he night of Jubilee. The flames, obedient
to such light airs as were blowing, bent in unison with the black
billows of smoke that wound above them. Great, trembling tongues
separated from the mass and soared upward, gleaming as they vanished;
sparks and jets, streams and stars of light, shot from the pile to
illuminate the rolling depths of the smoke cloud, to fret its curtain
with spangles and jewels of gold atid ruby, to weave strange, lurid
lights into the very fabric of its volume. Far away, as the breezes drew
them, fell a red glimmer of fire, where those charred fragments caught
in the rush and hurled aloft, returned again to earth; and the whole
incandescent structure, perched as it was upon the apex of Yes Tor,
suggested at a brief distance a fiery top-knot of streaming flame on
some vast and demoniac head thrust upward from the nether world.

Great splendour of light gleamed upon a ring of human beings.
Adventurous spirits leapt forth, fed the flames with faggots and furze
and risked their hairy faces within the range of the bonfire's scorching
breath. Alternate gleam and glow played fantastically upon the
spectators, and, though for the most part they moved but little while
their joy fire was at its height, the conflagration caused a sheer
devil's dance of impish light and shadow to race over every face and
form in the assemblage. The fantastic magician of the fire threw humps
on to straight backs, flattened good round breasts, wrote wrinkles on
smooth faces, turned eyes and lips into shining gems, made white teeth
yellow, cast a grotesque spell of the unreal on young shapes, of the
horrible upon old ones. A sort of monkey coarseness crept into the red,
upturned faces; their proportions were distorted, their delicacy
destroyed. Essential lines of figures were concealed by the inky
shadows; unimportant features were thrown into a violent prominence; the
clean fire impinged abruptly on a night of black shade, as sunrise on
the moon. There was no atmosphere. Human noses poked weirdly out of
nothing, human hands waved without arms, human heads moved without
bodies, bodies bobbed along without legs. The heart-beat and furnace
roar of the fire was tremendous, but the shouts of men, the shriller
laughter of women, and the screams and yells of children could be heard
through it, together with the pistol-like explosion of sap turned to
steam, and rending its way from green wood. Other sounds also fretted
the air, for a