“Hillo!” said he, “the lights have vanished.”
The light at the windows had, indeed, disappeared. The outline of the building was seen as sharply defined as if stamped out with a punch against the livid sky.
Their fear was not abated, but their curiosity had increased. The birds’-nesters approached.
Suddenly the light reappeared at both windows at the same moment.
The two young urchins from Torteval took to their heels and vanished. The daring French boy did not advance, but he kept his ground.
He remained motionless, confronting the house and watching it.
The light disappeared, and appeared again once more. Nothing could be more horrible. The reflection made a vague streak of light upon the grass, wet with the night dew. All of a moment the light cast upon the walls of the house two huge dark profiles, and the shadows of enormous heads.
The house, however, being without ceilings, and having nothing left but its four walls and roof, one window could not be lighted without the other.
Perceiving that the caulker’s apprentice kept his ground, the other birds’-nesters returned, step by step, and one after the other, trembling and curious. The caulker’s apprentice whispered to them, “There are ghosts in the house. I have seen the nose of one.” The two Torteval boys got behind their companion, standing tiptoe against his shoulder; and thus sheltered, and taking him for their shield, felt bolder and watched also.
The house on its part seemed also to be watching them. There it stood in the midst of that vast darkness and silence, with its two glaring eyes. These were its upper windows. The light vanished, reappeared, and vanished again, in the fashion of these unearthly illuminations. These sinister intermissions had, probably, some connection with the opening and shutting of the infernal regions. The air-hole of a sepulchre has thus been seen to produce effects like those from a dark lantern.