The poetic soul lays hold of every such tender pageant of
beauty and keeps it forever. Iglesias, having an additional method of
preservation, did not fail to pencil rapidly the wondrous scene. When
he had finished his dashing sketch of this glory, so transitory, he
peppered the whole with cabalistic cipher, which only he could interpret
into beauty.
Cancut's camp-fire now began to overpower the faint glimmers of
twilight. The single-minded Cancut, little distracted by emotions, had
heaped together logs enough to heat any mansion for a winter. The warmth
was welcome, and the great flame, with its bright looks of familiar
comradery, and its talk like the complex murmur of a throng, made a
fourth in our party by no means terrible, as some other incorporeal
visitors might have been. Fire was not only a talker, but an important
actor: Fire cooked for us our evening chocolate; Fire held the
candlestick, while we, without much ceremony of undressing, disposed
ourselves upon our spruce-twig couch; and Fire watched over our
slumbers, crouching now as if some stealthy step were approaching, now
lifting up its head and peering across the river into some recess where
the water gleamed and rustled under dark shadows, and now sending far
and wide over the stream and the clearing and into every cleft of the
forest a penetrating illumination, a blaze of light, death to all
treacherous ambush.
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