When the fire reached iron and copper nails and bands, and heated the metals to white heat, they became incandescent, and gave forth streams of green and blue flame, that glowed with the marigold yellow and tiger-lily red of the blazing wood and tar, forming of the fiery circle a rainbow complete in its prismatic tints. The clouds that passed overhead were flushed and palpitated, reflecting the fire below.
Notwithstanding the anguish of mind that possessed Zita, her anxiety for the fate of Mark and Kainie, and her self-reproach, she was carried away, out of all such thoughts, by the transcendent splendour of the spectacle. She stood looking up at the wheel of light, with hands clasped to her bosom, hardly breathing, her face illumined as though she had been looking into the sun.
Then, suddenly, a hand was laid roughly on her shoulder, and an agitated voice said in her ear, 'Good heavens! what have you done?—wicked, malignant girl!'
Zita dropped on her knees, with a cry of mingled joy and pain.
'Thank God! they are saved!'
She stooped and hid her face in her skirt about her knees. The revulsion of feeling was more than she could bear. She gasped for breath. She came to a full stop in sensation and thought. She could not rise, speak, nor look up. Then relief from acute tension of the mind found itself a way in a flood of tears, and broken words of no meaning and without connection were sobbed forth, and muffled in her gown.
When, finally, she did raise her head, and gather her dazed faculties, and wipe the water from her eyes, she saw that Mark and Kainie were forcing the head of the mill round, so as no longer to present the sails to the wind, but make them face away from it, so as to lessen the danger to the body of the mill, which might at any moment ignite when flame and sparks were swept over it.
They then put on the clog and stopped the movement of the charred arms.
This was almost all that could be done. They trusted that the arms would burn themselves out without the axle catching fire.
'Kainie,' said Mark, 'I'll run a rope up and throw it over the axle, and you can pass me up buckets of water.'