909 THE LOG OF A TIMBER CRUISER 
pause, impressive in its mere inaction, that serves 
to herald the imminent clashing of two gladiators 
who neither ask nor give quarter. 
There were seven of us there in all: Reid, 
Frazer, Moak, Wallace, Wetherby, Conway and my- 
self. This gave each of us approximately sixty 
yards of fire line to protect, sixty yards of rock and 
dirt across which no flame must win, no spark leap 
and live, throughout the night. 
At last the moment for action arrived. Here and 
there tongues of fire, small wedges of burning brush, 
the advance guard of the main body, broke from its 
ragged front and sallied ahead in short, uneven 
rushes, as if filled with a momentary confidence, a 
presentiment of victory to come. But when these 
scouting forces struck the cleared line they halted in 
mid-career as a bullet stops at a wall of sand. 
This was our moment. The leaping flames sank 
abruptly to a slow creeping line of yellow, close to 
the ground, and the heat, intolerable before, moder- 
ated enough to permit of our approach. We leapt 
forward and with swinging bough or dampened 
gunny sack beat out the wavering line of fire. 
At first it was easy. We were keyed to effort and 
the burning spots along the fireline were yet few and 
feeble. We had frequent opportunity to catch our 
breath in the intervals, to rush for a moment back 
from the line of battle and recover from each suffo- 
cating swirl of smoke or blast of excessive heat. 
But these chances became fewer and farther apart, 
