sand," said the short, fat man,
scrabbling terribly--"wet sand." One joined him. They threw hard-earned
handfuls of road-grit upon the flames, which accepted them with
enthusiasm.

Grubb arrived, riding hard. He was shouting something. He sprang off
and threw his bicycle into the hedge. "Don't throw water on it!" he
said--"don't throw water on it!" He displayed commanding presence of
mind. He became captain of the occasion. Others were glad to repeat the
things he said and imitate his actions.

"Don't throw water on it!" they cried. Also there was no water.

"Beat it out, you fools!" he said.

He seized a rug from the trailer (it was an Austrian blanket, and
Bert's winter coverlet) and began to beat at the burning petrol. For a
wonderful minute he seemed to succeed. But he scattered burning pools
of petrol on the road, and others, fired by his enthusiasm, imitated his
action. Bert caught up a trailer-cushion and began to beat; there was
another cushion and a table-cloth, and these also were seized. A young
hero pulled off his jacket and joined the beating. For a moment there
was less talking than hard breathing, and a tremendous flapping.
Flossie, arriving on the outskirts of the crowd, cried, "Oh, my God!"
and burst loudly into tears. "Help!" she said, and "Fire!"

The lame motor-car arrived, and stopped in consternation. A tall,
goggled, grey-haired man who was driving inquired with an Oxford
intonation and a clear, careful enunciation, "Can WE help at all?"

It became manifest that the rug, the table-cloth, the cushions, the
jacket, were getting smeared with petrol and burning. The soul seemed
to go out of the cushion Bert was swaying, and the air was full of
feathers, like a snowstorm in the still twilight.

Bert had got very dusty and sweaty and strenuous. It seemed to him his
weapon had been wrested from him at the moment of victory. The fire lay
like a dying thing, close to the ground and wicked; it gave a leap of
anguish at every whack of the beaters. But now Grubb had gone off to
stamp out the burning blanket; the others were lacking just at the
moment of victory. One had dropped the cushion and was running to the
motor-car. "'ERE!" cried Bert; "keep on!"

He flung the deflated burning rags of cushion aside, whipped off his
jacket and sprang at the flames with a shout. He stamped into the ruin
until flames ran up his boots. Edna saw him, a red-lit hero, and thought
it was good to be a man.

A bystan