brazier a sooty smoke went up in swirling eddies, instantly veiling the sky with thick, heavy clouds. The heat was terrific, so intense that the sweat rolled in torrents down the faces of the unfortunates imprisoned on the island. The air indeed was almost unbreathable. All round the party branches kept breaking off the trees and the smaller boughs
beginning to flare up, while the shrubs dipping in the water were in turn taking fire.
“We are done for!” groaned M. Havard. But Tom Bob preserved his presence of mind.