At these words, however, the adventurer recovered himself. He saw a pitiless enemy and a troop of armed men hastening to the door of the smelting-furnace and that way of refuge was consequently closed. The same instant an infernal idea occurred to him.
Hastily snatching up a burning torch from the altar with a couple of vigorous bounds he approached the smelting-furnace. Twenty bayonets and a long axe in the hands of Juon Tare were raised against him—and he was unarmed.
But it was not to the door he wished to get. With a spring sideways he reached the huge vat filled with brandy, threw the burning torch down in front of it and placing his muscular shoulders against the vat, with a desperate exertion of strength scattered its contents on to the floor of the cavern from end to end.
In an instant the whole cavern was in flames!
The floor was of stone so that it could not absorb the spirit as it leaked out and it flashed up as it caught the flame of the torch close at hand. It spread rapidly like a lake of fire that has burst its dams.
The blue spirit-flame filled the whole of the empty cavern with a pale, ghastly glare, the air, the empty space itself seemed to burst into flame. Hundreds of torches, burnt down to their very roots, flickered luridly in the midst of this blue fire of hell, and the heaped-up fire works,—the Bengali pyramids and the rockets and crackers—flamed, fizzled and banged about in the midst of the terrible heat. And in the thick of this infernal blaze black figures, like the souls of the Accursed, were running frantically about, howling, shrieking and toppling over one another and seeking a refuge on the higher rocks whither the flames, spreading through the air, leaped after them. Juon Tare lost his eyesight in the flames. The others tried to find a refuge in the aqueduct running through the cavern, but the pursuing alcohol rushed after them like a living cataract of fire. Everyone seemed bound to perish at this hellish marriage feast.
Only two people did not lose their presence of mind; only two knew what ought to be done, and one of these was Fatia Negra. When the armed soldiers scattered from before the door of the smelting-furnace, he had boldly waded through the burning spirit; he knew very well that it could not set fire to clothing immediately and he took care to hold his hands in front of his eyes to save himself from being blinded. He tore the door open and hastily vanished through it.
The other was Anicza, who, when she saw that in the hundred-fold confusion everyone had lost his head and was running desperately to certain death, quickly snatched up an axe, rushed to the gigantic beer vats and staved in their bottoms. The neutral fluid streamed down upon the floor like a water fall and, gradually gaining ground, forced the flaming palinka[31] back further and further, till at last the infernal blue light was gradually extinguished.
[31] Hungarian brandy.
By that time, however, the beautiful bride was a sight of horror, her face was burnt out of all recognition.