Agnes Anne came flying back with the worst kind of news. A great flame
of fire was springing up out of the well of the staircase into which we
had tumbled the barrels and boxes. It threatened, she said, to blow us
sky-high, if there were any barrels of powder among the goods left by
the smugglers.

At any rate, the flame was rapidly spreading to the other packages which
had formed our breastwork of defence, and was now like to become our
ruin.

For, once fairly caught, the spirit would flame high as the rigging of
Marnhoul, and we should all be burnt alive, which was most likely what
Lolar Maitland meant by his parting threatening.

"And it is more than likely," Agnes Anne added, "that some of the
barrels burst as we threw them down the stairs, and so, with the liquor
flowing among their feet, the assailants got the idea of thus burning us
out."

At all events something had to be done, and that instantly. So I had
perforce to leave Agnes Anne in charge of "King George" again,
cautioning her not to pull the trigger till she should see the rascals
actually bending to set fire to the pile underneath the porch of the
front door. I also told her not to be frightened, and she promised not
to.

Then I went down to the cellar. The heat there was terrible, and I do
not wonder that Agnes Anne came running back to me. A pillar of blue
flame was rising straight up against the arched roof of the cellar. I
could hear the cries of the men working below in the passage.

"Hook it away--give her air--she will burn ever the brisker and smoke
the land-lubbers out!"

Some few of the boxes in the front tier were already on fire, and still
more were smouldering, but the straightness of the vent up which the
flame was coming, together with the closeness and stillness of the
vault, made the flame mount straight up as in a chimney. I therefore
divined rather than saw what remained for me to do. I leaped over and
began, at the risk of a severe scorching, to throw back all the boxes
and packages which were in danger. It was lucky for me that the
smugglers had piled them pretty high, and so by drawing one or two from
near the foundation, I was fortunate enough to overset the most part of
it in the outward direction.

But the fierceness of the flame was beginning to tell upon the
building-stone of Marnhoul, which was of a friable nature--at least that
with which the vault was arched.

Luckily some old tools had been left in the corner,