The glare of the burning hut across the street shone weirdly through the doorway, making the boys’ faces look ghastly. The rolling clouds of smoke half choked them and smarted their eyes.
“We’ve got to get out of here--_quick_!” gasped Ned. “Those fellows may discover the _Ocean Flyer_ at any moment, and there’s no telling what may happen then. Follow me and have your weapons ready!”
Straight out into the street they plunged and found themselves in the midst of a scene more frightful than words can adequately describe. Half of the village was already ablaze, the thatched roofs of the cottages spurting yellow flames high up into the air and giving off an intolerable heat. The scene was almost as light as day. Silhouetted against the lurid glare, wild Cossacks were cutting down the fear-crazed peasants.
One fleeing woman with a babe in her arms was caught by her unbound hair and dragged screaming to her knees. As her frantic husband leaped at her assailant, the Cossack shot him deliberately through the heart. The dead lay fallen in grotesque postures half out of doorways or huddled bleeding on the street. Here and there a wounded man was crawling away to die in the fields.
Crack! Crack! Crack! sounded the revolvers of the intrepid boys as they charged down the street. Shot for shot answered them from the surprised marauders, who had not expected quarry like this. They leaped upon their prancing ponies again and tried to ride down these determined opponents, but, sheltered behind a yet unburnt hut, the boys met them with so withering a fire that they galloped on past.
“Run!” yelled Buck. “It’s our only chance!”
The boys did. It was heart-breaking work, but they arrived unwounded at the side of the _Flyer_. As they bounded up the hanging rope-ladder, their pursuers galloped madly up behind them. Shots rattled against the metal hull of the airship like hail against a window-pane, and half a dozen wild fellows tried to follow their escaping prey up the ladder before it could be drawn in.
It was a matter of seconds, but just in time the ladder was jerked out of the reach of clutching hands.
“All ready there, Mr. Engineer,” shouted Buck from up above the pilot room.
Buck made a dash for his post, the current was turned on, and in a minute more the _Flyer_ was soaring high above the scene of the massacre.