“It’s queer,” he said after ten seconds of watching. “It doesn’t really seem to be on the shore. Looks as if it were on the far end of this island.”
“The island, Johnny? What could burn like that out here? Look at her leap toward the sky!”
“All the same, it is. Come on, Ben. We may learn something. Arm yourself, Ben. It may mean a fight.”
As he said this Johnny picked up a scrap of gas pipe two feet long. “I’ve not forgotten what you said about striking first and arguing after,” he chuckled.
“I’ll take the hand grenades,” said Ben, loading an arm with half bricks.
Thus armed, they hurried away over a rough path that ran the length of the island.
They had not covered half the distance to the end when the flare of light began to die down. It vanished with surprising rapidity. Scarcely had they gone a dozen paces, after it began to wane, when the place where it had been, for lack of that brilliant illumination, appeared darker than the rest of the island.
“What about that?” Ben Zook stopped short in his tracks.
“Come on! Come fast!” exclaimed Johnny, determined to arrive at the scene of this strange spectacle before the last glowing spark had blinked out.
As he rushed along pell-mell, stumbling over a brick here, leaping a mound of clay there, quite heedless of any danger that might surround him, he might have proven a fair target for a shot from ambush.