n advancing to the fringe of the fire he
called out on chance to the invisible singer: "Can you come out? Are you
cut off?"

"God help us all!" said MacIan, with a shudder; "he's laughing now."

At whatever stage of being burned alive the invisible now found himself,
he was now shaking out peals of silvery and hilarious laughter. As he
listened, MacIan's two eyes began to glow, as if a strange thought had
come into his head.

"Fool, come out and save yourself!" shouted Turnbull.

"No, by Heaven! that is not the way," cried Evan, suddenly. "Father," he
shouted, "come out and save us all!"

The fire, though it had dropped in one or two places, was, upon the
whole, higher and more unconquerable than ever. Separate tall flames
shot up and spread out above them like the fiery cloisters of some
infernal cathedral, or like a grove of red tropical trees in the garden
of the devil. Higher yet in the purple hollow of the night the topmost
flames leapt again and again fruitlessly at the stars, like golden
dragons chained but struggling. The towers and domes of the oppressive
smoke seemed high and far enough to drown distant planets in a London
fog. But if we exhausted all frantic similes for that frantic scene,
the main impression about the fire would still be its ranked upstanding
rigidity and a sort of roaring stillness. It was literally a wall of
fire.

"Father," cried MacIan, once more, "come out of it and save us all!"
Turnbull was staring at him as he cried.

The tall and steady forest of fire must have been already a portent
visible to the whole circle of land and sea. The red flush of it lit up
the long sides of white ships far out in the German Ocean, and picked
out like piercing rubies the windows in the villages on the distant
heights. If any villagers or sailors were looking towards it they must
have seen a strange sight as MacIan cried out for the third time.

That forest of fire wavered, and was cloven in the centre; and then the
whole of one half of it leaned one way as a cornfield leans all one way
under the load of the wind. Indeed, it looked as if a great wind had
sprung up and driven the great fire aslant. Its smoke was no longer sent
up to choke the stars, but was trailed and dragged across county after
county like one dreadful banner of defeat.

But it was not the wind; or, if it was the wind, it was two winds
blowing in opposite directions. For while one half of the huge fire
sloped one way towards