Again the long corridor was filled with that intense and intolerable blue light, and again the blubber fiends ascended and descended like buckets in a well, and again the horrible noise was heard below, and the devil that spoke the good Norman French was heard shouting, “Devil Astaroth, art thou ready? Devil Balberith, hast thou lit thy fires on the top of the waters? Devil Alocco, are thy pools all ready to receive these Norman sinners? Fiends of the fen, are your torches all prepared? Fire fiends, are ye ready with your unquenchable fires? Incubuses[138] and succubuses, demons, devils, and devilings all, are ye ready?” And the hoarse voices, sounding as if they came from the bowels of the earth, roared more fearfully than before; and one loud shrill voice, that sounded as if close to the mouth of the pit, said in good Norman French, “Yea, great devil of Crowland, we be all ready!” “’Tis well,” said the other voice, “then set fire to every part of this once holy building, over which the sins of these Norman intruders have given us power! Fire it from porch to roof-tree, and if they will seek to abide here, let them perish in the flames, and be buried under the cinders and ashes.” “If the devil had spoken Saxon,” said one of the monks, “I should have known nought of his meaning, but since he parleys in Norman, it is not I that will neglect his warning!” And rushing back into the hall where they had so lately been feasting, and bursting open one of the windows, this well-advised intruder leaped from the window into the stinking moat. As when a frighted ram is seized by the horns and dragged by the shepherd hind through the brake, all the silly flock that could not move before follow him one by one, even so did our Norman monks and men-at-arms follow the first monk through the window and into the foul moat! Such as had swooned were brought, if not to their senses, to the use of their legs and arms, by the renewal of that exceeding bright light, or by the pinches and twitches of their comrades, which they took for pinchings of the devil—roaring accordingly. But in a wondrously short space of time every one of the intruders was outside of the house, and was either sprawling in the foul moat, or wading through muck and mud towards the firm, dry causeway. There was great peril of drowning or of being suffocated in the bogs; nor were they yet free from the supernatural terrors, for ghastly blue fires were burning on the surface of sundry of the deeper pools, and there was an overpowering stench of sulphur. Not one of them doubted but that the lights were from hell; yet, truth to say, those blue flames showed them how to avoid the deep pools in which they might have been drowned, and how to find their way to the causeway; for the moon had not yet risen, and except when illuminated by these unearthly lights the fens were as dark as chaos. When they had floundered a long while in the mud and