And then I saw the driver, whose figure stood out dark against the moonlit moorland on our right, point with his arm to the fast crimsoning sky, and Mr. Rowe left the rudder and came forward, and Fred, who had had his head low down listening, ran towards us from the bows and cried,

“There are sixteen, and they’re ringing backwards—­it’s a fire!”

The driver mounted the horse, which was put to the trot, and we hurried on.  The bells came nearer and nearer with their fantastic clanging, and the sky grew more lurid as they rang.  Then there was a bend in the canal, and we caught sight of the two towers of S. Philip and S. James, dark against the glow.

“The whole town is in flames!” cried Fred.

“Not it,” said the barge-master; “it’s ten to one nothing but a rubbish-heap burning, or the moors on fire beyond the town.”

Mr. Rowe rather snubbed Fred, but I think he was curious about the matter.  The driver urged his horse, and the good barge Betsy swung along at a pace to which she was little accustomed.

When we came by the cricket-field Mr. Rowe himself said—­“It’s in the middle of the town.”

Through the deafening noise of the bells I contrived to shout in his ear a request that I might be put ashore, as we were now about on a level with my home.  Mr. Rowe ran a plank quickly out and landed me, without time for adieux.

I hastened up to the town.  The first street I got into was empty, but it seemed to vibrate to S. Philip’s peal.  And after that I pushed my way through people, hurrying as I was hurrying, and the nearer I got to home the thicker grew the crowd and the ruddier became the glow.  And now, in spite of the bells, I caught other noises.  The roar of irresistible fire,—­which has a strange likeness to the roar of irresistible water,—­the loud crackling of the burning wood, and the moving and talking of the crowd, which was so dense that I could hardly get forward.

I contrived to squeeze myself along, however, and as I turned into our street I felt the warmth of the fire, and when I looked at my old home it was a mass of flames.

I tried to get people to make way for me by saying—­“It’s my house, please let me through!” But nobody seemed to hear me.  And yet there was a pause, which was only filled by that curious sound when a crowd of people gasp or sigh; and if every man had been a rock it could not have been more impossible to move backwards or forwards.  It was dark, except for the moonlight, where I stood, but in a moment or two the flames burst from the bedroom windows, and the red light spread farther, and began to light up faces near me.  I was just about to appeal to a man I knew, when a roar began which I knew was not that of the fire.  It was the roar of human voices.  And when it swelled louder, and was caught up as it came along, and then broke into deafening cheers, I was so wild with excitement and anxiety that I began to kick the legs of the man in front of me to make him let me go to the home that was burning before my eyes.