The Cap’n made no reply.  He only hitched himself forward as though trying to assist the momentum of the cart, and clutched his buckets, one in each hand.

A woman came flying out of the first house they passed and squalled: 

“Where’s the fire, Mr. Brackett, and is anybody burnt up, and hadn’t you jest as liv’ take my rags now?  I’ve got ’em all sacked and ready to weigh, and I sha’n’t be to home after to-day.”

Brackett pulled up.

“Blast your infernal pelt,” howled the Cap’n, “you drive on!”

“Bus’ness is bus’ness,” muttered the peddler, “and you ain’t bought me and my team with that little old ten dollars of yourn, and you can’t do northin’, anyway, till Hecla gits there with the boys, and when you’re there I don’t see what you’re goin’ to amount to with that sore toe.”

He was clearly rebellious.  Cap’n Sproul had touched the tenderest spot in T.W.  Brackett’s nature by that savage yelp at his vocal efforts.  But the chief of the Ancients had been wounded as cruelly in his own pride.  He stood up and swung a bucket over the crouching peddler.

“Drive on, you lubber,” he howled, “or I’ll peg you down through that seat like I’d drive a tack.  Drive on!”

Brackett ducked his head and drove.  And the Cap’n, summoning all the resources of a vocabulary enriched by a sea experience of thirty years, yelled at him and his horse without ceasing.

When they topped the ridge they were in full view of Ide’s doomed buildings, and saw the red tongues of flame curling through the rolling smoke.

But a growing clamor behind made the Chief crane his neck and gaze over the top of the van.

“Hecla” was coming!

Four horses were dragging it, and two-score men were howling along with it, some riding, but the most of them clinging to the brake-beams and slamming along through the dust on foot.  A man, perched beside the driver, was bellowing something through a trumpet that sounded like: 

“Goff-off-errow, goff-off-errow, goff-off-errow!”

The peddler was driving sullenly, and without any particular enterprise.  But this tumult behind made his horse prick up his ears and snort.  When the nag mended his pace and began to lash out with straddling legs, the Cap’n yelled: 

“Let him go!  Let him go!  They want us to get off the road!”

“Goff-off-errow!” the man still bellowed through the trumpet.

“I’ve got goods that will break and I’ll be cuss-fired if I’ll break ’em for you nor the whole Smyrna Fire Department!” screamed Brackett; but when he tried to pull up his steed, the Cap’n, now wholly beside himself and intent only on unrestricted speed, banged a leather bucket down across the driver’s hands.

Brackett dropped the reins, with a yell of pain, and they fell into the dust and dragged.  The horse broke into a bunchy, jerky gallop, and lunged down the hill, the big van swaying wildly with an ominous rattling and crashing in its mysterious interior.