It had reached the opposite wall now, and ran as well right up to the window, the floor being now one blaze, except in the corner where Hilary stood on guard, as if to keep the flames back from the straw.
But now he found that he had another enemy with which to contend, for a peculiarly stifling vapour was arising, producing a sensation of giddiness, against which he could not battle; and as Hilary drew back from the approach of the tiny sea of waves of fire, pressing back, as he did so, the straw, he felt that unless he could reach the window he would be overcome.
There was no time for pause; help, if it were coming, could not reach him yet. In another instant he knew that the straw would catch fire. Even now a little rill of spirit had run to it, along which the flames were travelling, so, nerving himself for the effort, he made a dash to cross to the window.
At his first step the burning spirit splashed up in blue flames; at his second, the fire rose above his ankles; then, placing his foot upon a plate that had been left upon the floor, he slipped and fell headlong into the burning tongues that seemed to rise and lick him angrily.
The sensation was sharp to his hands, but not too pungent, and, fortunately, he kept his face from contact with the floor, while struggling up he for the moment lost his nerve, and felt ready to rush frantically about the place.
Fortunately, however, he mastered himself, and dashed at the window, leaped at the sill, and climbed up to breathe the pure cool air that was rushing in, just as the straw caught fire, blazed up furiously, and the place rapidly filled with rolling clouds of smoke.
He could not notice it, however, for the flames that fluttered about his garments where they were soaked with the spirit, and for some few minutes he thought of nothing but extinguishing the purply blaze.
They burned him but slightly, and in several places went out as the spirit became exhausted; but here and there the woollen material of his garments began to burn with a peculiar odour before he had extinguished the last spark.
Meanwhile, although the straw blazed furiously, and the smoke filled the place so that respiration would have been impossible, no help came. The spirit fluttered and danced as it burned, and save here and there where it lay in inequalities of the floor, it was nearly consumed, the danger now being from the straw, which still blazed.
Fortunately for Hilary, although he could feel the glow, his foresight in sweeping it to one corner saved him from being incommoded, and the heat caused a current of cool night-air to set in through the window and keep back the blinding and stifling fumes.