Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/181

Rh be concerned, between her task in the still unblazing forward part of the ship and his and Linn's post on the ice at the ship's side. The flames in themselves were not the direct danger to any one; it was the tanks of gasoline—the hundreds and thousands of gallons still stored in the engine-room and the hold. They made the whole ship one great bomb, an explosive of total destruction for every one anywhere on board or near by, if the fire reached those tanks.

The fire was blazing hottest now in the engine-room, where the tanks lining the walls nearest the fire had been emptied by the demands of the engine. But the fire, in spite of all the water thrown upon it, no longer was blazing in the engine-room alone; it was creeping into the hold and burning among the boxes where the emptied spaces had made a chimney for the draft. There the gasoline was stored in great twenty and fifty and hundred gallon containers all about the sides of the ship. The flames were not yet blazing against them, but they could not be kept away for many more minutes. The two thousand eight hundred gallons of gasoline—as he stooped and dipped