"Dale," cried Max, with sudden and deeper earnestness, "d'ye know, I believe this is what we were really training for during all those gruelling races. It was not for nothing we slogged away there day after day, learning to conquer disappointment and defeat. No; it was to know how to serve our country here."
"I believe you—and we will."
"Hark! I think I can hear soldiers on the floor below. Look out! I am going to set a light to this pile of cases. Get ready to run. I fancy it will spread like wildfire."
A match was applied, and flames leapt up and spread with a rapidity that would have terrified anyone less absorbed or less determined than our two heroes. The flames flew along the floor and benches, and Max and Dale retreated down the room, overturning all the cans of oil and grease they could find, and making it an easy matter for the fire to catch and hold. The smoke, driven along in front of the flames, quickly became so intolerable that they had to fly for relief to the staircase at the farther end of the building.
Outside the workshop the burst of flame was the signal for a loud yell of execration, mingled with cries of warning to the soldiers who had entered the building in search of the hostile workmen reported there. The soldiers trooped noisily out and joined the cordon still drawn about the burning building. Messengers were dispatched to the fire-stations, and in a few minutes a couple of engines arrived and set to work to fight the flames. But though they were expeditious in arriving, the firemen were not equally expeditious in getting their hoses effectually trained upon the building. For one thing, the river had been largely relied upon to furnish a water-supply, and no hydrants were close at hand. Consequently the hoses had to be carried a great distance, and as the yards were still in darkness, save for the lurid light shed by the burning building, the hoses were badly exposed to the attentions of any hostile workman who happened to be near the scene.
Dubec "happened" to be there, with two or three other men animated by out-and-out hostility to the Germans, and waged fierce war upon the hoses at every point at which they lay in shadow. By the time the officer commanding the troops had awakened to the situation, the hoses had been completely ruined, and the fighting of the flames delayed until fresh ones could be brought to the spot.
In the meantime Max and Dale had ceased their efforts to extend the fire, and had retreated to one of the stone staircases situated at each end of the building. There was, in fact, little more to be done, for the fire had got firm hold, and it seemed certain that the whole building was doomed. The end by the staircase was almost free from smoke, and Max and Dale lingered there while awaiting the moment when they should be compelled to choose between death by burning or by the bayonets of the German soldiers. They fell somewhat quiet during those moments, and when they talked it was of the good old glorious times they had spent together. Presently Max's ear caught the sound of someone ascending the stairs.
"Someone—a fireman, I suppose—is coming up the stairs, Dale."
"What shall we do with him? Give him his quietus? I still have my hammer."
"No—get in the corner here and watch what he's after. It won't help us to hurt him."