"Now _you_ seen it too," he wheezed, "you seen my fiery, burning feet!
And now--that is, unless you kin save me an' prevent--it's 'bout time
for--"
His piteous and beseeching voice was interrupted by a sound that was
like the roar of wind coming across the lake. The trees overhead shook
their tangled branches. The blazing fire bent its flames as before a
blast. And something swept with a terrific, rushing noise about the
little camp and seemed to surround it entirely in a single moment of
time. Defago shook the clinging blankets from his body, turned towards
the woods behind, and with the same stumbling motion that had brought
him--was gone: gone, before anyone could move muscle to prevent him,
gone with an amazing, blundering swiftness that left no time to act. The
darkness positively swallowed him; and less than a dozen seconds later,
above the roar of the swaying trees and the shout of the sudden wind,
all three men, watching and listening with stricken hearts, heard a cry
that seemed to drop down upon them from a great height of sky and
distance--
"Oh, oh! This fiery height! Oh, oh! My feet of fire! My burning feet of
fire ...!" then died away, into untold space and silence.
Dr. Cathcart--suddenly master of himself, and therefore of the
others--was just able to seize Hank violently by the arm as he tried to
dash headlong into the Bush.
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