Cord and Creese

by James De Mille

The dry wood kindled. A million sparks flew out as it cracked under the assault of the devouring fire. The flame spread itself out to a larger volume; it widened, expanded, and clasped the kindling all around in its fervid embrace. The flame had been baffled at first; but now, as if to assert its own supremacy, it rushed out in all directions with something that seemed almost like exultation. That flame had once been conquered by the waters in this very ship. The wood had saved the ship from the waters. It was as though the WOOD had once invited the FIRE to union, but the WATER had stepped in and prevented the union by force; as though the WOOD, resenting the interference, had baffled the assaults of the WATER, and saved itself intact through the long years for the embrace of its first love. Now the FIRE sought the WOOD once more after so many years, and in ardor unspeakable embraced its bride.

Such fantastic notions passed through Brandon’s fancy as he looked at the triumph of the flame. But he could not stay there long, and as he had not made up his mind to give himself to the flames he clambered up quickly out of the hatchway and stood upon the sand without.

The smoke was pouring through the hatchway, the black voluminous folds being rendered visible by the glow of the flames beneath, which now had gained the ascendency, and set all the winds at defiance. Indeed it was so now that whatever wind came only assisted the flames, and Brandon, as he looked on, amused himself with the thought that the wind was like the world of man, which, when any one is first struggling, has a tendency to crush him, but when he has once gained a foothold exerts all its efforts to help him along. In this mood, half cynical, half imaginative, he watched the progress of the flames.

Soon all the fine kindling had crumbled away at the touch of the fire, and communicating its own heat to the wood around, it sank down, a glowing mass, the foundation of the rising fires.

Here, from this central heart of fire, the flames rushed on upon the wood which lay loosely on all sides, filling the hull. Through that wood the dry hot wind had streamed for many weeks, till every stave and every board had become dry to its utmost possibility. Now at the first breath of the flame the wood yielded; at the first touch it flared up, and prepared to receive the embrace of the fire in every fibre of its being.

The flame rolled on. It threw its long arms through the million interstices of the loose piles of wood, it penetrated every where with its subtle, far-reaching power, till within the ship the glow broadened and widened, the central heart of fire enlarged its borders, and the floods of flame that flowed from it rushed with consuming fury through the whole body of the ship.

Glowing with bright lustre, increasing in that brightness every moment, leaping up as it consumed and flashing vividly as it leaped up. A thousand tongues of flame streamed upward through the crannies of the gaping deck, and between the wide orifices of the planks and timbers the dazzling flames gleamed; a thousand resistless arms seemed extended forward to grasp the fabric now completely at its mercy, and the hot breath of the fire shriveled up all in its path before yet its hands were laid upon it.

And fast and furious, with eager advance, the flames rushed on devouring everything. Through the hatchway, around which the fiercest fires gathered, the stream of flame rose impetuously on high, in a straight upward torrent, hurling up a vast pyramid of fire to the ebon skies, a {Greek: phlogos migan pogona} which, like that which once illumed the Slavonic strait with the signal-fire first caught from burning Troy, here threw its radiance far over the deep.

While the lighter wood lasted the flame was in the ascendant, and nobly it did its work. Whatever could be done by bright radiance and far-penetrating lustre was done here. If that ship which had passed held any men on board capable of feeling a human interest in the visible signs of calamity at sea, they would be able to read in this flame that there was disaster somewhere upon these waters, and if they had human hearts they would turn to see if there was not some suffering which they might relieve.

But the lighter and the dryer wood was at last consumed, and now there remained that which Brandon had never touched, the dense masses which still lay piled where they had been placed eighteen years before. Upon these the fire now marched. But already the long days and weeks of scorching sun and fierce wind had not been without their effects, and the dampness had been subdued. Besides, the fire that advanced upon them had already gained immense advantage; for one half of the brig was one glowing mass of heat, which sent forth its consuming forces, and withered up, and blighted, and annihilated all around. The close-bound and close-packed masses of staves and boards received the resistless embrace of the fire, and where they did not flame they still gave forth none the less a blazeless glow.