Sam ran his eye along the front of the woods. Nowhere was the smoke rolling forth in volumes. It was like the coming of a fog, not yet thick but dimming everything. The breeze was light; so light, indeed, that though he made the test of a wetted finger, he could be sure of little except that the general direction of the air currents was toward the spot where he was rather than toward the lake. So far as it went, this was a hopeful condition. It meant that the spread of the fire would be away from the shore and the tent.
He strained his ears as well as his eyes, hoping to hear the shouts of men fighting the fire, but silence lay upon the woods. Plainly, the alarm had not spread to the summer settlement. The smoke was lying low and drifting away from the lake, and, presumably, had not yet been observed by the men at work about the pavilion.
Sam gave his orders briskly, if a bit breathlessly:
“Spread out—in a line! Don’t get too far apart, though. First fellow that sees anything, yell and yell loud! Now, start in, fellows!”
They obeyed, readily enough, in very open order, as he had directed, and went crashing through the undergrowth.
Sam himself was near the middle of the line. The end man to the left was Tom Orkney, while Herman Boyd had the corresponding place to the right. Sam went straight forward, but the flankers edged out as they advanced, so that they steadily increased the amount of ground covered.
As every one in the party knew, the tract was of the sort to favor a quick spread of a fire. There was a great deal of dry stuff, and the long period of fine weather had made much of it as inflammable as tinder. Besides, the undergrowth was so dense and tangled in places that flames would find abundant opportunity to move along, while the difficulties of coping with them would be increased. Such were the conditions that Sam began to wonder that the whole tract was not in a blaze. The fire must have been going for two or three hours, at least; that it had not made more progress was to be accounted for only by the lack of wind. In the woods, indeed, there was no perceptible breeze, and the air was still and heavy as well as smoke-laden.
Like his mates, Sam plowed ahead, making as much speed as he could. The smoke grew denser, but not very markedly. He was beginning to believe that his own course was not carrying him toward the fire, when a shout, raised by Orkney, was repeated along the line.
Tom had made the looked-for discovery. Dipping into a hollow, which two months before had been a swamp, he had been met first by a heavy puff of gray fog, so to speak, and through it had caught the yellow glint of flames. At his call the other boys hurried to him. No word of command from Sam or from anybody else was needed to set them at the work which was to be done. Breaking branches from trees, they began to beat the burning brush in the rough and ready fashion which sometimes is extremely effective in dealing with a fire of the sort. It was not light work, nor was it pleasant. It seemed as if the smoke increased even as the flames were checked; and now and again one or another of the club had to drop back for a moment, coughing and choking and gasping for air. A fine, dust-like ash, too, was raised in tiny clouds; more disagreeable than the smoke itself and quite as penetrating of throat and lung; while the heat of the fire was sufficient to blister hands incautiously venturing too near it. Yet, as woods fires go, this did not seem a hard one to deal with. The lack of breeze was in the boys’ favor. They were helped, also, by the “lay of the land.”
As has been said, Orkney had come upon the fire in a swampy hollow. Protracted as the drought had been, it had not sufficed to remove all the moisture by the slow process of evaporation, so that there still remained miry patches, which served as natural brakes on the advance of the flames. A gale, of course, or even a brisk wind, would have disposed of such handicaps quickly enough, but in a comparative calm they made a great difference. To Sam it became evident very quickly that the boys were not only checking the slow drift of the fire, but also were beginning to get it under control. He paused for a moment to watch his companions. Orkney was pounding away lustily. The Shark was exerting less effort, but his arms rose and fell with mathematical regularity. The others were performing, each in his own way, Step with tremendous swings of his long arms, Poke with a swift succession of queer little pats, the Trojan and Herman Boyd busily and steadily. Much encouraged, Sam raised a cheery cry and fell to wielding his broom-like weapon with fresh vigor.