the white oak, the glistening green of the cypress!  Why hadn’t he thought of this before?  Then, as the curling waves of fire pushed farther and farther up the steins of the trees, and farther and farther endlessly into the undergrowth, an unearthly outcry and stir began.  Birds, blinded by the light, whirred and fluttered into the open space above the water, falling helplessly so near Dick that he could have caught and killed a score to surprise Jack with a game breakfast, when he returned.  Then—­ugh!—­horror!—­great, coiling masses detached themselves from the tufts of sward, and splashed noisily into the putrid water, wriggling and convulsed.  The invalid still slept—­but, dreadful sight! the coiling monsters, upheaving themselves from the water, glided, dull eyed and sluggish, upon the mossy island, about the unconscious figure.

Dick, fascinated and inert, watched the snaky mass, squirming in hideous folds almost on the recumbent body.  Then, aroused to the horror of their nearness, he seized a torch and made at the slimy heap.  The fire conquered them.  They slid off the ground, with forked 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.