University of Virginia Library

6. CHAPTER VI.

It was about the middle of the forenoon, on the day marked
by the incidents narrated in the preceding chapter, when Claud
Elwood, who had become pretty well initiated into the sports
of the locality, entered his light canoe, with his fishing-tackle and
fowling-piece, and pushed out upon the broad bosom of the
forest-girt Umbagog. Having had the best success, when up
on the lake the last time, on the western margin, he pulled away
in that direction, and, after rowing a couple of miles up the
lake, he laid down his oar, unrolled his elm-bark cable, and let
down his stone anchor, at a station a furlong or so from the
shore.

It was a beautiful spot, and a beautiful day to enjoy it in.
From the water's edge rose, deeply enshrouded in their bright
green, flowing, and furbelowed robes of thickly interwoven
pines, the undulating hills, back to the summit level of that long,
narrow tongue of forest land, which, for many miles, only separates
the Umbagog from the parallel Magalloway, the noble
stream that here comes rushing down from the British highlands,
to join the scarcely larger Androscoggin, almost at the
very outset of its “varied journey to the deep.” Turning from

this magnificent swell on the west, the eye, as it wandered to
the right over the bright expanse of intervening waters, next
rested on the long, crescent-shaped mountain ridge, behind which
slept, in their still deeper and wilder seclusion, the broad Mooseeluk-maguntic
and the Molechunk-a-munk, which, with the Umbagog,
make up the three principal links in this remarkable chain
of lakes. Still farther to the right lay the seemingly boundless,
rolling forests, forming the eastern and southern rim of this
basin of the lakes; whose gradually sloping sides, like some old
pinnacled city, were everywhere bristling with the giant forms
of the heaven-aspiring pine, and whose nearer recesses were
pierced, in the midst, by the long, lessening line of the gleaming
Umbagog; while around the whole circle of the horizon,
scattered here and there far back into the blue distance, rose
mountain after mountain in misty grandeur to the heavens.

After thus slowly sweeping the horizon, to note, for the
tenth time, perhaps, the impressive character of the scenery,
whose everywhere intermingling beauty and grandeur he was
never tired of contemplating, Claud withdrew his gaze, and
turned his attention to the more immediate object of his excursion.
After a few moments spent in regulating his hook and
line, he strung his angle-rod, and threw out to see whether he
could succeed in tempting, at that unfavorable hour, the fickle
trout from their watery recesses. But all in vain the attempt.
Not a trout was seen stirring the water at the surface, or manifesting
his presence around the hook beneath; and all the endeavors
which the tantalized angler made, by changing the bait,
and throwing the line in different directions around him, proved,
for the next hour, equally fruitless. While he was thus engaged,
intently watching his line, each moment expecting that
the next must bring him a bite, one of those peculiar, subdued,
but far-reaching sounds, which are made by the grazing of the oar
against the side of the boat in rowing, occasionally greeted his
ear from some point to the south of him; though, for a while,
nothing was to be seen to indicate by whom the sounds were

produced. Soon, however, a man in a canoe, who had been
coasting, unseen, along the indentures of the shore, and whom
Claud instantly recognized as Phillips, the hunter already
named, shot round a neighboring point, and, in a few minutes
more, was at his side.

“Well, what luck?” cheerily exclaimed Phillips, a keen,
hawk-eyed, self-possessed looking man, with a round, compact,
and sinewy frame. “What luck to-day, young man?”

“None whatever,” replied Claud, with an air of disappointment.

“I suppose so, unless you began before ten o'clock.”

“But why did you suppose so?”

“O, I knew it from my knowledge of human nature,” said
the hunter, humorously. “Trout are very much like other
folks, only a great deal more sensitive to heat. Now, you
don't see men, who are well fixed under a cool shade in a sweltering
hot day, very anxious to run out bare-headed in the sun,
when there is no call for it; much less, then, the trout, that
can't bear the sun and heat at all. Though there are, probably,
a ton of them within a stone's throw of us, not one will come
out with this bright sun; they are lying behind the rocks and
old logs at the bottom, and won't begin to circulate these three
hours.”

“And are you not a-going to try them?”

“I? No; I would as soon think of fishing now on the top
of these hills. Besides this, I have a different object. I am
bound to carry home something that will pass for fresh meat,
if it is nothing but a coon. I shall haul up my canoe somewhere
about here; follow up the lake-shore a mile or so, with
the idea of catching a deer in the edge of the water, come there
to keep off the flies; then, perhaps, cross over to the Magalloway,
down that, and over to this place; when, by way of topping
off, I will show you, by that time, if you are about here so
long, how trout are taken.”

So saying, the hunter dipped his springy oar into the water,

and, with a few vigorous strokes, sent his canoe to the shore,
and, having moored it to a root, he glided into the thickets, and
disappeared with a tread so noiseless as to leave Claud, for
many minutes, wholly in doubt whether the man was standing
still in the bushes or proceeding on his excursion.

It was now noon, and Claud, seeing no prospect of any immediate
success in his piscatory employment, which had been
made to appear to him, by the remarks of the hunter, more discouraging
than ever, drew up his anchor, and rowed to a point
of the shore which was embowered by a group of magnificent
pines. Here, finding a cool spring, as well as a refreshing
shade, he drew out his lunch, and very leisurely proceeded to
discuss it, with the ice-cold water of the spring by which he
had seated himself for the purpose. His fare was coarse; but it
was partaken with a relish of which those who have never experienced
the effects of the air and exercise, incident to a life
in the woods, can have no just conception; and to which the
palled appetite of the

is poor in comparison, though all the king's banquets and metropolitan
feasts in the world should vie together to make good
the substitute. Claud's life had thus far been, in the main, a
quiet and commonplace one; nothing having occurred to him
to arouse those strong and over-mastering passions to which it
is the lot of most of us, at some period of our lives, to become
subjected. It had been checkered, however, by one bit of romance,
which, to say the least, had greatly excited his imagination.
About a year previous to the time of which we are now
writing, and one day while he was walking the streets of Boston,
a small, closely-enwrapped package was put in his hand
by an unknown boy, who, with the simple announcement, “For
you, Sir,” turned quickly away, and made off with the air of
one who has completed his mission, and would avoid being
questioned. Glancing within the wrapper, and perceiving it
inclosed a small encased picture, or likeness, of some female,
which he thought must have been delivered to him through mistake,
Claud looked hastily round for the messenger, and, not seeing
him, he walked backward and forward along the street, and
lingered some time in the vicinity, still expecting the boy would
soon return to claim the package. But, being disappointed in
this, he went home, and, retiring to his room, undid the wrapper,
which he carefully but vainly examined for some name,
mark, or other clue to the mystery; and then, with much interest,
fell to inspecting the picture. It was, obviously, a well-painted
miniature likeness of a fair, dark-eyed girl, but representing
no remembered face, except in the peculiar expression
of the strong and commanding countenance; which, he thought,
either in man or woman, he must have somewhere before encountered.
The whole likeness, indeed, together with the circumstances
under which it came into his hands, made, at the
time, a lively impression on his mind; and, keeping the affair
wholly to himself, he often contemplated that fair face in private;
and, for months afterwards, he never was in a public assembly,
where the sex were present, without running his eye
over it in search of the original. But, as he never found it, the
impression gradually wore away, and, in the exciting changes
that had occurred in the fortunes of his family, it had been
nearly obliterated from his mind; when, that morning, while
searching his trunk for some implement belonging to his gun,
he came across the minature, and put it in his pocket. And
now, in the leisure that followed his repast, he bethought him of
it; and, laying it before him on the bed of moss on which he was
reclining, he contemplated it with renewed interest, and that sort
of dreamy enthusiasm which the sudden revival of old associations
in such solitudes is apt to awaken in the mind, especially
when those associations are connected, as now, with a matter of
mystery and romance.

After indulging in his reveries a while, he put up his miniature,

aroused himself from his day-dream, and rose to his feet
when, feeling inclined for some kind of action, he decided on a
short excursion in the woods, in the direction of the Magalloway,
where probably he would fall in with Phillips, and return with
him to the lake. Accordingly, after loading his gun with ball
and buckshot, so as to be prepared for any large wild animals
he might chance to encounter, he leisurely took his way through
the heavy, ascending forest that lay in his course; here pausing
to note the last night's bed of some solitary bear, and there to
trace the marks of the death-struggle of a victim deer, that, with
all its vigilance and wondrous agility, had been surprised and
brought down by the stealthy and far-leaping catamount. The
ever-varying tenants of the forest, also, were constantly presenting,
as he passed on, some novelty to attract his unaccustomed
eye; now in the smooth, tall shaft of the fusiform fir — the
dandy of the forest — standing up with its beautiful cone-shaped
top among its rougher neighbors, trim and straight as the bonnetted
cavalier of the old pictures, among the slouchy forms of
his homelier but worthier opponents; now in the low and stocky
birch standing on its broad, staunch pedestal of strongly-braced
roots below, and throwing out widely above its giant arms, as if
striving to shoulder and stay up the weight of the superincumbent
forest; and now in the imperial pine, proudly lifting its
tall form an hundred feet over the tops of the plebeian trees
around, to revel in the upper currents of the air, or bathe its
crowning plumes of living green in the clouds of heaven.

Proceeding in this manner, he at length found himself gradually
descending the western slope of the hill; when he soon
arrived in the vicinity of the river, a glimpse of which, together
with a small clearing and a tidy-looking cottage on its banks,
he now caught through the tops of the intervening trees. While
still walking on, his attention was attracted to a comparatively
open place in the woods, where, at some previous period, a
severe fire had killed all the smaller trees, and consumed the
underbrush, which had been replaced by scattering shrubs of the

white poplar intermingled with a plentiful growth of the black-raspberry,
whose luscious fruit — the first to reward the
pioneer, and for which he has to contend sharply with the birds
and bears to obtain his share — was now beginning to ripen.
As he was entering this open space, which appeared to extend
some distance round the point of a screening knoll, he was suddenly
brought to a stand by a noise somewhere in the bushes
or woods ahead, such as had never before saluted his ears. It
was like nothing else, or if any thing else, like the wild snorting
of a frightened horse prolonged into the dying note of the
steam whistle. Claud recoiled a step before the unaccustomed
sound, and involuntarily cocked and raised his gun to his
shoulder. But he was allowed no time to speculate. The
next instant, the loud and piercing shriek of a female, nearer
but in the same direction, rose and rang through the forest.
With a speed quickened at every step by the rapidly repeated
cry of distress, he bounded towards the spot, when, turning the
point of the knoll, he suddenly found himself in full view of
the object of his solicitude, — a girl, in the full bloom of youthful
beauty, who, with bonnet thrown back and her loosened
hair streaming in wild disorder over her shoulders, instantly
rushed forward for his protection. claud stopped short, in
mute surprise at the unexpected apparition; for the first glance
at her face told him that the original of his mysterious miniature
was before him, — before him, here in the woods! Breathless
and speechless in her wild affright, she pointed, with a
glance over her shoulder, to a thick, high tangle of large,
strongly limbed, knotty, windfallen trees, a short distance
behind her, and fled past him to the rear. Looking in the
indicated direction, the startled and perplexed young man distinguished
the outlines of a monstrous moose madly plunging
at the woody barrier, and trying to force his enormous antlers
through the unyielding limbs preparatory to leaping it in pursuit
of his victim, who had eluded the infuriated animal, and
barely escaped the fatal blows of his uplifted hoofs, by creeping
under the providentially placed obstruction. Claud instantly
raised his piece, when, feeling uncertain of his aim, he withheld
his fire, and stood waiting for a fairer view. But, before he
could obtain it, the moose, tired of vain attempts to force
his passage through the bristling barricade of logs and limbs
before him, disappeared for one moment, but the next came
crashing round the nearest end of it, and, with renewed demonstrations
of rage and hostility, made directly for the new opponent
he beheld in his way. Still unalarmed for his own safety,
Claud waited with levelled gun till his formidable assailant
was within forty yards of him, when he took a quick aim and
fired. Reeling under the discharge of his heavily loaded
piece, and blinded by the smoke, he could not, at first, see the
effect of his fire; but when he did so, the next instant, it was
only to behold the monster brute, maddened, not stopped, by
the flesh wounds inflicted, rushing on him with a force and fury
which compelled him to leap suddenly aside, to avoid being
beat into the earth by those terrible hoofs, which he saw lifted
higher and higher, at each approaching step, for his destruction.
Mindful, in his peril, of the precautions already learned from
the hunters, Claude, while the moose, whose tremendous impetus
was driving him straight ahead, could break up, so as to turn
in the pursuit, — Claud made, with all the speed of which he
was master, for a huge hemlock, luckily standing at no great
distance on his right; a course which he thought would divert
the monster from pursuit of the maiden, and, at the same time,
best insure his own safety. But, so prodigious was the rushing
speed of the foiled and now doubly exasperated moose, that
the imperilled huntsman had barely time to reach the sheltering
tree and dodge behind it, before the hotly pursuing foe was at
his heels, rasping and tearing with his spiked antlers the rough
bark of the tree, in his attempts to follow round it near and
fast enough to overtake and strike down his intended victim.
Round and round then sped both pursuer and pursued, as fast
as the frantic rage of the one, and the keen instinct of self-preservation
in the other, could impel them. Although the
moose, from the great width of his interfering horns, was compelled
to sweep round the tree in a circle requiring him to go
over double the distance travelled by Claude, yet so much
greater was his speed, that it called for the utmost exertions
of the latter to keep clear of the battle-axe blows which he
heard falling every instant with fatal force behind him. His
gun had already been struck, shivered, and beat from his hand;
and, as he glanced over his shoulder and saw the fierce and
glaring eyes of his ruthless pursuer, and his uplifted and forward-thrown
hoofs striking closer and closer to his heels at
every bound, a sense of his deadly peril flashed over his mind
with that strange and paralyzing effect which the first full conviction
of impending death often produces on the stoutest
hearts. He felt his strength giving way, his brain beginning
to whirl, and he was on the point of yielding himself to his
fate; when a stream of smoke and flame accompanied the
startling report of a rifle, shot out from the edge of a neighboring
thicket. The moose gave a convulsive start, floundered
forward on his knees, swayed backward and forward an instant,
then fell over broad-side into the bushes with a heavy crash,
straightened out, gasped, and died.

“Dunno but you'll think I waited too long, young man,”
cried Phillips, now advancing with a quick, leaping step from
his covert. “The fact was, I felt, on seeing you getting into
such close quarters, that I had better be rather particular
about my aim, so as to stop him at once; besides that, I was at
first a little out of breath. I had heard the fellow blow when
an hundred rods off, — then the woman scream, — then your
gun; and, thinking like enough there would be trouble, I legged
it for the spot, and got to my stand just as he treed you.”

“I feel very grateful to you, Mr. Phillips, for this timely
rescue,” responded Claud, recovering his composure. “This, I
suppose, is the far-famed moose?”

“Yes, and a bouncer at that,” replied the hunter, going up

and, placing his foot on the broad and still quivering flank of
the huge animal. “Good twenty hands high, and weighs,
well, not much short of fifteen hundred, I should say.”

“But are they often thus dangerous?” asked Claud.

“Not very often, perhaps,” rejoined the hunter. “But still
the bull moose, at this season of the year, is sometimes, when
wounded, about as ugly a customer as you meet with in the
woods. This fellow I judge to have been oncommon vicious, as
he begun his tantrums before he was touched at all, it seems.
I dunno but 'twas the woman put the devil into him, as women
do into two-legged animals sometimes, — don't they, young
man?”

“The woman? O yes, the young lady,” said Claud, reminded
of his duty as a gallant by the remark, though unwilling
to appropriate to himself the prophetic joke with which it
was coupled. “Where is she? I must go and see to her.”

“She has already seen to herself, I guess,” said the hunter.
“As I was coming up, I glimpsed her cutting round and running,
like a wild turkey, for the clearing, to which the moose
had cut off her retreat. She has reached the house by this
time, doubtless; for it is hard by, down on the river here, a
hundred rods or such a matter.”

“Who is she? Do you know the family?” eagerly inquired
the young man.

“No,” answered the hunter. “They are new-comers in
these parts.”

“What could have brought her here so far into the woods?”
persisted Claud.

“The raspberries, very likely,” said the other, indifferently,
while taking out and examining the edge of his knife. “But
come, we must get this moose into some condition, so that he will
keep; then be off to let the settlers know of our luck. And
early to-morrow morning, we will, all hands, come up the
river in boats, and distribute him. He will make fresh meat
enough to supply the whole settlement.”

The hunter now, with the assistance of his new pupil in the
craft, proceeded to dressing the moose, the process of which,
bleeding, disemboweling, and partially skinning, was soon completed;
when, cutting some stout green skids with the hatchet
he ever carried in his belt, and inserting the ends under the
bulky carcass, the two contrived to raise it, by means of old
logs rolled up for the purpose, several feet from the ground, so
as to insure a free circulation of air beneath it. This being
done, the hunter kindled two log fires, one on each side, to
keep off, he said, the wolves and other carnivorous animals.
They then, after cutting out the tongue and lip, which are
esteemed the tidbits of this animal, took up their line of march
for the lake, which, with the long, rapid lope of the woodsman,
measured off, as usual, in Indian file, and with little or no
interrupting conversation, they reached in a short time, and
without further adventure.

“Now,” said the hunter, as he reached the spot where his
canoe was tied, and turned round towards his lagging companion,
— “now, sir, what say you to taking a five-pound
trout?”

“Perfectly willing,” replied Claud, smiling; “and I would
even take up with a smaller one.”

“Well, I won't, — that is, not much smaller; and I think I'll
have one of at least the size I named.”

“What makes you so confident?”

“Because, it being a hot, shiny morning, they took to their
coverts early, and must be sharp-set, by this time. Besides
that, it is just about the best time for them that could be got
up: a deep cloud, as you see, is coming over the sun, and this
wind is moving the water to the bottom. All sizes will now
be coming out, and the big ones, like big folks, will make all
the little ones stand back till their betters are served.”

Each now taking to his canoe, they pushed out some twenty
or thirty rods into the lake, cast anchor, and threw out their
lines. Claud, who baited with grubs, soon had drawn in two,

weighing as many pounds a piece, and began to feel disposed
to banter the hunter, who had baited with a flap of moose-skin,
which he had brought along with him, and which, to Claud,
seemed little likely to attract the fishes to his hook. But he
soon found himself mistaken; for, turning to give utterance to
what was passing in his mind, he beheld the other dallying
with a trout, which he had hooked, and now held flapping on
the surface of the water, evidently much larger than either of
his own.

“That is a fine one!” cried Claud. “Why don't you pull
him in?”

“Not big enough,” said the hunter, in reply to the question;
while he turned to the fish with an impatient “Pshaw! what
work the cretur makes of it! Hop off, hop off, you fool!
There,” he added, as the trout at length broke away and disappeared,
“there, that is right. Now be off with yourself
till you grow bigger, and give me a chance at the fine fellow
whose tail I saw swashing up round here just now.”

The hunter then carefully adjusted his bait, and threw out
the whole lingth of his line. After alternately sinking his hook,
and then drawing it to the surface, for two or three throws, the
line suddenly straightened, moved slowly backward at first,
then swept rapidly round and round, or darted off in sharp
short angles, with downward and forward plunges so quick and
powerful as to make the stout sapling pole sway and bend, like
a whipstock, in the steadying hands of the hunter. For four
or five minutes he made no attempt to draw in his prize, but
let the fish have full play to the length of its tether, till its
efforts had become comparatively feeble; when, slowly bringing
it alongside, he took the line in his hand, and, with a quick
jerk, landed the noble fellow safely on the bottom of the
canoe.

“There, sir!” exclaimed the hunter, seizing the trout by the
gills, and triumphantly holding it up to view, “there is about
what I bargained for: two feet long, not an inch shorter, —

seven pounds weight, and not an ounce lighter! Now, being
satisfied, I am done.”

“What, leave off with such luck?” asked Claud in surprise.

“Yes, young man,” said the other, “I hold it all but a downright
sin to draw from God's storehouse a single pound more
than is really needed. This will last my family as long as it
will keep, this warm weather, with the plenty of moose-meat
we shall have. Any thing more is a waste, which I will not
commit. And you, sir, who have just hauled in your third and
largest one, I perceive, and have now nearly as many pounds
as I have, — what can you want of more? Come, let us pull
up and off for our homes. It is nearly time, any way.”

Although loth to break off his sport, yet inwardly acknowledging
the justness of the hunter's philosophy, Claud reluctantly
drew in and wound up his line, hauled in his anchor, and,
handling his oar, shot out abreast of the other, who had already
got under way, into the heaving waters of the now
agitated lake. Side by side, with the quick and easy dip of
their elastic single oars, the rowers now sent their light, sharp
canoes, dug out to the thinness of a board from the straight-grained
dry pine, rapidly ahead over the broken and subdued
waves of the cove, in which they had been stationed, till they
rounded the intervening woody point which had cut off the
view of the lower end of the lake.

“Good Heavens!” exclaimed Claud, starting back, with suspended
oar, as now, coming out in view of the lake, his eye fell
on the huge pillar of smoke, which, deeply enshrouding that part
of the distant forest lying east of the outlet of the lake with its
expanded base, was rolling upward its thousand dark, doubling
folds; “good Heavens, Phillips, look yonder! Where and what
is it? It looks like a burning city.”

“It is a fire, of course, and no small one, either; but where,
I can't exactly make out,” slowly responded the hunter, intently
fixing his keen eyes on the magnificent spectacle which had
thus unexpectedly burst on their view in the distance. “Let

me see,” he continued, running his eye along the border of the
lake in search of his old landmarks: “there is the tall stub
that stands half a mile down on the west bank of the river, and
is now just visible in the edge of the smoke; but where is the
king pine, that stands nearly against it, over in your slash?
Young man,” he added, with a startled air, “was your father
calculating to burn that slash to-day?”

“No, unless it looked likely to rain.”

“Well it does look likely to rain, in the shape of a shower
gathering yonder, which has already given out one or two
grumbles of distant thunder, if my ears served me as well as
usual.”

“Yes; but such a smoke and fire can't come from our slash.
It must be a larger and more distant one.”

“So I thought at first; but I begin to think different. Do
you see that perpendicular, broken line of light, occasionally
flashing out from the smoke, and extending upward to a height
that no ground fire ever reached? That is your king pine in
a blaze from bottom to top. Hark! why, I can hear it roaring
clear here, like a distant hurricane. It must be a prodigious
hot fire to make all that show and noise.”

“Can it endanger our buildings?” asked Claud, in alarm.

“I am afraid so,” replied the other, with a dubious shake of
the head. “But hark again! 'tis your father's horn blowing
for help.”

“Let us row, then, as for our lives!” cried the now thoroughly
aroused and agitated young man. “If any thing happens
before I get there, I shall never forgive myself for my
prolonged absence, to the last day of my life. You will join
me in going there, will you not?”

“Yes, and outstrip you by half a mile. But that won't be
the best way. Throw your anchor into the stern of my canoe,
and fall in behind. There; now keep the anchor-line slack
between us, if you can,” rapidly said the hunter, bending his

sinewy form to the work, with a power that sent his canoe half
out of the water at every stroke of his swiftly-falling oar.

Leaving them to bound over the billowy waters of the lake
towards their destination, with all the speed which strong arms
and nerves made tense with excitement could impart, let us
anticipate their arrival, to note what befell the objects of their
anxieties, whom we so abruptly left in their perils from the
fire, to bring up the other incidents of the day having an equal
bearing on the story, with which we have thus far occupied
the present somewhat extended chapter.

The immediate danger to their house from the fire, with
which we left the alarmed Elwood and his wife contending, was,
indeed, easily overcome by dashing pails of water over the
roof. But scarcely had they achieved this temporary triumph
in one place over an element proverbially terrible when it
becomes master, before it was seen kindling into flickering
blazes on the roof of the barn and the locks of hay protruding
from its windows and the crevices between the logs of which
it was built. Here, also, they soon succeeded in extinguishing
the fire in the same manner. They were not, however, allowed
a moment's respite from either their labors or alarms. The
fences were by this time on fire in numerous places; and the
chips and wood in the door-yard were seen to be igniting from
the sparks and cinders which, every instant, fell thicker and
hotter around their seemingly devoted domicil. The fences,
after a few vain attempts to save them, were given up a prey
to the devouring element, and the whole exertions of the
panting and exhausted sufferers were turned to saving their
buildings; and even at that they had no time to spare; for, so
hot had the air become from the burning slash, which,
through its whole length, was now glowing with the red heat
of a furnace, that every vestige of moisture had soon disappeared
from the drenched roofs, and they were again on fire.

“Is there no way of raising help?” exclaimed Mrs. Elwood,

in her extremity, as she witnessed these increasing manifestations
of danger.

“I never thought of that,” said Elwood. “Hand me the
dinner-horn. If there are any within hearing, they will understand,
with the appearance of this fire, that we are calling for
assistance.”

With a few sharp, loud blasts, Elwood threw aside the horn,
and again flew to the work of extinguishing the fires where
they became most threatening. And thus, for nearly another
hour, the distressed settler and his heroic wife, suffering deeply
from heat and exhaustion, toiled on, without gaining the least
on the fearful enemy by which they were so closely encompassed.
And they were on the point of giving up in despair,
when the welcome shout of “Help at hand!” from the ringing
voice of the hunter, then just entering the opening, revived
hope in their sinking hearts. The next moment that help was
on the spot; but it was unnecessary. A mightier Hand was
about to interpose. From the bold, black van of the hurrying
and deeply-charged rack of cloud, that had now unheeded
gained the zenith, a stream of fire, before which all other fires
paled into nothing, at that instant descended on the top of
the burning pine, and, rending it from top to bottom by the
single explosion, sent its wide-flying fragments in blazing circles
to the ground. A sharp, rattling sound, terminating in a cannon-like
report, followed, shaking the rent and crashing heavens
above, and the bounding earth beneath, in the awful concussion.
Before the stunned and blinded settlers had recovered from the
shock, or the deep roll of the echoing thunder had died away
among the distant mountains, another and more welcome roar
saluted their ears. It was that of the rapidly-approaching rain
striking the foliage of the neighboring forest; and, scarcely had
they time to gain the cover of the house, before the deluging
torrents poured over it with a force and fury beneath which
the quelled fires speedily sunk, hissing, into darkness and death.