"What he t'ink I is, anyhow?"
"Go back an' lahn, go back an' lahn, dat not de way fi' cote."
The western sky of Barbadoes was ablaze. A mixture of fire and gold, it burned, and burned—into one vast sulphurous mass. It burned the houses, the trees, the windowpanes. The burnt glass did amazing color somersaults—turned brown and gold and lavender and red. It poured a burning liquid over the gap. It colored the water in the ponds a fierce dull yellowish gold. It flung on the corn and the peas and the star apples a lavender glow. It pitched its golden, flaming, iridescent shadow upon the lush of paw-paw and sunflower. It withered the petals of rose or sweet pea or violet or morning glory. Its flame upon the earth was mighty. Sunset over the gap paralyzed. Sunset shot weird amber tints in the eyes of the black peons ... sent strange poetic dreams through the crinkly heads of mule boys tiredly bowed over the reins of some starved-out buckra cart horse.
Sunset at Ella's—"Go in yo' pen, sah, go in...." Hogs, fowls, pigeons, geese, bastard creations, straggled waywardly in.
Smoke. Smoke is easy to smell. Ella quickly smelt it. Then she began to look for it.... Smoke and the sunset. A smoky sunset. No. The setting sun kept her from seeing it. But slowly it grew dim, dark; slowly the gold burned into a deep rich bronze ... slowly it burned and burned ... black.
"Somebody grass burnin'," Ella sniffed and looked about. The dense night helped. The smoke persisted. "Ah, dere it are." Ella paused, a hen, sick with the yaws, clutched to her bosom.
"Gahd, a cane fire." Vaults of black smoke rose. A winding, spouting pyramid of it. Black, greasy, caneless.
"It must be de church steeple, dem ministers is so careless...." Ella watched, lured by the curving, spouting ascent.
"Miss Heath!" From the gap a voice called. "Fiah, Miss Heath, fiah, Poyah shop on fiah!" One of the Dalrimple children ... speeding down the gap, to the rest of the folks....
"Lahd, 'a' massie!"