the
launch shot into the main stream, drawing thin threads of fire into her
eddying wake, leaving behind her the flying death and the devouring
blaze. Barry guided his craft straight over the river to the farther
bank, seeking for relief to his burning eyes in the cool blackness of
night. His hair and eyebrows were singed off close, his skin was a
scorched torment; but a glance at his companions proved that others had
suffered too, and he held on to his fast-cooling steering wheel while
old Bill Blunt led a final attack on the clinging fire about the launch.

They shot into the shadow of the bank and looked back on a scene of
terrific grandeur. As their faces cooled, and the air revived their
dulled vitality, a deeper significance in the picture came home to them.
For some minutes their brains could only grasp the fact that they had
escaped the fire as well as their enemies' range; but a shaft of fire
roared up through the trees, and the howl that responded hinted at the
truth.

"Gee! They're getting roasted in their own fire!" gasped Little.

So it was. The jungle on all sides of the creek began to blaze, and the
roar filled the river channel. At first only small patches of dead wood
and leaves burned, but when great hanging masses of moss caught fire,
the jungle drew the flames like a huge furnace, and in some of the trees
a score of men were trapped.

"Poor devils! Dose mans are murdered by Leyden," growled Houten. "He
shall pay, jah! It iss on his bill."

But despite the awful peril facing them, the little brown men over on
the creek worked on as if with a definite aim beyond the mere
destruction of a ship and the dispersing of her crew. Figures dancing in
the firelight were feverishly busy about the creek entrance, towards
which the blazing _Barang_ was drifting, gathering speed with every
fathom by which she drew nearer to the tremendously faster river stream
outside. Gradually the surface oil about the vessel thinned out and
died, as if the supply had been suddenly cut off. And the moment the
water ceased to blaze, canoes shot out from the shore, and frantic
little savages pushed and hauled at the bigger craft in obvious anxiety
that she should not reach out beyond the entrance. They succeeded in
pushing her on to the edge of the cleared channel, then the swift
current gripped her, swung her broadside in the entrance against the
matted grasses, and there she lay, heeling over slowly, burning away
merrily ab