at half that distance they reached for one another, fluttering, sweeping across the intervening space, gathering both speed and height. A dull, increasing roar of ascending air sounded beneath the pistol-like reports of burning wood; the yellowish, thick smoke rose as it might through a heated flue—Flame touched flame at the extreme point and that contact seemed to give the strength which swept the laggard portions of the lines forward even faster. A tongue of flame found hold in a pitch deposit on the side of a tree; the draft swept it upward, giving it hold, made it secure there. A long creeper of live fire whipped into the branches dragging heavier flame with it—There was a sound like a great, savage sigh of triumph and a sheet of fire rose from earth to tree crowns and with a ripping, tearing, wailing fury of sound the tops burst into flame—
Trees rocked and twisted in the force of the draft. A mighty column of smoke spouted into the heavens, rising straight up, seeming uninfluenced by the wind and from it rained needles and twigs and small branches, all blazing, and from it came sounds of terror, sounds that went straight through the reason of strong men and touched raw emotions that had been buried for generations. Fire, man's first friend, had turned into his raging enemy, mighty in its wrath, terrible in its manifestation of power.
Men dropped their tools and ran. Goddard raised his hoarse voice in command to call them back, but he could not be heard—they fled, scattering as the fire leaped the break and fastened itself in the tops of the trees they had sought to safeguard! Thad Parker ran down the line and would have gone on into the forest, heedless of all else except the impulse to escape this fiend, but Helen
