Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/187

Rh off before him and jumped down on the ice.

The flames burst higher from the little Viborgsupposed to be italicized [sic] and threw over the ice about a ghastly glow of flaring red, a glowing circle that showed the scurrying figures of the Viborg's little company stumbling away over the ice.

"FatherFarther [sic] away! Faster!" McNeal made a trumpet of his hands and commanded; and the flames ran up the masts from below and flared out in the rigging. Then a roar and flash from lower down, and a mighty burst of blue, exploding flame smothered over the red and hurled through the air all about great billets of burning wood. A greater burst of flame followed this; and forward and astern, as the first exploding tanks blew up and lit the rest, the gasoline flew into flame, shattering and strewing the little wooden ship into fragments of fire, which shot high into the Arctic night and were scattered in all four directions far over the ice, while the ship burst and burst again with the detonation of the tanks till the last blue eruption strewed the deck boards, bits of beams and spars of the Viborg into blazing heaps or streaking splinters spluttering on the frozen sea.