“Look here,” said Brace: “the place is very lofty, and there are windows upward to take off the smoke. Let’s make a fire of the dead wood lying about here.”
“That’s a good thought,” said Sir Humphrey; and five minutes afterwards a match was applied to the heap of perfectly dry wood underfoot. It caught fire at once and began blazing up, sending forth such a glow of light that the men set up a cheer, drawn from them by the excitement and wonder of the weird scene which confronted them.
Chapter Forty.
The Flood Subsides.
As all stepped back from the crackling and blazing pile, the smoke rose, rolling up in wreaths, and the fire illumined the whole place, displaying a perfect crowd of grotesquely horrible figures in all manner of menacing attitudes.
To add to the weird horror of the scene, high above and mingling with the smoke clouds were scores of great bats, fully three feet across in the stretch of their leathern wings, with which they silently flapped through the gloom till they succeeded in reaching one or other of the windows through which the smoke poured, and thence the outer air.
“Horrible!” cried the captain.
“It is weird in the extreme,” said Sir Humphrey; “but it is interesting.”