"The furniture being very dry, and rendered more combustible by wax and oil, besides the arts they had used, took fire at once. The flames roared high and fiercely, blackening the prison wall and twining up its lofty front like burning serpents. At first they crowded around the blaze, and vented their exultation only in their looks; but when it grew hotter and fiercer; when it crackled and leaped, and roared like a great furnace; when it shone upon the opposite houses, and lighted up not only the pale and wondering faces at the windows, but the inmost corners of each habitation; when through the deep red heat and glow the fire was seen sporting and toying with the door, now clinging to its obdurate surface, now gliding off with fierce inconstancy and roaring high into the sky, anon returning to fold it in its burning grasp and lure it to its ruin; when it shone and gleamed so brightly that the church clock of St. Sepulchre's, so often pointing to the hour of death, was legible as in broad day, and the vane upon its steeple-top glittered in the unwonted light like some thing richly jeweled; when blackened stone and sombre brick grew ruddy in the deep reflection, and windows shone like burnished gold, dotting the longest distance in the fiery vista with their specks of brightness; when wall and tower and roof and chimney-stack seemed drunk, and in the flickering glare appeared to reel and stagger; when scores of objects, never seen before, burst out upon the view, and things the most familiar put on some new aspect, then the mob began to join the whirl, and with loud yells and shouts and clamor, such as is happily seldom heard, bestirred themselves to feed the fire and keep it at its height.