"Iosa--Iosa!" shouted the soldiers; "here come the flames!" "What matters it, Captain Rollo," said Phadrig Mhor, brandishing his Lochaber axe, and belting his plaid about his giant figure; "the cowards would smoke brave men like rats, but we will break through, and do as Conan did with the devil. If bad they give, they will get no better. Into your ranks, my brave lads--close in, close in!" "Put your plaids above your bandoleers, or they will explode!" I exclaimed; "hammer-stall your locks and matches--follow me--forward!" "Quick, Donald M'Vurich!" cried Phadrig, administering a cuff with his gauntlet to a Highlander who lingered to poke his dirk into an abandoned camp-kettle, in the faint hope of fishing out something that might be left; "into your ranks! _Is faide t-fhacail na t-fhéosag_! By the Holy Iron! your teeth are longer than your beard!" How shall I describe the scene of horror that immediately ensued! Around us the whole wood was in flames! Many of the pines were aged, dry, and decayed, and they stood in a bed of parched moss, thickly strewn with the old leaves and the withered branches of past summers. Running like wildfire along this inflammable stratum, the spreading flame caught the pines by their hollow trunks, and, narrowing on all sides to the centre, its frightful circle rapidly enclosed us. The glare, as the flame shot from pine to pine, from root to root, and branch to branch, though almost shrouded in the suffocating smoke of the green wood, was blinding; and the heat, blaze, and smoke increased--approaching nearer and more near. My company became bewildered as the fiery circle narrowed round them; they were uncertain whether to advance or retreat--to keep together or to break and scatter. Volumes of smoke and columns of fire surrounded us; every knot and gnarl on the trunks of the trees, every leaf and blade of grass, every check in our tartans, became visible, as the red, livid glow that hemmed us in became closer and closer. From the broad yellow blaze which sheeted all the background, the solemn pines came forward in black outline--gloomy, tall, and towering, like conical spires. My soldiers were appalled; for the same brave hearts that would have stormed a breach or charged a brigade with all the heedless valour of their race, now quailed at the prospect of being roasted alive; and I cursed my own folly in bivouacking so far in the centre of the wood, instead of lying on its skirts; but who could have foreseen such a horrible catastrophe? Was it the result of chance, or the diabolical spirit of Bandolo? "Dioul!" snorted Phadrig Mhor, half choked and half blinded; "we wander here like hornless cattle in a strange fold. Oich! we'll all be birselled in our iron, like partans in their shells!"