Before all this occurred Florimel's quick eye had noticed the audacious Red Spirit with his stolen bow and arrows, and he had sprung forward to wrest them from him. But the strange, repulsive creature evaded him mockingly, and flew off with his booty.
The disappointment of the prince was transformed to delight when the next moment he beheld Titania running to him with arms extended. But they never met, for before she could reach his side the terrible catastrophe of the earthquake and volcano happened, and they were jostled and crowded apart by the throng, who in their great terror seemed to have lost all control of their senses. In all the turmoil careful watch was kept of the captives. Nearer and nearer came the molten stream of lava, and hotter and hotter grew its scorching breath, while huge trees in its remorseless path flared up and shriveled away in an instant.
When the stunning shock to his nerves was exhausting itself, King Stanislaus in a dazed way began to think, with the full realization that whatever there was to be done had to be accomplished quickly.
Suddenly he recalled the frame building they had passed in going to the palace. If it housed as he most fervently hoped it did a complete equipment for fighting fires it might prove the very means by which the Brownies could grapple with a situation that was becoming more and more intolerable.
Promptly he communicated his plan to various members of the band, as he spied them, and the word was passed around from one to the other, until all were fully conversant with His Majesty's views. And very soon all these agile sprites, with King Stanislaus and Prince Florimel in the lead, were racing helter-skelter back to the wooden structure that bore the inscription: NEPTUNE HOOK AND LADDER CO. NO. 1.
They broke in the doors, and soon were prying into every nook and corner of the place. And, while King Stanislaus forthwith seized a fire-trumpet that was hanging from a hook on the wall, Brownies were donning with the greatest haste fire helmets that even with paper stuffed in them came down over their ears, and putting on rubber boots and coats intended by Dragonfel for his followers, and which proved but sorry fits, for the boots came well up over their waists, and had to be turned back, and the coats trailed after them like the long trains of fashionable ladies' gowns.