The wound on his arm was but slight, though it bled profusely and smarted like a burn, and only stopping to tear off a piece from his shirt-sleeve, which he bound tightly round it, tying the knot with his teeth and his right hand, he again put the charcoal, which was burning well, into his cap, and with the flask of brandy set off for the top of the hill. The rain had come on again, hissing down in torrents, and Mitsos, knowing that the fear of failure strode faster every moment, tore the cover of boughs off from the core of moss and furze, but found to his dismay it was quite damp and would not light. It was necessary to get a flame somehow; the spirits and the moss would do the rest if once he could get that; and to get a flame, he must have something dry, though it were but a twig. There was no time to waste; already a big raindrop had made an ominous black spot on the middle of the glowing charcoal, and meantime everything was getting rapidly wetter. In a moment of hopelessness he clutched at his hair despairingly; the thing seemed an impossibility. Then suddenly an idea struck him, and, tearing off his jacket, he removed his shirt, which had been kept quite dry, and kneeling down with his back bare to the cold, scourging rain put the two lumps of charcoal in the folds of it and blew on them. For a couple of seconds the linen smouldered only, but then--and no Angel Gabriel would have been a gladder sight to him--a little tongue of flame shot up. Mitsos took the brandy bottle, and with the utmost care shook out a few drops onto the edge of the flame. These it licked up, burning brighter, and soon the whole of the back of the shirt took the fire. He crammed it under the thick core of moss and brushwood, and feeding them plentifully with brandy coaxed the flame into the driest part of the stuff. Now and then a little spark would go running like some fiery insect through the fibres, leaving a gray path of ash behind, only to perish when it reached the damper stuff, and once even the flame seemed to die down altogether; but meantime it had penetrated into the centre of the pile, and suddenly a yellow blade of smoky fire leaped out and licked the dripping branches of fir outside. These only fumed and cracked, and Mitsos pulled them off, for they were but choking the flames; and, running down to the edge of the wood, he tore up great handfuls of undergrowth, which had been partially protected from the rain by the trees, and threw them on. Then the fire began to take hold in earnest, and through the thick volumes of stinging smoke, which were streaming away westward, shot lurid gleams of flame. Now and then with a great crash and puff of vapor some thicker branch of timber would split and break, throwing out a cloud of ignited fragments, or again there would rise up a hissing and simmering of damp leaves, like the sound of a great stewing over a hot fire. The place where he had first