Five minutes’ scouting failed to reveal a trace of the fugitive. It showed, too, that the fire in this quarter had spread more slowly, and that the farther the boys advanced, the more distant the flames were from the shore. The pair halted and took counsel.
“That chap’s escaped—for the present, anyhow,” said Sam. “We’d better be turning firemen again.”
“Umph! I’d rather land that runaway,” objected the Shark. “What’s more to the point, we’ve a better chance to do it than to stop the fire.”
Sam reflected briefly. “I guess you may be right,” he admitted. “All the same, we can try to kill two birds with one stone—watch the fire and look for that fellow at the same time. And let’s be at it!”
Again the two set out, this time putting the lake behind them and moving inland. For a space the growth was heavier and the ground “cleaner”—that is, there was less litter of dead leaves and branches. Moreover, a low ridge for the moment hid the fire, so that there was nothing to delay their progress.
Pressing on at a brisk pace, they strained eyes and ears for evidence of the stranger’s presence. Twice or thrice Sam thought he saw or heard something, but in each case it proved to be a false alarm. Once it was a frightened rabbit crossing his path, and again the rustlings might have been made by some smaller woods creature. Presently, though, there was a sound which did not die away in a moment, as the other sounds had died, but steadily increased in volume; a peculiar sound that was like a low roar. Its explanation was not far to seek. The ridge bent sharply to the left. The boys rounded the curve, and halted aghast at the sight they beheld.
For a little the higher ground had concealed the spread of the flames, but now, of a sudden, the pair could view the full fury of the fire. Here it was burning on a scale far greater than any that had marked its progress in other parts of the woods. The crackling of burning brush was quite lost in the roaring of the sheets of flame. The boys seemed to be looking into a huge furnace, in which trees and logs were swiftly being consumed. The forward line of the fire was like a moving wall, being pushed forward by some mighty, if irregular, force. And, as they gazed, Sam and the Shark saw great brands caught up by a sharp gust of the rising gale and carried along in gleaming arcs to fall in the dry timber beyond. They saw vines burned from trees to which they had clung and fall, writhing like serpents in their descent; they saw a resinous pine burst into flame from root to top, as if it were some pyrotechnic set-piece. A shower of sparks fell close to them; there came another, and it was like a fiery rain upon their devoted heads.
The boys gave ground. Compared with this conflagration, the fire in its earlier stages had been as child’s play. It was no longer a question of checking or even hindering its progress. They fell back, reluctantly but helplessly.
“If—if it’s as big—at the other end, they—they won’t be able to stop it this side of the pavilion,” Sam said brokenly.
The Shark was the most undemonstrative of mortals, but now he was wringing his hands in a queer sort of despair.