Yanni jumped up, and, crouching beneath the stern of the caique, thrust the lantern open into a heap of brushwood impregnated with turpentine. It caught and flared up in a moment, and while from the Turkish ship came sudden confused sounds and runnings to and fro, the flame leaped along the caique from stern to bow, ran like a flash of lightning up the sail, and was driven by the wind with a roar right into the broken panel. Next moment Mitsos, having cast loose their smaller boat, pushed off backward into the darkness, and both the boys, seizing their oars, rowed for life. But the blaze between them and the ship had made it impossible for those on board to see them, and after five minutes or so Yanni, blown and streaming with perspiration, saw Mitsos drop his oar and sink down to the bottom of the boat and lie there as if dead. [Illustration: "BOTH THE BOYS, SEIZING THEIR OARS, ROWED FOR LIFE"] Round three-quarters of the horizon was dense darkness, inhabited only by the rushing wind, but in front a column of fire rose up, crowned with clouds of smoke. The flames leaped up over the stern of the ship, the steersman fled for his life farther forward, and left to itself the ship swung round into the wind, dragging its destroyer behind it, the flames from which, driven straight before it, licked greedily round the timbers of its victim. In a few moments the tar in the seams began to melt and run, breaking into flame like burning sealing-wax, and the planks of the upper decks were parted a fraction of an inch as it oozed out. Then the timbers themselves began to fizzle and crack, giving each moment new crevices and footholds for the fire, and the window where the mast of the caique had penetrated showed red burning lips, like a horrible square mouth. Volumes of smoke began to pour forward between the decks, driving those who were throwing unavailing water onto the flames to the upper deck, to make another hopeless attempt from there. The women and children ran forward with shrill screams, and could be seen standing like a flock of frightened sheep huddled together. Then a boat was let down, but before it touched the water a tongue of flame sprang out from one of the big, square port-holes below it, driving upward so fiercely that those who were holding the ropes let go and it fell splashing into the sea. Soon with a crash the aft part of the deck, all charred and no longer able to support its own weight, fell in a huge shower of embers and half-burned or blazing pieces of timber, and again the flames leaped higher and moved forward along the ship. The iron davits supporting the boat corresponding to that which had fallen into the sea, still stood firm, and the boat itself hung unburned for some ten minutes, till the fire reaching up caught it, and set it blazing, hanging there, apart and separate from the greater conflagration like a huge burning signal of distress. Soon, however, the side of the ship which held the davits fell in, and the