seasoned by the hot suns, he set his torches to the carefully
constructed piles.

Steven and Pepeeta were to share with him in the excitement of this
conflagration, and David had postponed it until dusk, in order that they
might enjoy its entire sublimity. He had taken the precaution to plow
many furrows around the cabin and also around the edge of the clearing,
so the flames could neither destroy his house nor devastate the forest.

Such precautions were necessary, for nothing can exceed the ferocity of
fire in the debris which the woodsmen scatter about them. When the dusk
had settled down on this woodland world and long shadows had crept
across the clearing, wrapping themselves round the trees at its edge
and scattering themselves among the thick branches till they were almost
hid from view, David lighted a pine torch and gave it into the hands of
the eager boy, who seized it and like a young Prometheus started forth.
A single touch to the dry tinder was enough. With a dull explosion, the
mass burst into flame. Shouting in his exultation, the little
torch-bearer rushed on, igniting pile after pile, and leaving behind him
almost at every step a mighty conflagration. At each new instant, as the
night advanced, a new outburst of light illumined the darkness, until
ten, twenty, fifty great heaps were roaring and seething with flames!
Great jets spouted up into the midnight heavens as if about to kiss the
very stars, and suddenly expired in the illimitable space above them.
Immense sparks, shot out from these bonfires as from the craters of
volcanoes, went sailing into the void around them and fell hissing into
the water of the brooks or silently into the new-plowed furrows.

The clouds above the heads of the subdued and almost terrified
beholders, for no one is ever altogether prepared for the absolute
awfulness of such a spectacle, were glowing with the fierce light which
the fires threw upon them. Weird illuminations played fantastic tricks
in the foliage from which the startled shadows had vanished. The roar of
the ever-increasing fires became louder and louder, until in very terror
Pepeeta crept into David's arms for protection, while the child who had
fearlessly produced this scene of awful grandeur and destruction shouted
with triumph at his play.

"Thee's a reckless little fire-eater!" said David, watching his figure
as it appeared and disappeared. "How youth trifles with forces whose
powers it can neither meas