d tongues darting
out in impotent malice. But others, squirming through the water,
wriggled up; and the boy, maddened by the danger, stood his ground,
torch in hand, defending the sleeper.

But now the fire had widened its path, and is enveloping the tiny
island. The serpents, hedged in from the outer line, uproar in
blood-curdling masses, their dull eyes gleaming, and their tongues
phosphorescent, darting out in their agony. Dick doesn't mind them now,
for he has, for the first time, begun to realize that his illumination
has destruction as the sequel of its delight. Great clouds of smoke
settle a moment on the water and then rise, impelled by the cold
surface. Even the green verdure begins to roll back where the crackling
flames play into the more compact wall of incombustible timber. The
sleeper murmurs in his dreams. Dick casts about despairingly. He hears
the horses--they have broken their tethers--he can hear them whinnying,
upbraidingly, far off. Wherever he casts his eye, volumes of fire dart
and sway, always coming inward, first scorching the green limbs, then
fastening on the tender stems and turning them to glowing lines of
cordage; only the great sheet of water, inky, terrible, and threatening
a few hours before, protects him and his charge. The hissing snakes have
sunk into it.

Bevies of birds, supernaturally keen of sight, have dropped upon the
twigs that lie on the glittering bosom of the water. Dick, in all the
agonized uncertainty of that night of peril, thinks with wonder on the
mysterious resources Nature provides its helpless outcasts. The hideous
shallows, black, glistening, are now a belt of safety, not only for
himself and the sleeper, but a refuge for all manner of whirring birds
and crawling things, intimidated and harmless in the stifling breath of
the fire. The flame, leaping from sedge to sedge, from trunk to trunk,
seems to seek, with a human instinct, and more than human pertinacity,
food for its ravening hunger; far upward, where festoons of moss hung
from the sycamores in the day, airy banners of starry sparks, swayed,
coiled, and flamed among the branches. But Dick was soon reminded that
the scene was not for enjoyment, however fantastically fascinating.

The smoke, at first rising from the burning brakes, lodged among the
tree-tops; then, meeting the humid night-air in the matted leaves,
descended slowly. Dick found himself nearly smothered when he had partly
recovered from the spel