The flame rolled on. It threw its long arms through the million interstices of the loose piles of wood, it penetrated every where with its subtle, far-reaching power, till within the ship the glow broadened and widened, the central heart of fire enlarged its borders, and the floods of flame that flowed from it rushed with consuming fury through the whole body of the ship. Glowing with bright lustre, increasing in that brightness every moment, leaping up as it consumed and flashing vividly as it leaped up. A thousand tongues of flame streamed upward through the crannies of the gaping deck, and between the wide orifices of the planks and timbers the dazzling flames gleamed; a thousand resistless arms seemed extended forward to grasp the fabric now completely at its mercy, and the hot breath of the fire shriveled up all in its path before yet its hands were laid upon it. And fast and furious, with eager advance, the flames rushed on devouring everything. Through the hatchway, around which the fiercest fires gathered, the stream of flame rose impetuously on high, in a straight upward torrent, hurling up a vast pyramid of fire to the ebon skies, a [Greek: phlogos migan pogona] which, like that which once illumed the Slavonic strait with the signal-fire first caught from burning Troy, here threw its radiance far over the deep. While the lighter wood lasted the flame was in the ascendant, and nobly it did its work. Whatever could be done by bright radiance and far-penetrating lustre was done here. If that ship which had passed held any men on board capable of feeling a human interest in the visible signs of calamity at sea, they would be able to read in this flame that there was disaster somewhere upon these waters, and if they had human hearts they would turn to see if there was not some suffering which they might relieve. But the lighter and the dryer wood was at last consumed, and now there remained that which Brandon had never touched, the dense masses which still lay piled where they had been placed eighteen years before. Upon these the fire now marched. But already the long days and weeks of scorching sun and fierce wind had not been without their effects, and the dampness had been subdued. Besides, the fire that advanced upon them had already gained immense advantage; for one half of the brig was one glowing mass of heat, which sent forth its consuming forces, and withered up, and blighted, and annihilated all around. The close-bound and close-packed masses of staves and boards received the resistless embrace of the fire, and where they did not flame they still gave forth none the less a blazeless glow.