ast them with the swiftness of the
wind itself. "FAST, FAST, FAST!"--Neewa's instinct cried; "but--ENDURE!
For the caribou, speeding even faster than the fire, will fall of
exhaustion shortly and be eaten up by the flames. FAST--but ENDURE!"

And steadily, stoically, at his loping gait Neewa led on.

A bull moose swung half across their trail from the west, wind-gone and
panting as though his throat were cut. He was badly burned, and running
blindly into the eastern wall of fire.

Behind and on either side, where the flames were rushing on with the
pitiless ferocity of hunnish regiments, the harvest of death was a vast
and shuddering reality. In hollow logs, under windfalls, in the thick
tree-tops, and in the earth itself, the smaller things of the
wilderness sought their refuge--and died. Rabbits became leaping balls
of flame, then lay shrivelled and black; the marten were baked in their
trees; fishers and mink and ermine crawled into the deepest corners of
the windfalls and died there by inches; owls fluttered out of their
tree-tops, staggered for a few moments in the fiery air, and fell down
into the heart of the flame. No creature made a sound--except the
porcupines; and as they died they cried like little children.

In the green spruce and cedar timber, heavy with the pitch that made
their thick tops spurt into flame like a sea of explosive, the fire
rushed on with a tremendous roar. From it--in a straight race--there
was no escape for man or beast. Out of that world of conflagration
there might have risen one great, yearning cry to heaven:
WATER--WATER--WATER! Wherever there was water there was also hope--and
life. Breed and blood and wilderness feuds were forgotten in the great
hour of peril. Every lake became a haven of refuge.

To such a lake came Neewa, guided by an unerring instinct and sense of
smell sharpened by the rumble and roar of the storm of fire behind him.
Miki had "lost" himself; his senses were dulled; his nostrils caught no
scent but that of a world in flames--so, blindly, he followed his
comrade. The fire was enveloping the lake along its western shore, and
its water was already thickly tenanted. It was not a large lake, and
almost round. Its diameter was not more than two hundred yards. Farther
out--a few of them swimming, but most of them standing on bottom with
only their heads out of water--were a score of caribou and moose. Many
other shorter-legged creatures were swimming aimlessly, tu