“Andre—­Andre—­Andre!”

Again he stared north and south through the smoke-gloom.  Mountains of resinous clouds, black as ink, were swirling skyward along the two sides of the giant wedge.  Under that death-pall the flames were sweeping through the spruce and cedar tops like race-horses, hidden from his eyes.  If they closed in there could be no escape; in fifteen minutes they would inundate him, and it would take him half an hour to reach the safety of the clearing.

His heart thumped against his ribs as he hurried down the ridge in the direction of Black Roger’s voice.  The giant wedge of the forest was not burning—­yet, and Audemard was hurrying like mad toward the tip of that wedge, crying out now and then the name of the Broken Man.  And always he kept ahead, until at last—­a mile from the ridge—­David came to the edge of a wide stream and saw what it was that made the wedge of forest.  For under his eyes the stream split, and two arms of it widened out, and along each shore of the two streams was a wide fire-clearing made by the axes of Black Roger’s people, who had foreseen this day when fire might sweep their world.

Carrigan dashed water into his eyes, and it was warm.  Then he looked across.  The fire had passed, the pall of smoke was clearing away, and what he saw was the black corpse of a world that had been green.  It was smoldering; the deep mold was afire.  Little tongues of flame still licked at ten thousand stubs charred by the fire-death—­and there was no wind here, and only the whisper of a distant moaning sweeping farther and farther away.

And then, out of that waste across the river, David heard a terrible cry.  It was Black Roger, still calling—­even in that place of hopeless death—­for Andre, the Broken Man!

XXVI

Into the stream Carrigan plunged and found it only waist-deep in crossing.  He saw where Black Roger had come out of the water and where his feet had plowed deep in the ash and char and smoldering debris ahead.  This trail he followed.  The air he breathed was hot and filled with stifling clouds of ash and char-dust and smoke.  His feet struck red-hot embers under the ash, and he smelled burning leather.  A forest of spruce and cedar skeletons still crackled and snapped and burst out into sudden tongues of flame about him, and the air he breathed grew hotter, and his face burned, and into his eyes came a smarting pain—­when ahead of him he saw Black Roger.  He was no longer calling out the Broken Man’s name, but was crashing through the smoking chaos like a great beast that had gone both blind and mad.  Twice David turned aside where Black Roger had rushed through burning debris, and a third time, following where Audemard had gone, his feet felt the sudden stab of living coals.  In another moment he would have shouted Black Roger’s name, but even as the words were on his lips, mingled with a gasp of pain, the giant river-man stopped where the forest seemed suddenly to end in a ghostly, smoke-filled space, and when David came up behind him, he was standing at the black edge of a cliff which leaped off into a smoldering valley below.