Anthea had filled the jar with paraffin. She came in, and she threw the
paraffin over the tray just at the moment when Cyril was trying with the
twenty-third match to light the Jack-in-the-box. The
Jack-in-the-box did not catch fire any more than usual, but the
paraffin acted quite differently, and in an instant a hot flash of
flame leapt up and burnt off Cyril's eyelashes, and scorched the
faces of all four before they could spring back. They backed, in
four instantaneous bounds, as far as they could, which was to the
wall, and the pillar of fire reached from floor to ceiling.

'My hat,' said Cyril, with emotion, 'You've done it this time,
Anthea.'

The flame was spreading out under the ceiling like the rose of fire
in Mr Rider Haggard's exciting story about Allan Quatermain.
Robert and Cyril saw that no time was to be lost. They turned up
the edges of the carpet, and kicked them over the tray. This cut
off the column of fire, and it disappeared and there was nothing
left but smoke and a dreadful smell of lamps that have been turned
too low.

All hands now rushed to the rescue, and the paraffin fire was only
a bundle of trampled carpet, when suddenly a sharp crack beneath
their feet made the amateur firemen start back. Another crack--the
carpet moved as if it had had a cat wrapped in it; the
Jack-in-the-box had at last allowed itself to be lighted, and it
was going off with desperate violence inside the carpet.

Robert, with the air of one doing the only possible thing, rushed
to the window and opened it. Anthea screamed, Jane burst into