Sergeant-Major Dann had been first to see that glare in the surgery window, and Buckie reminded him of the hay left round the stove-pipe. At the head of the hospital stairs they found Baugh, the heroic orderly, fighting the flames with a sack and getting badly burned. The sergeant-major picked up Sergeant Gilchrist and ran with him down-stairs. Chatter McNabb jeered at Buckie's attempt to do as much for him, and shot as he was through the lungs, made his own way out of the building. Buckie found the hospital orderly with his face apparently burned off, in the act of falling among the flames. He dragged Baugh down the stairs.
The bugle was crying the terrible monotone of the "General assembly." But while the work of rescue blocked the stairway, the fire leaped from room to room, and before the brigade could form for organized work the whole gate-house was in flames, barring the only exit from the fort. The conflagration was spreading through old dry wooden buildings and the garrison was trapped beyond all hope of escape.
Through cracks in the palisade I could see the impending death of the whole garrison, but I was crazy with pain and rapidly losing strength, while every stroke I clove with the ax made me scream with agony. Then in a sudden rage with Sarde, I turned round and kicked him.
"Who told you to lie down, you dirty dog? Get up! Don't you see the damned fort's on fire? And you, a Canuck with an ax, letting the outfit burn to death! Get up!"
He scrambled up, dazed, leaning against the wall, and peered stupidly through a slit while I kicked him savagely from behind. What was the good of moccasins? I needed boots!
"Get to it," I howled, "you blithering disgrace, and I'll forgive you for shooting me, you cad, and let you off the charge of cowardice. Strike, you whelp of sin! Strike, and I'll let you stay in the force, my bleeding hero. Harder! Harder! Sick 'im! Bite 'im! Tear 'im and eat 'im!"
In Canadian hands the quivering haft and gleaming blade of an ax ring out wild music to its whirl, its bite, its rending and swirl of splinters.
"Go it, you cripple!" I yelled. Then from within I heard the quick live clamor of a second ax and a third.
The fire, with gathering strength at frightful speed, now roared along the buildings round the square, flames leaping high through crashing roofs to light the jammed confusion of sleighs and rearing horses, while the whole mass were driven scorched against this northern wall. But the call of Sarde's ax had roused the whole of our ax-men to help, hewing a gap through the wall; its tall posts reeled and fell one by one, the breach was widening, at last there was room, and the sleighs began to file past me. I had swooned by that time with the loss of blood, but somebody with a handkerchief and a gun made a rough tourniquet, which stopped the spurting blood until Doctor Miller came. They put me into the last sleigh as it left the abandoned fort.
As we slowed down to climb the Prince Albert hill, I looked back at that red splendor which had been Fort Carlton. Across the meadow, on snow that glowed like blood, some one was running, a woman who lugged a bundle and brandished an umbrella while her big bustle wagged from side to side. The sleigh was stopped and Mrs. Sarde climbed in.