The entire force of the whites clustered in front of the grove, clutching their rifles, and gazing with wondering eyes upon this singular sight, and exclamations burst spontaneously from their lips.
“Ach Gott! what ish dat?” cried the Dutch private.
“It’s a volcayano!” explained the Irishman.
“It’s the debble’s fireplace!” mumbled Isaac, and his teeth chattered together with superstitious awe.
“It’s some of Smoholler’s deviltry!” said Glyndon.
The fire grew in intensity, and then a dark body seemed to grow up in the midst of it. A black, unearthly figure of a man, with eyes of fire, a tongue of flame, and livid horns projecting from his head, of a deep-red color.
“The devil!” was the cry that burst from the lips of the astonished whites.
He held what appeared to be a thunderbolt in his hand, and suddenly launched it like a javelin at the astonished gazers. It whizzed past Isaac’s head, singeing his wool in its passage, and exploding at his heels, and the tonsorial professor sprawled upon his back with one heart-rending yell that evinced his firm belief that he had received his quietus.
“Fiend or man, I’ll have a try at him!” cried Glyndon, and he took a rapid sight along the barrel of his rifle, and fired at the apparition on the cliff.
Two other rifles echoed his, for Blaikie and Robbins had impulsively followed his example. The three rifles sent forth their contents, and the smoke clouded their vision for a moment. But following the reports came an unearthly, soul-curdling laugh, and then something pattered down among them like heavy drops of rain.