Chapter 23 - Page 2

I seen a richer rising of the sun.

"Rising of the sun!" slowly repeated the old man, lifting his tall
person from its seat with a deliberate arid abstracted air, while he
kept his eye riveted on the changing, and certainly beautiful tints,
that were garnishing the vault of Heaven. "Rising of the sun! I like
not such risings of the sun. Ah's me! the imps have circumvented us
with a vengeance. The prairie is on fire!"

"God in Heaven protect us!" cried Middleton, catching Inez to his
bosom, under the instant impression of the imminence of their danger.
"There is no time to lose, old man; each instant is a day; let us
fly."

"Whither?" demanded the trapper, motioning him, with calmness and
dignity, to arrest his steps. "In this wilderness of grass and reeds,
you are like a vessel in the broad lakes without a compass. A single
step on the wrong course might prove the destruction of us all. It is
seldom danger is so pressing, that there is not time enough for reason
to do its work, young officer; therefore let us await its biddings."

"For my own part," said Paul Hover, looking about him with no
equivocal expression of concern, "I acknowledge, that should this dry
bed of weeds get fairly in a flame, a bee would have to make a flight
higher than common to prevent his wings from scorching. Therefore, old
trapper, I agree with the captain, and say mount and run."

"Ye are wrong--ye are wrong; man is not a beast to follow the gift of
instinct, and to snuff up his knowledge by a taint in the air, or a
rumbling in the sound; but he must see and reason, and then conclude.
So follow me a little to the left, where there is a rise in the
ground, whence we may make our reconnoitrings."

The old man waved his hand with authority, and led the way without
further parlance to the spot he had indicated, followed by the whole
of his alarmed companions. An eye less practised than that of the
trapper might have failed in discovering the gentle elevation to which
he alluded, and which looked on the surface of the meadow like a
growth a little taller than common. When they reached the place,
however, the stinted grass itself announced the absence of that
moisture, which had fed the rank weeds of most of the plain, and
furnished a clue to the evidence by which he had judged of the
formation of the ground hidden beneath. Here a few minutes were lost
in breaking down the tops of the surrounding herbage, which,
notwithstanding the advantage of their position, rose even above the
heads of Middleton and Paul, and in obtaining a look-out that might
command a view of the surrounding sea of fire.

The frightful