United States or Guadeloupe ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !


To drink vile spirits among vile companions by the flare of a pine-torch; to go burthened with my furtive treasure in a belt; to fight for it knife in hand, rolling on a clay floor; to flee perpetually in fresh ships and to be chased through the sea from isle to isle, seemed, in my then frame of mind, a welcome series of events.

Do you notice the moving light in the distance, on the lake? It comes from a pine-torch fixed in the bow of a canoe, by which an Indian is spearing fish. 'Oh, have you Indians here? how delightful! I have always so longed to see a real live red man. Are they at all like Uncas and Chingachgook? I shall pay them a visit first thing in the morning.

Illustrious Hidalgos! cut them down; los infidelos, sacrificados los! Scatter them like chaff!" One roar of laughter was my only answer to this energetic appeal for my destruction, and the moment after the dry features and pleasant face of old Monsoon beamed on me by the light of a pine-torch he carried in his right hand. "Are they prisoners? Have they surrendered?" inquired he, riding up.

Still, with all his bravery, he recoiled a little when he first caught sight of the extraordinary being that emerged from the darkness a wild, distorted figure that ran towards him with its head downwards, bearing aloft in one skinny hand a smoking pine-torch, from which the sparks flew like so many fireflies.

Not being able, however, to imagine the Bench a happy place, I corrected the excess of brightness and gave its walls a pine-torch glow; I set them in the middle of a great square, and hung the standard of England drooping over them in a sort of mournful family pride.

Telling one of the men whereabouts the wolf lay, he set off with a fresh pine-torch. In the meantime my father and his companions returned with a couple of deer. So hungry had the party become that no time was lost in kindling fires, which had not before been done, and putting on the venison to roast.

They passed stooping under the little low door, and the woodman, having lighted a pine-torch, stuck it into a split iron rod to serve as a candlestick, and a bright light, clear and white as moonshine, filled the hut, lighting up every corner of it.

She sprang from her couch, lighted a pine-torch, and searched all round about; and, behold, in the part of the bed where she had stretched her feet, lay, not the child, but a great ugly frog! She was horror-struck at the sight, and seized a heavy stick to kill the frog; but the creature looked at her with such strange, mournful eyes, that she was not able to strike the blow.

Still, however, the wild flare of the pine-torch over the lone grave of his adversary, and the horrid answer of the grave-digger, that he was but "finishing his work," would recur to his memory and awake an internal pang.

I had not long, however, to endure these unpleasant apprehensions, when I heard a slight rustling, and presently caught sight of two faint lights just before me. They were large and round, and I knew that they were the eyes of a deer, in which the blaze from the pine-torch was reflected. The animal stood quite still, and I had time to raise my rifle, and to aim between the lights.