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It was still dark, and the haze that shrouded the Dervish camp was broken only by the glare of the watch-fires. The silence was profound. It seemed impossible to believe that more than 25,000 men were ready to join battle at scarcely the distance of half a mile.

Far down the coast, thirty miles away, stood the sharp peak of Villúchinski, with the watch-fires of morning already burning upon its summit, and beyond it the hazy blue outlines of the coast range. Shreds of fleecy mist here and there floated up the mountain sides, and vanished like the spirits of the night dews rising from earth to heaven in bright resurrection.

The rain fell in torrents; the wind was hushed; and as the night fell in darkness, the columns moved severally to their destinations. The bivouacs were formed; the watch-fires were lighted; and seventy thousand men and two hundred pieces of cannon occupied the heights of Planchenoit.

"But, look," he added, "you doubted my word when I told you the rising was at an end. The beacon fires on Boulsworth Hill and on the Grange of Cliviger are extinguished; that on Padiham Heights is expiring nay, it is out; and ere many minutes all these mountain watch-fires will have disappeared like lamps at the close of a feast." "By our Lady, it is so," cried the abbot, in increasing terror.

Early on that day Blücher heard that on the morrow Schwarzenberg would attack Leipzig from the south-east, but would send a corps westwards to threaten it on the side of Lindenau. The Prussian leader therefore hurried on from the banks of the Saale, and at night the glare of his watch-fires warned Marmont that Leipzig would be assailed also from the north-west.

Whenever they could approach unperceived within proper distance of our watch-fires, six or eight riflemen would fire amongst the party that sat around them, while one or two, stealing as close to each sentinel as a regard to their own safety would permit, acted the part of assassins rather than that of soldiers, and attempted to murder him in cold blood.

The stables rather the patch-and-hole-covered desolation that once had been stables were altogether too snake-defiled and smelly to be worth repairing; the string of horses was quartered cleanly and snugly under tents, and Mahommed Gunga went to enormous trouble in arranging a ring of watch-fires at even distances.

As I looked around I could see the elephants standing a little way off under the trees, fanning themselves lazily with branches of trees to drive off the mosquitoes, which tormented them. Nearer were our attendants sitting round their watch-fires, and close to them were picketed the horses, to take advantage of the protection afforded by the fires against any prowling bear or active leopard.

We see them best, in this night of our distress and trial, by the soldiers' watch-fires. They encroach upon the gloom, and open it for us with hopes. They shine like the stare of a deeper sky than day affords, and we can see a land stretching to the Gulf, and lying expectant between either sea, whose surface is given to a Republic to people and civilize for the sake of Man.

Within the little valley of Brand Death was rife in many and awful shapes that no eye might see, for the many watch-fires were scattered and trampled out; but up from that pit of doom rose shrieks and cries and many hateful sounds sounds to pierce the brain and ring there everlastingly.