Plunging over and through the tundra, however, with veins swollen almost to bursting with the heavy going, the men kept on, no one speaking, though once, as a sheet of flame shot up, Gersup pointed with his finger. It was a welcome sight, on topping a small rise, to see in the distance that two of the three tents were still standing, though ringed round with a smoldering fire; in the foreground the blackened figures of the cook and the Indian, working for their lives, and the chief just pounding into the camp. With never a pause, save when some fellow tripped and fell, the men tore over the rough ground until they reached the flames. Under the vigorous work of all hands an impression began to be made, and two hours later the fire was under control. "How did it happen, George?" the chief asked. Twice the cook tried to answer, but the pungent smoke and the exertion had made him almost speechless, and he could only whisper hoarsely. Though the fire was officially out, every few minutes a puff of smoke would reveal a smoldering root of moss, and all night through two men watched, two hours apiece, to see that it did not break out anew. And these men never had five minutes' quietude, for the fire, which had been burning unseen in the network of roots for hours, would suddenly send up a flame, and the whole line of that smoldering glow would have to be beaten and drenched out. As the cook described it later, the fire did not appear for over an hour after the party had left, and when the smoke first arose, he did not pay much attention to it, merely thinking that it was one of the circles of "smudges" which had been lighted the night before all round the camp to keep the mosquitoes away, and which had not been properly put out. He looked up a couple of times, but not for another hour did he notice any change, and then he saw a faint vapor rising near the first. Thinking by this time that it might be as well to go and keep the fire from spreading, he strolled over to the column of smoke. But he had not come within thirty feet of the place when he found that he was walking over a glowing furnace, the tundra being red hot between the green moss above, which would not burn, and the wet roots below. Each step he took, of course, put out the fire under his footstep by pressing the glowing moss into the substratum of water, but it created a current of air to the moss around that footstep, and looking behind he saw smoke arising from every impress of his foot.