With frantic speed we rushed back, the fierce flames, like hissing serpents, close on our heels.  Hotter and hotter became the air--more dense and suffocating the smoke.  Blinded and confused by it, we could scarcely find our way.  A trip over the tangled grass-stalks we knew would be fatal.  The flames were already scorching our backs.  On either side we saw them leaping upwards round the tall tufts of dry herbage. We shrieked with pain and terror.  The rock was reached, but to scale its steep sides seemed beyond our power.  With a strength I did not believe myself to possess, I seized Jerry and hoisted him up.  Grasping the clumps of grass and rugged lumps of rock, he scrambled to the top, and then leaning over, lent me his hand, and dragged me after him. Horror of what might be my fate enabled me to do what I otherwise could not have accomplished.  At the same moment that I reached the top of the rock, the whole surrounding surface of the ground below became a sea of raging fire--leaping, tossing, hissing, roaring, the flames blown here and there by the wind; it was like the ocean in a storm.  The devouring element came circling round us, the bright flames darting up like the tongues of huge serpents, eager to make us their prey.  Bewildered by the scorching heat and black circles of smoke, we were nearly falling back into the fiery sea.  I felt that I could not much longer retain my senses.  I seized Jerry's arm, and dragging him back, we retreated towards the centre of the rock.  Even there the heat was so intense, and the smoke so suffocating, that it was with difficulty we could breathe.