of silence, the bo'sun placed
his hand over the poor lad's heart; but there was no movement, though the
body was still warm. Immediately upon that, he rose to his feet, a look
of vast wrath upon his great face. He plucked his torch from the ground,
into which he had plunged the haft, and stared round into the silence of
the valley; but there was no living thing in sight, nothing save the
giant fungi and the strange shadows cast by our great torches, and the
loneliness.

At this moment, one of the men's torches, having burnt near out, fell all
to pieces, so that he held nothing but the charred support, and
immediately two more came to a like end. Upon this, we became afraid that
they would not last us back to the camp, and we looked to the bo'sun to
know his wish; but the man was very silent, and peering everywhere into
the shadows. Then a fourth torch fell to the ground in a shower of
embers, and I turned to look. In the same instant there came a great
flare of light behind me, accompanied by the dull thud of a dry matter
set suddenly alight. I glanced swiftly back to the bo'sun, and he was
staring up at one of the giant toadstools which was in flames all along
its nearer edge, and burning with an incredible fury, sending out spirits
of flame, and anon giving out sharp reports, and at each report, a fine
powder was belched in thin streams; which, getting into our throats and
nostrils, set us sneezing and coughing most lamentably; so that I am
convinced, had any enemy come upon us at that moment, we had been undone
by reason of our uncouth helplessness.

Now whether it had come to the bo'sun to set alight this first of the
fungi, I know not; for it may be that his torch coming by chance against
it, set it afire. However it chanced, the bo'sun took it as a veritable
hint from Providence, and was already setting his torch to one a little
further off, whilst the rest of us were near to choking with our
coughings and sneezings. Yet, that we were so suddenly overcome by the
potency of the powder, I doubt if a full minute passed before we were
each one busied after the manner of the bo'sun; and those whose torches
had burned out, knocked flaming pieces from the burning fungus, and with
these impaled upon their torch-sticks, did so much execution as any.

And thus it happened that within five minutes of this discovery of Job's
body, the whole of that hideous valley sent up to heaven the reek of its
burning; whilst we, filled