With one bound Ahmet dashed to the assistance of his uncle. He seized him before the burning gas could reach him, and dragged him, half suffocated, beyond the influence of the vapours.
"Oh! uncle, uncle!" cried the young man.
Then Van Mitten, Bruno, and Nizib, having assisted to carry him to the thicket near by, endeavoured to reanimate Kéraban.
At length, after some vigorous coughing, Kéraban began to breathe freely. When he was restored to his senses and to life, his first words were,—
"Do you dare to dispute, Ahmet, that it would not have been better to have made the tour of the Sea of Azof?"
"You are right, uncle," he replied.
"As I always am, nephew, always!"
Kéraban had scarcely finished this little speech, when profound darkness fell upon the plain. The cones had become simultaneously and suddenly extinguished, as if the hand of a machinist had cut off the gas. Everything was pitchy dark, and appeared all the more sombre after the late glow, which had left its impression upon the retina of the light which had so suddenly been extinguished.
What had happened then? How had the cones caught fire, since no light had approached them?
We can offer a probable explanation. To the influence of a gas which will take fire when it comes in contact with the air, such a phenomenon, like that which took place in the vicinity of Taman in 1840, was due. This gas is phosphoretted hydrogen, generated in phosphates. It is visible in the carcases of dead animals, and in marshy places. It takes fire, and communicates the flame to the carbonetted hydrogen, which is only the ordinary gas we use for lighting purposes. So, under the influence, perhaps, of certain atmospheric conditions, the spontaneous combustion was suddenly produced in a way which could not have been foreseen.
From this point of view, the peninsulas of Kertsch and Taman present serious dangers, from which it is difficult to guard, as they are so very sudden.
Seigneur Kéraban was not far wrong when he said that
