FIGHTING FIRE.

Before proceeding to relate the incidents which follows, it is necessary to explain a little more fully the arrangement of the root fortress and the drift-pile. The two trees, which were enormous ones, had originally grown as close together as they could, and their roots had interlaced beneath the soil. The sand in which they grew having been gradually washed away, their great masses of roots were exposed for about fifteen feet below the original level of the soil and as they spread out they made two circles (one running a foot or two into the other), of about twelve or fifteen feet in diameter. Inside of this circle of great roots, the roots were mostly small, and the boys had cut them away with their knives, leaving just enough of them to stop up all the holes and obscure the view from without. The drift-pile, or hammock, as it is sometimes called at the South, had been years in forming, being drift-wood which had floated down the river during winter and spring freshets, and as it had lodged against the trees it lay only on their upper side, where it was piled up into a perpendicular wall nearly twenty feet high. Thence it stretched away up the river for a hundred yards or more. Now the only entrance big enough to admit a person into the root fortress was on the side next to the drift, and it opened only into an alley-way which the boys had partly found and partly made through the drift. This alley-way led past several little aisles running out to the right and left for a dozen yards or so,—aisles formed by the irregular piling of the logs on top of each other. In the fortress there were a dozen places at least, where the big roots were sufficiently wide apart to admit a grown man easily, but the boys had left the smaller roots which covered these gaps undisturbed, and cut only the one entrance. After cutting that on the side next the hammock, they had moved some of the drift so as to close up the sides of the entrance and make it open only into the alley-way. All this had been done under Sam's supervision, and as a result of his prudence and fore thought.

Joe had been gone nearly half an hour when he burst suddenly into the chamber in which the others were. His hands were full of the wild grapes, but of those he was evidently not thinking. His face was of that peculiar hue which black faces assume when if they were white faces they would grow pale; and his lips, usually red, were of an ashy brown. His eyes were of the shape of saucers, and seemed not much smaller. He gasped for breath in an alarming way, and Tom saw that the poor fellow was frightened almost out of his wits.

"What's the matter Joe? Tell me quick," said the younger boy.

"O Mas' Tom, we'se dun surrounded. I was jest a-gittin' de grapes when I seed a'most a thousand Injuns a-comin,' an' I dun run my life a'most out a-gittin' here. Dey did not see me, but I seed dem, an' I tell you dey's de biggest Injuns you ever did see. I 'clar dey's mos' as tall as trees."

"How many of 'em are there, Joe?" asked Tom standing up.

"I couldn't count 'em e'zactly, Mas' Tom, but I reckon dey's not less'n a thousand of 'em,—maybe two thousan' for all I know."

"Where are they, and what were they doing?" asked Tom; but before Joe could answer, the voices of the Indians themselves indicated their whereabouts, and Tom discerned that they were disagreeably close to his elbow.

Seeking a place in which to cook their breakfast the savages had selected the corner formed by the root fortress and the drift-pile as a proper place for a fire, and were now breaking up sticks with which to start one. They were just outside the fortress, and either of the boys could have touched them by pushing his arm out between the roots. Tom motioned the others to keep absolutely silent, and going a little way into the hammock, through the passage way he managed to find a place from which he could see the intruders. He soon discovered that Joe's account of them was slightly exaggerated in two important particulars. They were only ordinary Indians, neither larger nor smaller than grown Indians usually are, and instead of a thousand there were but three of them in all.

But three fully grown Indians were enough to justify a good deal of apprehension, and if they should discover the party in the tree, Tom knew very well they would make very short work of their destruction. He crept back to the tree therefore and again cautioned Joe and Judie, in a whisper, not to speak or make any other noise. Then he returned to his place of observation and watched the Indians. They soon made a crackling fire and proceeded to broil some game they had killed, this and the eating which followed occupied perhaps an hour, during which Tom made frequent journeys to the little room, nominally for the purpose of cautioning the others to keep still, but really to work off some portion of his uneasiness, which was growing with every moment. He was terrified at first upon general principles, as any other boy of eleven years old would have been. Then he was afraid that the Indians would by some accident, lean something against the curtain of small roots between two other big trees, and that the curtain might not be strong enough to support it, in which event their hiding-place would be discovered at once. He was afraid, too, that some slight noise inside the fortress might catch the uncommonly quick ears of the Indians.

All these were dangers well worth considering; but now a new, and much greater danger began to show itself. The drift was largely composed of light wood, and from his hiding-place Tom could see that the fire built by the trees had communicated itself to the hammock, and that the flames were rapidly spreading. The danger now was that the fire would burn into the alley-way and so cut off retreat from the fortress, and if so those inside would be burned alive. Quitting his place of observation therefore, he established himself as a sentry in the alley-way, having determined, if the fire should approach the passage, to take Joe and Judie out of the fortress and into one of the aisles near the farther edge of the drift-pile. Having begun to plan he saw all the possibilities of the case and tried to provide for all. He knew that if the wind should drive the flames into the drift the whole pile would be destroyed in a very brief time, but in that case, he reasoned, the black smoke of the resinous pine would make it impossible for the Indians to see very far in that direction, and so he resolved, if the worst came, to lead his companions out of the upper end of the hammock, into the bushes and so escape to the creek, where he hoped to find a hiding-place of some sort. He had got this far in his planning when he heard Judie cough, and stepping quickly into the room found it full of smoke. Seeing that to stay there was to suffocate, he beckoned his companions to follow, and stepping lightly they passed down the alley-way and sat down in one of the aisles, behind a great sycamore log which ran across the pile. Peeping over this log Tom saw the three Indians shoulder their guns and walk away. He ran at once to the look-out, and though the smoke almost blinded him he observed all their movements. He wanted them away speedily, so that he and Joe might extinguish the fire if that were still possible, and as every minute served to increase the difficulty and lessen the chances of doing so, the loitering of the savages seemed interminable. They stopped first to drink at the spring. Then they amused themselves by throwing sticks, and pebbles and shells at a turtle which was sunning himself on a log in the stream. Then they stopped to examine the track of a turkey or of some animal, in the sand, and it really seemed to Tom that they did not mean to go away at all.

All things have an end, however, and even the stay of disagreeable visitors cannot last always. The three savages finally disappeared a mile down the river, and Tom, after scanning the surrounding country and satisfying himself that there were no others in the immediate neighborhood, hurried to the place where Joe and Judie were hidden.

"They've gone at least," he said, "and now Joe, we must put this fire out, if we can. Judie, you stay here, and if you find the smoke bothers you, go further down the alley that way. Don't try to stay if the smoke comes."

How to stop the fire was the problem. Fortunately there was very little wind, and what there was blew chiefly from up the river. The flames had spread over a considerable space, however, and the boys had hardly anything with which to work.

They carried water in their hats from the river, which was only a few yards away, now that it had risen to the bottom of the second bank. This was altogether too slow a way of working, however, and the fire was visibly gaining on the boys. But, slow as this process was, it served to teach Tom a lesson or rather to remind him of one he had learned and forgotten. He found that a hatful of water thrown on the bottom of the fire did more good than two hatfuls thrown on top, and he remembered that when the soot in the chimney at home caught fire once, his father would not allow anybody to pour water down the chimney, but stood himself by the fireplace throwing a little water, not up the chimney but, on the blazing fire below. This water, turned into steam, went up the chimney and soon extinguished the fire there. In the same way Tom now discovered that when he threw a hatful of water on a burning log at the bottom of the pile it had a perceptible effect all the way to the top. Thinking of the chimney fire he remembered also that his father had said at the time that a plank laid over the top of a burning chimney, or a screen fastened over the fireplace would stop the burning of the soot by stopping the air, and so smothering the fire. This suggested a new plan of operations for present use. The long gray moss grew in great abundance all around the place, and gathering this he dipped it in the river and then threw it on top of the fire. A bunch of the moss held greatly more water than his hat, and it served also to smother the fire. He and Joe repeated the operation, putting some of the moss on top and some against the sides of the burning pile of timber. The steam from these perceptibly checked the burning, and an hour's work covered the fire almost entirely up, so far at least as the exposed side of the drift-pile was concerned. But just as they were disposed to congratulate themselves upon their success in subduing the flames, they discovered that while they had been smothering the fire on one side it had been burning freely further in. The openness of the hammock gave free access to the air from the other side, and just beyond the line of moss they saw a blaze licking its tongue out from below. They were tired out, already, and this added discouragement to weariness. Little Judie, although the boys had urged her to remain quiet, had been hard at work bringing moss to them, insisting upon her right to work as well as they. She had discovered too that the sand, just below the surface was wet, and that this served almost as good a purpose as the moss itself when thrown on the fire. The poor little girl was utterly tired out at last, however, and when the fire seemed to be subsiding, she had yielded to Tom's entreaties, and going into the drift-pile had laid down to rest. Now that all their work promised to accomplish nothing, the boys were vexed with themselves for having permitted the frail little girl to wear herself out in so fruitless a task. This, with their disappointment, served to make them utterly wretched.