When Mr. Bengough was gone, Joyce heard the frightened servants crying out, that the fire was bigger than ever, and that they were sure the house would catch fire, and they would all be burned alive.
Mrs. Arundel could not calm their fears, and scarcely control her own, and Joyce alone preserved any self-possession.
"The panes of glass are hot in the nursery!" they said; "come up there, ma'am, and see if it is not true."
"Do not wake Master Falcon or disturb your master. Remember you are—we all are—in God's hands."
But, as Joyce looked out from the vantage ground of the nursery windows, the terrified servants clinging to her, with cries and exclamations, the sight was one too awful for any words to paint. The panes of glass were actually heated, and the lurid, fierce glare seemed to be ever increasing.
The scene upon which Joyce gazed, with that strange fascination, which, acting like a spell, seemed to compel her to look at what yet she shrank from as too awful, has been left on record by one who, then a boy at school, has described it in a vivid word picture, which was the outcome of the actual experience of an eye-witness. This boy, who was one day, to be foremost in the ranks of those who carried the standard of truth, and justice, and charity into the very thick of the conflict with the powers of darkness, thus spoke—long, long after most of those who had taken any part in those three awful days were dead—to an audience who were inhabitants of the city of Bristol, and to whom, therefore, the subject was of especial interest. He said:
"I was a schoolboy in Clifton, up above Bristol. I had been hearing of political disturbances, even of riots, of which I understood nothing, and for which I cared nothing.
"But on one memorable Sunday afternoon I saw an object which was distinctly not political. It was an afternoon of sullen, autumn rain. The fog hung thick over the docks and lowlands. Glaring through the fog I saw a bright mass of flame, almost like a half-risen sun. That, I was told, was the gate of the new gaol on fire; that the prisoners had been set free. The fog rolled slowly upwards. Dark figures, even at that great distance, were flitting to and fro across what seemed the mouth of the fire.
"The flames increased, multiplied at one point after another, till by ten o'clock that night one seemed to be looking down upon Dante's Inferno, and to hear the multitudinous moan and wail of the lost spirits, surging to and fro amid the sea of fire.
"Right behind Brandon Hill rose the central mass of fire, till the little mound seemed converted into a volcano, from the peak of which the flame streamed up, not red above, but delicately green and blue, pale rose, and pearly white, while crimson sparks leapt and fell again in the midst of that rainbow, not of hope, but of despair; and dull explosions down below mingled with the roar of the mob, and the infernal hiss and crackle of the flames.