Urith: A Tale of Dartmoor

by S. Baring-Gould

The surface of the moor is chapped and transformed by the chaps into a labyrinth, of peaty hummocks and black and oozy clefts, the latter from six to twelve feet deep, running in every direction, and radiating out of each other at all angles. Why the peat is so cleft is hard to say, there is no running water in the gashes, which in many cases go down to the white granite like the fissures in the body of a leper that in places disclose the bone. It would almost seem as though the bitter cold of this region had chapped its surface, and that no soft warm weather ever came to mollify, and to heal its gaping wounds.

Evening had closed in, but not attended by darkness, for the whole sky was glowing. The moor was on fire.

The season was that early spring in which what is locally termed "swaling" takes place, that is to say, the heather is set fire to after the dry winds of March, so as to expose and to sweeten the herbage.

The recent season had been exceptionally dry, even for so rainless a season, and the fires that had been kindled near the circumference of the moor had run inwards, gained the mastery, and rioted over the whole expanse beyond control. They leaped from bush to brake, they crossed streams, throwing over tufts of flaming bracken, pelting the further shore, till that also was ignited.

They circumvented bogs, they scrambled up moraines of granite, locally termed clatters, they ran up the hills on one side, enveloped their rocky crests in lambent flame, and descended the further side in a succession of bounds, and now they raged unchecked in the vast untrodden interior, where the wiry heather grew to shrubs, and the coarse grass and rushes were dust dry. There it ate its way along, a red advancing tide, working to windward, with a low roar and crackle, snapping at every bush, mumbling the tufts of rush, tossing up sparks, flame, and smoke, so that in the general glow and haze every landmark was disguised or effaced.

To no distance could the eye reach, because the whole atmosphere was impregnated with smoke, the smoke red and throbbing with the reflection of the fires over which it rolled. Indeed, the entire firmament was aglow, at one time flashing, at another darkening, then blazing out again as a solar photosphere, responsive to the progress and force of the conflagration.

Crouched at the foot of the great upright stone, that rose over her as the Devil triumphing over his pray, was a girl, with sullen, bewildered eyes, watching the fires as they folded about her, like flame fingers interlacing to close in and squeeze, and press the life out of her.

Her hands were bandaged. She rested her chin on them. She was a handsome girl, but with the features irregular. She had large dark eyes—possibly at this moment appearing unduly large, as they stared with a vacant unconcern at the mingled darkness and flame. Her complexion was by nature a transparent sallow, but now it glowed—almost vermilion in the light of the burning moor. Her brow was broad, but low and heavy. The face was strange. When the long dark eyelashes fell, then there was in the countenance, in repose, a certain pathos, a look of sadness, of desolation; but the moment the eyes opened, this was gone, and the eyes proclaimed a sullen spirit within, underground, a smoulder of fierce passion that when stirred would burst forth into uncontrolled fury—akin to madness. When the lids fell, then the face might be pronounced beautiful, but when they rose, only the sullen, threatening eyes could be seen, the face was forgotten in the mystery of the eyes.

As the girl sat beneath the great black monolith her brooding eyes were turned as a brake exploded into brilliant flame. She watched it burn out, till it left behind only a glow of scarlet ash; then she slowly turned her head towards Devil Tor, and watched the fantastic shapes the rocks assumed in the flicker, and the shadows that ran and leaped about them, as imps doing homage to their monarch's chair.

Then she unwound the bandages about her hands, and looked at her knuckles. They were torn, and had bled, torn as by some wild beast. The blood was dry, and when she wrenched the linen from a wound to which it adhered, the blood began again to ooze. Her wounds were inflamed through the heat of the fires and the fever in her blood. She blew on them, but her breath was hot. There was no water within the engirdling ring of fire in which she could dip her hands. Then she waved them before her face, to fan them in the wind, but the wind was scorching, and charged with hot ash.