“These operations filled the summer days; but it was at nightfall and a little earlier that the real fun began. For then the men, women, and children would gather and build the kilns--pits scooped in the sand, measuring about seven feet across and three feet deep in the centre. While the men finished lining the sides of the kiln with stones, the women and girls would leap into it with armfuls of furze, which they lighted, and so, strewing the dried ore-weed upon it, built little by little into a blazing pile. The great sea-lights which ring the islands now make a brave show and one which the visitor carries away as the most enduring, most characteristic recollection of his sojourn; but (say the older inhabitants) it will not compare with the illuminations of bygone summer nights, when as many as forty kilns would be burning together and island signalling to island with bonfires that flickered across the roadsteads and danced on the wild tide-races. From four to five hours the kilns would be kept burning, and the critical moment came when the mass of kelp began to liquefy, and the word was given to ‘strike.’ Then a dozen or fourteen men would leap down with pitchforks and heave the red molten mass from side to side of the kiln, toiling like madmen, while the sweat ran shining down their half-naked bodies; and sometimes--and always on Midsummer Eve, which is Baal-fire night--while they laboured, the women and girls would join hands and dance round the pit. In ten minutes or so all this excitement would die out, the dancers would unlock their hands, the men climb out of the pit, and throw themselves panting on the sand, leaving the kelp to settle, cool, and vitrefy.” The kelp was ready to be exported as soon as it was cold; and the sooner the better, for it was apt to deteriorate with keeping. A single mass, formed in a kiln of the size above mentioned, would weigh from two and a half to three hundredweight. When the industry first began, the price obtained by the islanders was only eighteen to twenty shillings for every ton. This afterwards rose to forty-four shillings a ton; but for a long time the steward of the islands, who represented the Godolphins, insisted on acting the part of middleman, paying only twenty shillings, and threatening to turn any one out of his holding who sold it elsewhere for a higher price. Later, when the islanders had broken free from this tyranny, they were able to get from the merchants of Bristol and London as much as five pounds per ton of twenty-one hundredweight. But the amount of labour involved was colossal. It has been estimated that more than three tons of seaweed were required at a burning, in order to produce three hundredweight of kelp. This huge mass of weed had all of it to be cut from the rocks, carried, scattered, dried, and stacked, before it was ready for burning; and many times must the entire operation be repeated during the season. [Illustration: A GREY EVENING IN SCILLY]