We hadn't bothered doing anything with the slashings, except to get them out of our way, while we were working. Now we gathered them into piles among the trees, placing them to take advantage of what little wind was still blowing, and touched them off with the arc torch. Soon we had the branches of the trees burning, and then the soft outer wood of the trunks. It actually began to get uncomfortably hot, although the temperature was now down around minus 90° Fahrenheit.
Cesário was using the torch. After he got all the slashings on fire, he started setting fire to the trees themselves, going all around them and getting the soft outer wood burning. As soon as he had one tree lit, he would run on to another.
"This guy's a real pyromaniac," Tom said to me, wiping his face on the sleeve of his father's parka which he was wearing over his own.
"Sure I am," Cesário took time out to reply. "You know who I was about fifty reincarnations ago? Nero, burning Rome." Theosophists never hesitated to make fun of their religion, that way. The way they see it, a thing isn't much good if it can't stand being made fun of. "And look at the job I did on Moscow, a little later."
"Sure; I remember that. I was Napoleon then. What I'd have done to you if I'd caught you, too."
"Yes, and I know what he was in another reincarnation," Tom added. "Mrs. O'Leary's cow!"
Whether or not Cesário really had had any past astral experience, he made a good job of firebugging on this forest. We waited around for a while, far enough back for the heat to be just comfortable and pleasant, until we were sure that it was burning well on both sides of the frozen stream. It even made the double moonlight dim, and it was sending up huge clouds of fire-reddened smoke, and where the fire didn't light the smoke, it was black in the moonlight. There wouldn't be any excuse for anybody not seeing that. Finally, we started back to camp.
As soon as we got within earshot, we could hear the excitement. Everybody was jumping and yelling. "They see it! They see it!"
The boat was full of voices, too, from the radio:
"Pequod to Dirty Gertie, we see it, too, just off our port bow... Yes, Bulldog, we see your running lights; we're right behind you... Slasher to Pequod: we can't see you at all. Fire a flare, please..."