The illumination was about to appear, but not in the character she had expected to see it. This was a fire, she knew, but whence or where she knew not. She could only watch and listen as before. The black and crimson smoke speedily burst into flame, and all the earth and all the heavens were lighted up as by a general conflagration. So might have belched forth the subterranean fires of Vesuvius upon the doomed cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii! Viewed from her window, the scene was wild, splendid and magnificent beyond description. Against the broadening sheets of flame the city buildings stood up black, stark and spectral, while all the crowded streets between them formed a Pandemonium. The ocean of fire rolled on and on. Every nook of the city was intensely illuminated. The inside of her own cell was so dazzlingly lighted up that she had to close her eyes, at intervals, to relieve them of the blinding glare. And the sea of flame rolled on and on! And the horror was presently augmented, when, with tremendous reports that rent the air and shook the ground like an earthquake, magazine after magazine exploded, sending blazing timbers, bricks, mortar, and every description of ignited missile, whirling through the city; while a driving shower of sparks and burning coals fell like the rain of fire that consumed Sodom and Gomorrah! “Grant is before the inner line of intrenchments, and is shelling the city,” was the natural conclusion of Britomarte, as she heard the detonating thunder of the frequent explosions, the dreadful crash of falling buildings, and the fierce cries of the infuriated mob; as she saw the flood of flame and the rain of burning coals. “And when he takes the city, at what a stupendous cost of life. It will be utterly destroyed, with all its people. And we, the Union prisoners, will find our only deliverance through a death by fire.” And Britomarte sank to her knees, and covered her eyes, and bowed her head, and prayed—not in fear for herself, for she was brave to meet the fire, but in pity for the innocent children, the delicate women, the suffering invalids, and all the helpless and harmless that she thought must go down with the strong and the guilty in this general destruction. Long and earnestly she prayed to the Lord of Heaven and earth to mitigate the horrors of this most horrible night. When at length she arose, and looked out upon the burning city, she beheld a scene which, in its sublime terrors, overwhelmed her senses, and brought to her appalled soul the vision of “that dreadful day, that day of wrath,” when the firmament shall melt with a fervid heat, the heavens be rolled together as a scroll, and the sun, moon and stars be blotted out.