It could hardly have been a minute from the warning shot and yell of No. 5--repeated right and left by other sentries and echoed by No. 1 at the guard-house--before bugle and trumpet were blaring their fierce alarm, and the hoarse roar of the drum was rousing the inmates of the infantry barracks. Out they came, tumbling pell-mell into the accustomed ranks, confronted by the sight of Blakely's quarters one broad sheet of flame. With incredible speed the blaze had burst forth from the front room on the lower floor; leaped from window to window, from ledge to ledge; fastened instantly on overhanging roof, and the shingled screen of the veranda; had darted up the dry wooden stairway, devouring banister, railing, and snapping pine floor, and then, billowing forth from every crack, crevice, and casement of the upper floor streamed hissing and crackling on the blackness that precedes the dawn, a magnificent glare that put to shame the feeble signal fires lately gleaming in the mountains. Luckily there was no wind--there never was a wind at Sandy--and the flames leaped straight for the zenith, lashing their way into the huge black pillar of smoke cloud sailing aloft to the stars. Under their sergeants, running in disciplined order, one company had sped for the water wagon and were now slowly trundling that unwieldy vehicle, pushing, pulling, straining at the wheels, from its night berth close to the corrals. Rushing like mad, in no order at all, the men of the other company came tearing across the open parade, and were faced and halted far out in front of officers' row by Blakely himself, barefooted and clad only in his pyjamas, but all alive with vim and energy. "Back, men! back for your blankets!" he cried. "Bring ladders and buckets! Back with you, lively!" They seemed to catch his meaning at the instant. His soldier home with everything it contained was doomed. Nothing could save it. But there stood the next quarters,--Truman's and Westervelt's double set,--and in the intense heat that must speedily develop, it might well be that the dry, resinous woodwork that framed the adobe would blaze forth on its own account and spread a conflagration down the line. Already Mrs. Truman, with Norah and the children, was being hurried down to the doctor's, while Truman himself, with the aid of two or three neighboring "strikers," had stripped the beds of their single blanket and, bucketing these with water, was slashing at the veranda roof and cornice along the northward side.