Cheap Jack Zita

by S. Baring-Gould

A wondrous sight in the black night! The mill sails whirling in the freezing blast sent forth streamers of flame and a rain of sparks. Every now and then there dropped from them incandescent tears. They roared as they went round, forming, as they rotated on the axle, a mighty wheel of dazzling light. Zita stood looking up at her work, and for a moment forgot the occasion of the setting fire to the wheel in the overwhelming effect produced by the brilliancy of the spectacle. The wind not only made the canvas glare, but kindled as well the stretchers of lath to which it was fastened, and the mainbeams likewise. The ties by which the sail-cloth was fastened were of tarred cord. As the fire consumed a portion, the rest slipped forth, and flew away in lurid lines of light.

The platform was illumined, as though a blaze of July sun had fallen on it. The window-panes of the cottage were transmuted into flakes of gold-leaf. The dykes reflected the flashing sails, and shot the light along in streaks through the dark fen into the outer darkness beyond.

A number of bats that had been harboured by the old mill, and were sleeping through the winter, were roused by the light, quickened by the heat, and came forth in flights, dazed, to flit on leather wings about the platform, to dart into the wheel of fire, and to fly back scorched, and to fall crippled at Zita's feet.

Wolf came up cowering. He had been unable to trace the course of his mistress on the ice, and he crouched moaning at Zita's feet, his eyes watching the fiery revolutions, but ever and anon starting back with a snap and a whine as some disabled bat clawed at him, and endeavoured to scramble up his side.

Would the whole mill fall a prey to the flames?

Ignited, molten tar was flung off as fire dross by the whirling sails, masses of burning canvas were carried off on the wind. The sails for a while moved more slowly. The canvas was in part consumed, but the flame itself seemed to form a sheet over the ribs, and incite the wind to act with redoubled force; for again, with renewed activity, the great arms continued their rotation.

Every rush in the dyke was made visible, standing out as a rod of burnished gold, and the withered tassels of seed glowed scarlet, against a background of night made doubly sombre by the dazzling splendour of the burning mill sails.

The boarded and tarred body of the mill was changed in the lurid glare into a structure of red copper. In the heat given off by the wings, the tar dissolved and ran down from the movable cap, as though the great bulk of the mill were sweating in an agony of fear lest the fire should reach and consume it also.

A barn-owl hovered aloft, and the glare smote on its white breast and under-wings. It to-whooed in its terror, and its cry could be heard above the rush of the sails and the roar of the flames.

There were other sounds that combined with the hooting of the owl, the rush of the sails and of the fire. The mechanism of the mill was in motion; the huge axle revolved and throbbed like a great pulse running through the body of the structure, the wheels creaked and groaned, the paddles laboured to drive the water up the incline, and the water when it came produced strange sounds beneath the ice, gasps and gulps. It was as though the dykes were sobbing at the combustion and destruction of the engine which had so long and so steadily laboured to drain them.