I turned round.

"Have they all gone back?" I asked.

"I think so," Menzies replied huskily. "They will rush us again
directly, and fire the bedding and the wood. It's all up with us!"

Crack! A gun spoke shrilly from a loophole on the right, and Baptiste's
voice shouted with elation:

"Bonne! bonne! another redskin! He ran out from beneath the window! He
is dead now--I shot him in the back!"

"But why did he stay behind the rest?" Menzies asked suspiciously.

"To light the fire!" cried Carteret. "My comrades, it is Heaven's will
that we perish!"

The old voyageur was right. As he spoke he pointed with one band to the
loopholes. We saw a red glare spreading farther and farther across the
trampled snow crust, and heard a hissing, crackling noise. The dead
Indian had ignited the heaped-up material, probably by means of flint
and steel.

The flames leaped higher, throwing ruddy reflections yards away. They
roared and sang as they devoured the inflammable mattresses, stuffed
with straw, and laid hold of the dry timbers piled above. They spat
showers of sparks, turned the falling snowflakes to specks of crimson,
and drove curls of thick yellow smoke into the room through the chinks
of the now burning logs. The house was doomed, and we who were caught
there in the meshes of death, fated to perish by agonizing torture,
looked at one another with white faces and eyes dilated by horror, with
limbs that trembled and lips that could not speak. Outside, across the
inclosure, the hordes of savages shrieked and yelled with the
voices of malicious demons. From the hall, from the rooms beyond it, the
rest of our little band came running in panic to learn the worst and
share our misery.

Christopher Burley fell on his knees and clasped his hands in prayer.

"O, God, save us!" he cried. "Let me live to see London again."

"The fire is just to the left of the window," exclaimed Captain
Rudstone. "If we had water--"

"There's only one small cask in the house," interrupted Carteret, "and
if we had plenty we could do nothing. Fifty bullets would enter by the
window the moment the shutter was opened."

With terrible rapidity the flames spread, roaring like a passage of a
wind storm through treetops. Out in the snow it was as light as day, and
one could have counted the streaks of paint on the faces of the dead
savages by the awful red glare. The chinks between the logs were
flickering lines of fire, and the smoke puffed throu