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Many streets consisted of nothing but avenues between heaps of roaring ruins; the sound of the fire being nothing less than that of hundreds of furnaces, mixed up with splittings, rattlings, and thunderous falls; and the flame blowing frightfully one way, with a wind like a tempest. The pavement was hot under one's feet; and if you did not proceed with caution, the fire singed your hair.
On the tenth of May, at about 5 P. M., all hands were called to reef topsails, and a forecastle man, who was hurrying aloft to assist his companions on the foreyard, fell from only a few rattlings above the sheerpole upon the deck, and injured himself so severely as to cause his death early the next morning. Poor fellow!
There were other sounds, too, odd rattlings, deep hollow notes like groans, and a throbbing as of some mighty pulse, but there was no thunder; indeed Eyebright doubted if she could have heard it had there been any, so loud was the tumult of noises. She sat by the fire and dried her hair what else was there to do? but feeling all the time as if she ought to be out in the rain helping papa somehow.
They are doing no good." For enraged by what had taken place, the attacking party had rushed in again, to go on stabbing and thrusting away with their pikes, keeping up a series of rattlings and clashings, till Ralph made his voice heard, and they drew back, growling angrily, and the weird light shed by the torches showed that blood had begun to flow from hands and arms.
The wooden stairs creaked more than once; there were little rattlings, faint and distant, as of a dried leaf or a loose window, in the bowels of the house; and though nothing came of any of these noises, except a fresh period of tension on my part, they made the skin act on my forehead every time.
These were all together down each side of a long passage ending in a door with ground glass panels. At last, just as they were sitting down to table, the innkeeper himself appeared. He was a former horse-dealer, a stout asthmatic man with perpetual wheezings and blowings and rattlings of phlegm in his throat. His father had transmitted to him the name of Follenvie.
In one of the passages all sorts of queer sounds, such as whinings, meanings, screeches, clangings of pails and rattlings of chains, were heard, whilst something, no one could ever see distinctly, but which they all felt to be indescribably nasty, rushed up the cellar steps and flew past, as if engaged in a desperate chase.
Checked, though not humbled, I repeat the necessary orders, and no sooner do I see the men on the rattlings, than I squeak out at the top of my voice, "Pave your way up the rigging pave your way, you lubbers." The men stop for a moment, grin at me with astonishment, and then scamper up like so many party-coloured devils.
"Is safe; " calmly said the Skimmer, appearing in the rattlings of the main-rigging, which was still untouched by the fire "Cut off all! I stay to brace the mizen-top-sail more firmly aback." The duty was done, and for a moment the fine figure of the free-trader was seen standing on the edge of the burning ship, looking with regret at the glowing mass.
Such was the prostration of these wretched beings that, without turning their heads to Yvon, or even addressing a single word to him, they let him carry out the corpse of the deceased child. An hour later Yvon re-entered his hut. It was pitch dark; the hearth was cold. None had even the spirit to light a resin torch. Hollow and spasmodic rattlings were heard from the throats of those within.
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