Then we made a dash of it, and fled away westward through the forest, looking back and laughing as we ran.
By the middle of the day we came to a neck of land, made, as we afterward discovered, by a great curve of the river that almost completed a circle.

Right across the neck lay bunched several low and partly wooded hills.

Over these we climbed, looking backward at the forest which had become a sea of flame that swept eastward before a rising wind.

We continued to the west, following the river bank, and before we knew it we were in the midst of the abiding-place of the Fire People.
This abiding-place was a splendid strategic selection.

It was a peninsula, protected on three sides by the curving river.