he could not do, and, when he called Maka, the negro was not able to
help him. The fire had worked its way back of the green vines, and seemed
to have found good fuel, for it was soon crackling away at a great rate,
attracting the rest of the party.

"Can't we put it out?" cried Miss Markham. "It is a pity to ruin those
beautiful vines."

The captain smiled and shook his head. "We cannot waste our valuable
water on that conflagration," said he. "There is probably a great mass
of dead vines behind the green outside. How it crackles and roars! That
dead stuff must be several feet thick. All we can do is to let it burn.
It cannot hurt us. It cannot reach your tent, for there are no vines
over there."

The fire continued to roar and blaze, and to leap up the face of the
rock.

"It is wonderful," said Mrs. Cliff, "to think how those vines must have
been growing and dying, and new ones growing and dying, year after year,
nobody knows how many ages."

"What is most wonderful to me," said the captain, "is that the vines ever
grew there at all, or that these bushes should be here. Nothing can grow
in this region, unless it is watered by a stream from the mountains, and
there is no stream here."

Miss Markham was about to offer a supposition to the effect that perhaps
the precipitous wall of rock which surrounded the little plateau, and
shielded it from the eastern sun, might have had a good effect upon the