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The campfire had died to black embers before Casey ventured from his covert, and Barney Oakes seemed to have holed up for the season. Unless you have lived for a long while in a land altogether empty of any human life save your own, you cannot realize the effect of having mysterious bullets zip past your ears and ruin your supper for you.
Occasionally it happens that the port-holes are opened while there still flickers a little blue flame above the whitening embers. In this case there is death in the stove. The carbonic-acid gas, which is still proceeding from the burning charcoal, enters the room, and produces asphyxia, or at all events some of its symptoms.
There was an iron pot in the embers. He seized a stick and stirred the contents furiously, then set the pot between his knees and ate like an animal. He passed the pot to King when he had finished, but fingers had passed too many times through what was left in it and the very thought of eating the mess made his gorge rise; so King thanked him and set the pot aside. Then, "That is thy place!"
They sat in silence, with their faces to the fire, imagining, perhaps, in its red embers new scenes of persecution yet to be encountered. The snow still drifted hard against the windows, and sometimes, as the blaze of the logs had gradually sunk, came down the spacious chimney and hissed upon the hearth.
Still there was no sound of firearms, though, the savages were crowding into both apartments. Some one kicked the ashes from the embers, and the blaze which followed made known the astounding fact that both of the white men had fled. Ziffak seemed to be in a towering rage because such a blunder had been made, and called upon the fleetest runners to follow him.
The fire grew dimmer and dimmer, until at last but a faint semi-circle of embers remained. Shortly afterwards, however, he became aware by seeing shrubs and rocks, which he had been hitherto unable to distinguish, that the light of day was returning, but the clouds still hung so densely around the horizon, that he was unable to ascertain the direction of the east.
"Very well," said Babo; "give me the golden angel that the master gave you, and I'll do the job for you." Well, the smith paid the money, and Babo bade him blow the bellows. When the fire roared up good and hot, he caught up the old mother, and, in spite of her scratching and squalling, he laid her upon the embers.
While tidying the room, she was assailed with entreaties to call their Mary, and let them get up, they were so tired of bed. She undertook to be still their Mary, and made them direct her to the house-maid's stores, went down on her knees at the embers, and so dealt with matches, chips, and coal, that to her own surprise and pride a fire was evoked.
Left alone and recovering his wits, he fishes out Clorinda from the embers, and then proceeds to thump vigorously at the lady's door. But it never opened, and from that day to the day three months ago when he told me the tale, he had not beheld her again." "By Jove, it's a striking story," I said. "But the question is, what does it prove?" "Several things. "And last?" I asked.
No report is made as to the condition of their feet when they emerge from the fire. As usual, a pit is dug, filled with faggots. When these have burned down 'a little, and 'while the heat is still unbearable in the neighbourhood of the ditch, those persons who have made the vow . . . walk . . . on the embers in the pit, without doing themselves as a rule much harm.
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