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Then tea-time seemed as if it ought to be near, and we decided to come back next day and get our pots.

As we went home across the fields Dicky looked back and said:

“The bonfire’s going pretty strong.”

We looked. It was. Great flames were rising to heaven against the evening sky. And we had left it a smouldering, flat heap.

“The clay must have caught alight,” H. O. said. “Perhaps it’s the kind that burns. I know I’ve heard of fire-clay. And there’s another sort you can eat.”

“Oh, shut up!” Dicky said, with anxious scorn.

With one accord we turned back. We all felt the feeling–the one that means something fatal being up and it being your fault.

“Perhaps,” Alice said, “a beautiful young lady in a muslin dress was passing by, and a spark flew on to her, and now she is rolling in agony enveloped in flames.”

We could not see the fire now, because of the corner of the wood, but we hoped Alice was mistaken.

But when we got in sight of the scene of our pottering industry we saw it was as bad nearly as Alice’s wild dream. For the wooden fence leading up to the bridge had caught fire, and it was burning like billyo.

Oswald started to run; so did the others. As he ran he said to himself, “This is no time to think about your clothes. Oswald, be bold!”

And he was.

Arrived at the site of the conflagration, he saw that caps or straw hats full of water, however quickly and perseveringly given, would never put the bridge out, and his eventful past life made him know exactly the sort of wigging you get for an accident like this.

So he said, “Dicky, soak your jacket and mine in the stream and chuck them along. Alice, stand clear, or your silly girl’s clothes’ll catch as sure as fate.”

Dicky and Oswald tore off their jackets, so did Denny, but we would not let him and H. O. wet theirs. Then the brave Oswald advanced warily to the end of the burning rails and put his wet jacket over the end bit, like a linseed poultice on the throat of a suffering invalid who has got bronchitis. The burning wood hissed and smouldered, and Oswald fell back, almost choked with the smoke. But at once he caught up the other wet jacket and put it on another place, and of course it did the trick, as he had known it would do. But it was a long job, and the smoke in his eyes made the young hero obliged to let Dicky and Denny take a turn as they had bothered to do from the first. At last all was safe; the devouring element was conquered. We covered up the beastly bonfire with clay to keep it from getting into mischief again, and then Alice said:

“Now we must go and tell.”

“Of course,” Oswald said, shortly. He had meant to tell all the time.

So we went to the farmer who has the Moat House Farm, and we went at once, because if you have any news like that to tell it only makes it worse if you wait about. When we had told him he said:

“You little—-” I shall not say what he said besides that, because I am sure he must have been sorry for it next Sunday when he went to church, if not before.

We did not take any notice of what he said, but just kept on saying how sorry we were; and he did not take our apology like a man, but only said he dare said, just like a woman does. Then he went to look at his bridge, and we went in to our tea. The jackets were never quite the same again.

Really great explorers would never be discouraged by the dare saying of a farmer, still less by his calling them names he ought not to. Albert’s uncle was away, so we got no double slating; and next day we started again to discover the source of the river of cataracts (or the region of mountain-like icebergs).