But Brice had scant eyes or heed for them.  Now that his blaze was started past danger of easy extinction. he plunged both hands again into the box.  And now. two handfuls at a time. he began to cast forth more and more of the stuffing.

With careful aim he threw it.  Presently there was a wide line of jute and paper extending from the main blaze across to the next box.  Then another began to pile up in an opposite direction, toward the door.  The fire ran greedily along these two lines of fuel.

Meantime the room was no longer so clearly lighted as at first.  For the smoke billowed up to the low roof, and in thick waves poured out through the small ventilator.  Such of it as could not find this means of outlet doubled back floorward, filling the room with chokingly thick fumes which wellnigh blinded and strangled the man and blotted out all details of shape and direction.

But already Gavin Brice had slipped to the floor, his thin-shod feet planted in the midst of the blaze, whose flames and sparks licked eagerly at his ankles and legs.

Following the trail of fire which led to the box.  Gavin strode through the very center of this blazing path, heedless of the burns.  Well did he know the snakes would shrink away from actual contact with the fire.  And he preferred surface burns to a fatal bite in ankle or foot.

As he reached the box its corners had already caught fire from the licking flames below.  Heaving up the burning receptacle.  Brice looked under it.  There lay the rusty key, just visible through the lurid smoke glare.  But not ten inches away from the far side of it coiled a moccasin, head poised threateningly as the box grazed it under Gavin’s sharp heave.

Stooping, Brice snatched up a great bunch of the flaming paper and flung it on the serpent’s shining coils.  In practically the same gesture he reached with lightning quickness for the key.

By a few inches he had missed his hurried aim for the moccasin.  He had intended the handful of fire to land on the floor just in front of it, thus causing it to shrink back.  Instead the burning particles had fallen stingingly among its coils.

The snake twisted its arrow-shaped head as if to see what had befallen it.  Then catching sight of Brice’s swooping hand it struck.

But the glance backward and the incredibly quick withdrawal of the man’s hand combined to form the infinitesimal space which separated Gavin from agonizing death.  The snake’s striking head missed the fast-retreating fingers by less than a hair’s breadth.  The fangs met on the wards of the rusty key Brice had caught up in his fingertips.  The force of the stroke knocked the key clatteringly to the floor.

Stepping back.  Brice flung a second and better aimed handful of the dwindling fire in front of the re-coiling reptile.  It drew back hissing.  And as it did so.  Gavin regained the fallen key.