The sport kept up until midnight, when Colonel Mason suggested that they return to the basin. Just as those on the flat were settling themselves for the run, just as Wolfe was reaching for the throttle-lever, there came tearing through the stillness the dull but mighty roar of the sawmill whistle. It was somehow like a death-knell. It blanched the cheeks of every member of the party. The long blast died out in its own echoes. Then there came a short blast that ended abruptly; it was as though the hand that had held the whistle-cord had been suddenly stricken down. Wolfe opened the throttle as far as he dared. With the other hand he opened the valve to the sandbox. When they had covered three miles, a voice from the flat ahead sent tremors to Wolfe's heart. The voice said but one small word, but that one small word meant destruction. "_Fire!_" Fire, when the fine, new mill had run but half a day! It was a cataclysm. XVII Soon the now thickly overcast heavens became lighted everywhere ahead by a lurid, blood-red glow. It was evident that the conflagration was great and steadily growing. Granny Wolfe knelt on the lumber flat, turned her seamed and troubled face toward the Omnipotent, and begged that a rain might come and put to rout the element that is at once mankind's best friend and worst enemy. The rest of the party kept grimly silent. When the little locomotive pushed its one car through the jaws of Devil's Gate and into the basin, those on board were greeted by a spectacle that was nothing less than appalling. Every one of the deep and finely-timbered coves was a raging furnace of dead leaves, dead wood, and resinous pine, which were as dry as tinder. The big mill itself was a raging furnace. It was already too late for any rain except a cloudburst to save anything whatever. The devastation promised to be complete within a very short time. [Illustration] "This is the end," Wolfe kept saying bitterly to himself. "This is the end of it all." The locomotive and its flat came to a jarring, grinding halt a hundred yards from the burning mill, and the hunting party alighted. The "furriners" of the mill crew, most of the Singletons, and the women and children of the Wolfes were gathered together before the blazing plant in an awed, helpless mass of humanity. The children were crying with fear; some of the women were sobbing aloud; the men were pale and silent. Weaver, the foreman, and Nathan Wolfe, the watchman, hurried to meet the party that had just arrived. The watchman was burned about the hands and face and arms; his clothing was scorched and blackened and torn. "Well?" the general manager said unsteadily. The foreman looked toward Nathan Wolfe, then turned his face away. Nathan Wolfe gulped, and tears began to sting in the broken blisters of his cheeks.