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Updated: June 17, 2025
Suddenly a vivid illumination burst forth. Great pine torches, piles of tar-barrels, and heaps of other inflammable material, which had been carefully arranged in Fort Porcupine, were now all at once lighted by Vere's command.
When, to a stately march, the musicians blowing their loudest, Prince Alexis and Princess Martha led the way to the ball-room, the signal was given: candles and tar-barrels burst into flame, and not only within the castle, but over the landscape for five or six versts, around everything was bright and clear in the fiery day. Then the noises of Kinesma were not only permitted, but encouraged.
The knight burnt the first cat by flinging blazing tar-barrels on it. So the besiegers made the roof of this one very steep, and covered it with raw hides, and the tar-barrels could not harm it.
At Delmenhorst, in Oldenburg, it used to be the custom to cut down two trees, plant them in the ground side by side, and pile twelve tar-barrels, one above the other, against each of the trees. Brushwood was then heaped about the trees, and on the evening of Easter Saturday the boys, after rushing about with blazing beanpoles in their hands, set fire to the whole.
A wild, stormy, rainy night then set in, but still the royalist party citizens and soldiers intermingled all armed to the teeth, and uttering fierce cries, while the whole scene was fitfully illuminated with the glare of flambeaux and blazing tar-barrels, kept watch in the open square around the city hall. A series of terrible Rembrandt-like nightpieces succeeded grim, fantastic, and gory.
Denys, already prepared, shot his bolt, and the murderous archer staggered away wounded. But poor Simon never moved. His wars were over. "I am unlucky in my comrades," said Denys. The next morning an unwelcome sight greeted the besieged. The cat was covered with mattresses and raw hides, and fast filling up the moat. The knight stoned it, but in vain; flung burning tar-barrels on it, but in vain.
Moreover, in addition to all these theatrical spectacles and pompous processions accompanied as they were by blazing tar-barrels, flying dragons, and leagues of flaring torches John Baptist, who had been director-in-chief of all the shows successively arranged to welcome Don John of Austria, Archduke Matthias, Francis of Alengon, and even William of Orange, into the capital, had prepared a feast of a specially intellectual character for the new governor-general.
Two axes had been brought along, and Dale used one while Peleg Snuggers wielded the other. Soon the cedar commenced to totter. "Look out!" cried Captain Putnam, and then crash! the tree came down, directly on top of the tar-barrels. Up went a thick cloud of smoke and sparks. But the cadets were ready with dirt and stones, and the danger of a new blaze was quickly averted.
Thus, for ten apparently endless hours the perishing seamen hung suspended over what seemed to be their grave. They hung thus in the midst of pitchy darkness after their blazing tar-barrels had been extinguished. And what of the lifeboat-men during all this time? Were they asleep? Nay, verily!
There was a bench on either side of the hut which was lumbered with a confused mass of spars, sails, sou'westers, oil-skin coats and trousers; buoys, sea-chests, rudders, tar-barrels, and telescopes. This hovel belonged jointly to old Jeph and Captain Bluenose. Bax had shared it with them before he was appointed to the command of the "Nancy."
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