Part 13

He now floated along, and was thus borne onward by the river, with many a turn and winding, amidst the forest. On either side arose the trees,--dark, solemn, and silent, for not a sound of any kind could be heard. The birds which usually made the forest vocal with their melody had fled to other places. In that torrid and smoky atmosphere there was no place for these children of song. Phil, as he floated in the cool current of the river, felt himself withdrawn completely from the heat and the smoke; but as he looked up he saw enough to make him feel grateful that he was where he was--that he had found a stream deep enough to sustain him in its waters, and swift enough to carry him onward without any severe exertion on his part. The smoke lowered darkly and menacingly overhead, and before him, where the river ran, it seemed accumulated in gloomier and denser masses. The air seemed even hotter, and as he at times plunged his head under the waters, he rejoiced to think that he had so near him such a perpetual remedy for heat and exhaustion.

He had now been in the stream for some hours, when at length he noticed a rising ground before him. It was a hill of no very great height, rounded and covered with trees; but behind this there seemed to be an agitation among the smoke clouds, as though there was concealed there the unseen cause of all these stifling vapors that filled the skies. This place Phil began to watch with deep interest and curiosity. He did not feel fear, for in his present position he did not anticipate any danger; but he expected that at this place he would reach what might be the climax of his adventures. The only real fear that he had was, not from fire, but from the water itself. He was apprehensive that he might come to a cataract, or to rapids. This danger certainly did not seem very imminent, or very probable, for the country was generally of too level a character to allow of waterfalls; but Phil thought of this as his only possible danger, and was consequently always on the lookout. Now, therefore, as he saw this accumulation of clouds, and the agitation that prevailed there, he did not perceive anything that could immediately affect him, and so he felt no terror.

The river had a winding course; and though it drew nearer and nearer to this hill, yet it approached it slowly, and by gradual advances. At length, on taking a turn round one of its bends, Phil could see that the hill was on the left bank, and that he would soon reach it, and pass round it in the next turn of the stream. Full of curiosity, he now drifted along, and waited for the next prospect that would be opened up behind the hill.

Nearer and nearer Phil approached, and stronger and stronger did his excited curiosity grow. The smoke, as he drew closer, was more distinctly revealed, rising into the skies in dark, rolling masses, as though sent up by some mighty power beneath. Nearer and nearer he came, and at length became aware of short, dull flashes of light, which, brightening for a moment, were soon obscured. It did not surprise him, for this was in some degree what he was expecting. Where there is smoke there must be fire; and if now the flames flashed forth, it merely proved that he was at last drawing near to that fire whose signs had filled the air for many days. And what should he see? What was it that could produce this veil of smoke that obscured the universal sky? Could it be near the haunts of men, and was it merely the commonplace process of clearing land? No; he felt that it could not be anything so ordinary as this. The signs which he had seen and felt for days arose from something more than the clearing of fields for cultivation. It was rather the march of a mighty conflagration through the forest, which devoured all things in its path, swept away the verdant trees, blackened and devastated the rich forest foliage, and sent afar in all directions the breath of its devastating mouth.

With these thoughts Phil drifted on, awaiting the disclosure of the great fire, and at length reached the hill. Past this he was slowly borne by the current which encircled it, and then, completing the circuit, swept onward upon its course.

Here, as Phil floated looking forward, the whole scene burst at once upon his sight. No obstacle any longer rose between him and the fire; he saw it in its reality--living and breathing before his eyes.

The river went on for about a half mile, and then took another turn. Half way between this hill and the next bend rose the flames of a vast conflagration, devouring the forest far and wide, extending on both sides of the river to the right and to the left. From Phil’s position he could not command any extensive view on either side, and, indeed, the smoke would have prevented that had he even been more elevated; but the scene before him was enough to convince him of the magnitude of the fire. Immediately in front, beginning from that point, lying midway between him and the next bend, the fires began, and extended till the river turned again upon its next circuit. On both sides of the stream the fires blazed up, and continued far away, reddening in the glow of a mighty conflagration. In the midst of this arose innumerable trees, standing up, black, blighted, and withered in the red fire; while over them the smoke leaped and rolled as it bounded upward. Nearer, the fires were brighter, for here they were incessantly advancing to attack new trees: and the flames could be seen darting, like lightning, upward from twig to twig, and from bough to bough, until tree after tree was enveloped in the raging fire. These were the cause of those flashes which he had noticed further up the stream, and indicated the advance of the fire in this direction. The foreground was thus most brilliant, most active, and most thrilling; but the background, with its innumerable array of blackened trunks rising from the midst of that dull, angry fire glow, and surrounded by the dark smoke clouds, formed a scene that was yet more terrible.

XVIII.

_The Conflagration.--A dread Alternative.--Forward or backward.--A bold Decision.--The Hood.--A terrible Venture.--The red Place of Flame.--The Place of the fiery Glow.--The toppling Tree.--A Struggle for Life.--The fiery Atmosphere.--The last supreme Moment._

AS this sight thus came upon his view, Phil drove his float towards the shore on the left, until his feet touched bottom; and standing here he looked down the river upon the conflagration. Away before him stretched that vista of fire, the pathway before him led through an avenue of flame, the burning forest glowed on either side, while overhead the vast volumes of smoke rolled along, and around him fell showers of ashes. There before him through that scene of terror lay his pathway; the way which lie thought was leading him to safety had brought him here; the river, to which he had intrusted himself, had borne him along to this; and at the very moment when his hopes had been most excited, they were dashed at once to the ground.

And what now?

What should he do?

Could he go back?

Go back? No; that was a simple impossibility. How should he go back? Not through the woods, for he could make but small advance through the dense forest that now surrounded him; not up the stream, for how could his strength bear him on against this current? He would have to wander for days before he could reach the place which he had left that morning; and of what avail would it be if he did reach it? What would he do? Where could he go? No; to go back was not to be thought of.

He saw plainly that he had now to make choice from, one of two alternatives.

One was to remain here and wait for the fires to subside.

The other was to go forward.

Now, the idea of waiting here was intolerable. To wait here idle, or, perhaps, slowly retreating before the advancing fires, enduring day after day the hunger, the fatigue, and the misery of such a situation, seemed the worst fate conceivable. Where could he sleep at night? How could he endure living in the water by day? Besides, the fire was evidently advancing in a direction which led it up stream; so that he would merely be driven before it back to his old quarters, to perish miserably. To be driven back before the fires would be a lingering death. It was not to be thought of, so long as any other course was possible.

What, then, was the other course?

The other course was--to go forward.

To go forward!

This was what Phil longed to do, with longing unspeakable. To go forward would lead him farther down the river. To go forward would carry him beyond the fires. Once let him pass the place where the fire raged, and then he would be on the other side of it; out of its hot breath; away from its stifling smoke. Could he but once make that passage, all would be well. To him it seemed as though on the other side of those fires there lay the abodes of men, and open lands, and pure air, and help, and liberty, and life. It was there that he longed to go.

But between him and what he fancied to lie beyond, there lay a barrier, terrific, tremendous, whose fullest horrors were unknown; a barrier that seemed impassable--irremovable. How could he hope to overcome it?

Under any other circumstances, the idea of passing that barrier could not, of course, be entertained. But there was one thing in Phil’s situation which made him think that the deed might be done; that it was not impossible, or even difficult. This one thing that gave hope was the river. Its stream might still bear him on its bosom, amidst those fires; he might find protection in its running waters. He could keep cool amid that fervent heat; and as the stream would itself bear him on, he would not need to make any efforts except those which served to guide him in a right course.

As he thought of this, and of the possibility of making his passage, he felt eager to go, but was restrained by other thoughts.

How far might those fires extend? How long could he endure the presence of those flaming woods, even in the waters of the river? Could he breathe? Would not the intense heat make breathing impossible? That burning district might extend for many and many a mile; and if he once ventured there, how would he ever get out of it? Or again, might not that possible obstacle in the river waters, which he had dreaded, be found down there amid the burning forests? And if so, what a terrible fate would be his!--to be arrested amid raging fires by a cataract--unable to advance, unable to retreat, unable to go ashore! If he could only form some idea as to the possible extent of the fire,--if he could only see beyond that next turn in the river, and find out how far those fiery shores ran on,--then he might know whether there was any hope. But this was impossible. The land before his eyes was a land of fire; its trees blackened by the fire, or still glowing red as they quivered under its attack; and there was no way by which he might know anything more than this.

At last there came a thought which gave him great encouragement. He thought that the fire in its march must exhaust itself after a certain time, and that after the trees were actually consumed there must be a departure of the heat. It was in the advanced part of its march that it maintained this furnace glow; at a certain distance behind, the heat might not be intolerable. If, therefore, he could traverse the flames and the fire that he saw before him, he might find the country beyond not much worse than it was here.

This thought, this hope, decided him. He determined to stake everything upon this, and venture upon that fiery path.

But before he attempted it he made the only preparation possible. What he dreaded most was the scorching glow of those flames; and as he did not know to what extent they might affect him, he wished above all things to guard his head against that danger.

He therefore unbound his clothes from the log, and took his coat out, after which he again bound the remainder of the clothes to the place where they had been. His coat he dipped in the river until it was saturated with the water, and then carefully adjusted it over his head, tying the sleeves under his chin so that it served the purpose of a hood. In this way he hoped to have a protection from the heat of the burning forest, while his eyes would be shaded from the dazzling and blinding glare, and would be able to watch without interruption or impediment the course of the river.

With these simple preparations Phil breathed a short prayer, committing himself to the care of God, and then summoning up all his courage, he directed his float down the stream once more, and then boldly launching forth, he dared the terrible journey. Once more the waters received him to their embrace; once more the river enfolded him, and bore him gently onward; once more he swept past the shores, and saw them recede on either side. The current bore him on. The fire drew near.

The fire drew near--and nearer. He felt its hot breath, growing hotter upon his brow--nearer yet--and then, at length, the flames dashed forward, the green trees passed from his line of vision, and his eyes saw nothing but one vast and far-reaching glare.

He plunged his head beneath the water, and held it under as long as he could. When he raised it again he found himself farther on in the midst of the flaming trees. The heat of the air was intense, yet not so much so as he had feared. His dripping coat hung round his head, protecting him. His course was true, for looking forward he saw that he was still in the very middle of the stream.

One look was sufficient, and then, desiring to prepare himself as much as possible for the worst that the fire might bring against him, he once more plunged his head under.

When he next raised his head, he found the scene somewhat changed. The dazzling flash of leaping, up-springing flames had passed away. He had moved past the advanced line of the fire where the flames were assailing the light twigs and foliage of the trees, and had come to that inner portion where the trees were standing bare of everything that the flame could destroy; skeletons--glowing red in the embrace of consuming fire. The glow was all around--on the ground, on the trees--and the emanation of heat was far more intense. The air was now like that of a room heated to an intense degree; yet, to his immense relief, it was not worse than he had known air to be before; and to him it seemed like the atmosphere of a room overheated on some winter day. He could breathe without difficulty, and thanks to his extemporized hood, and his plunges under water, he did not feel that scorching glow of the hot fires that he might otherwise have felt. Well was it for him that he was spared the necessity of exertion. In that atmosphere any exertion would have overcome him in a very short time. As it was he had only to cling to his float, steer it straight, and from time to time plunge his head under water.

In this way he was borne steadily on, and succeeded in preserving himself from destruction during that first entrance into the avenue of flame. He was now in the avenue of fire, and over this the flood bore him, until at length he reached that bend on the river which he had seen before starting upon this last journey.

The river turned to the right, and swept away for about as great a distance as lay between this bend and the last one. As Phil looked at it in eager and anxious scrutiny, he saw to his dismay that the fire glow covered all the land before him, and on either side. He had been too sanguine, and had not made sufficient allowance for the tenacity of the fire where it once has fixed its grasp. There rose the trees--the skeletons--red--glowing in a fervid glow; and the air was hotter here--more torrid--more stagnant.

Here, then, Phil found a severer trial than any which he had yet experienced; and the sight of these new regions, all glowing in the wide-spread conflagration, showing far and wide the withering signs of fiery devastation, filled him with awe and apprehension. There was nothing, however, which he could do. He could only do as he had been doing, and draw his hood over his face as far as he could without obstructing the view, and guide himself in the right course, and occasionally plunge beneath the waters so as to maintain the protection that was afforded by the moisture and the sheltering hood.

The time seemed long as he thus drifted on; but at length, to his great joy, he reached the next bend in the river, and began slowly to pass around it.

But the joy which he had felt at reaching this place soon passed away, when, on turning the point and entering upon the new course of the river, he beheld before him an unchanged scene of devastation. There, as before, the glowing fire appeared on the ground below and in the trees above; the latter rising all red in the fire, and crumbling slowly beneath its touch. One difference there was; and that was, that in this new scene the conflagration seemed to be farther advanced; giant branches fell to the ground; tall trees toppled over, and the silence that had reigned was now broken by the thunder of those falling masses.

The air here was also hotter; for as the fire had been burning longer, so everything was affected by its long intensity. Now it was that Phil first began to find something approximating to what he had dreaded--a heat which made breathing difficult, and made the air like that at the mouth of a furnace.

Through this he drifted on as before. His soul already began to yield to despondency; while hope grew fainter, and a dark dismay gradually took possession of his heart. How could it end? Would it ever end? Were there any limits to the burning woods? Must he thus go drifting on, and find that every new scene, as it opened up, was worse than its predecessor?

So he drifted on.

As he thus went on, he suddenly saw immediately before him, on the edge of the bank, a tree which was slanting over the river, and seemed to him to be swaying, or toppling slowly over. It had been assailed most fiercely by the flames. Its trunk and branches were all glowing red, while the fire seemed to have burned into the ground, and consumed those roots which had thus far held it in its place. The slight movement had arrested Phil, and instinctively he turned his course towards the opposite shore. The tree was tall, but whether it could reach across the river, he could not tell. It seemed to be falling, and if it did, it would fall across the stream. Thus Phil, by a blind instinct, shifted his course slightly.

The tree slowly tilted over. It descended farther and farther. Phil at that same moment was being borne on by the current. The danger was imminent. The tree would fall upon him. With a frantic effort he threw himself nearer to the shore, and as he did so, the tree descended. Phil let go the log, and swam towards the shore. There was a rush, and a sweep through the air; a rattling, crashing sound, followed by a hiss, as the red-hot mass touched the water; there was the shower of a million sparks, and then all was still.

Phil felt every fibre of his frame tingle with horror, and thrill with a sense of descending ruin. But the moment passed. His feet touched bottom. He turned and looked around. There, about three yards from him, lay the tree, its roots still on the other bank, and its top buried beneath the water. With a wild, despairing glance Phil looked for his float. Even as he looked, he saw it slowly emerge from the water, several yards below where the tree lay. For the tree in its descent had struck it, and dashed it to the bottom of the river; but fortunately it had become disentangled, and the current had freed it from the tree, and there it floated, ready once more to assist him.

Phil swam down the stream towards it, and almost fainting with the fatigue of this exertion, he clung to it motionless, panting heavily, and now scarcely able even to guide himself aright.

XIX.

_The black Place of Desolation.--Blue Sky.--Open Heavens.--The Glory of the Sunshine.--Green Hills.--The open Sea once more.--Along the Road.--A strange, a very strange Encounter.--The Wandering Leper.--Naaman the Syrian._

PANTING heavily, and almost fainting with exhaustion, Phil drifted on, clinging with a convulsive grasp to his log, and scarce conscious of his surroundings. It was the current that now guided him, for he for some time was incapable of making any effort to guide himself. Several times he instinctively thrust his head under the water; and each time, though this did not ease his breathing, it at least caused relief by the grateful coolness and the drip of the water over his face. Drifting on in this way, he remained for some time without noticing the shores on either side, too much taken up with his own sensations to regard any external things. He had a general idea that the fires were all around him still; but he no longer sought with his former eager scrutiny to find some signs favorable to his own hopes.

But at length he regained his breath, and began once more to look around. The first thing that he noticed was, that the heat had very materially lessened. The next thing was, that the land of the fiery glow had passed away. Around him there was now, not a fiery country, but a black and devastated country, out of which smoke was still arising in places, but from which the fire had departed, having done its work. He now saw that while he had been in a half senseless state he had been carried along; that the current had drifted him away from the place where the fire was now raging, to a place where it raged no longer--to a place where the air was cooler--where it was purer--where the smoke was much diminished. All around, and all before, the country was black, and there arose a forest of charred and blackened trees; but this sight, hideous though it might be in itself, was inexpressibly delightful to eyes that had just gazed upon the fire in its wrath.

He began to understand his position now. This was the very thing that he had hoped for when first he ventured to make the passage. His hope had been realized. The fire was advancing up the stream. He had passed the front line of flame, the second line of fire, and now reached the blackened and desolate tract that lay in the rear of the conflagration. Here the hot breath of the fire existed no longer. Here the air was purer--it grew cooler at every yard of his progress forward.

It was, probably, this cooler air that had revived him, and given him back the breath that he had nearly lost forever at that time of his struggle near the falling tree.

He looked up. The smoke was thinner overhead. Before him the skies were brighter, and in one place the glorious blue of heaven was discernible. It was the first bit of blue sky that he had seen since first he entered these ill-omened woods; and it seemed to him to be the harbinger of safety, and liberty, and life. His whole soul roused itself in joyous hope; the last vestige of his dismay and despondency departed, and even his weakness and bodily languor left him. He gave a cry of joy; he breathed a prayer of thankfulness to the merciful One who had preserved him from a terrible fate; and then, grasping his float with a strong and nervous clutch, he once more put forth his efforts to quicken his progress, and struck out with strong and rapid strokes.