Through the short night the work went on.  Here and there a man’s weariness grew more than he could bear, and he would lie down to sleep for an hour or two.  They ate food when it was brought to them.  Always, while they could keep their feet, they worked.

Hollister worked on stoically into the following night, keeping Lawanne near him, because it was all new and exciting to Lawanne, and Hollister felt that he might have to look out for him if the wind took any sudden, dangerous shift.

But the mysterious forces of the air were merciful.  During the twenty-four hours there was nothing but little vagrant breezes and the drafts created by the heat of the fire itself.  When day came again, without striking a single futile blow at the heart of the fire, they had drawn the enemy’s teeth and clipped his claws—­in so far as the flats of the Toba were threatened.  The fire would burn up to that cleared path and burn itself out—­with men stationed along to beat out each tiny flame that might spring up by chance.  And when that was done, they rested on their oars, so to speak; they took time to sit down and talk without once relaxing their vigilance.

In a day or two the fire would die out against that barrier, always provided the west wind did not rise and in sportive mockery fling showers of sparks across to start a hundred little fires burning in the woods behind their line of defense.  A forest fire was never beaten until it was dead.  The men rested, watched, patrolled their line.  They looked at the sky and sighed for rain.  A little knot of them gathered by a tree.  Some one had brought a box of sandwiches, a pail of coffee and tin cups.  They gulped the coffee and munched the food and stretched themselves on the soft moss.  Through an opening they could see a fiery glow topped by wavering sheets of flame.  They could hear the crackle and snap of burning wood.

“A forest fire is quite literally hell, isn’t it?” Lawanne asked.

Hollister nodded.  His eyes were on Bland.  The man sat on the ground.  He had a cup of coffee in one hand, a sandwich in the other.  He was blackened almost beyond recognition, and he was viewing with patent disgust the state of his clothes and particularly of his hands.  He set down his food and rubbed at his fingers with a soiled handkerchief.  Then he resumed eating and drinking.  It appeared to him a matter of necessity rather than a thing from which he derived any satisfaction.  Near him Charlie Mills lay stretched on the moss, his head pillowed on his folded arms, too weary to eat or drink, even at Hollister’s insistence.

“Dirty job this, eh?” Bland remarked.  “I’ll appreciate a bath.  Phew.  I shall sleep for a week when I get home.”

By mid-afternoon of the next day, Sam Carr decided they had the fire well in hand and so split his forces, leaving half on guard and letting the others go home to rest.  Hollister’s men remained on the spot in case they were needed; he and Lawanne and Bland went home.