Then one last yell from a single throat--and the night was silent
again.
And that was the Boulain Brigade--singing at this hour of the
night, when men should have been sleeping if they expected to be
up with the sun. Carrigan stared ahead. Shortly his adventure
would take a new twist. Something was bound to happen when they
got ashore. The peculiar glow of the fires had puzzled him. Now he
began to understand. Jeanne Marie-Anne Boulain's men were camped
in the edge of the tar-sands and had lighted a number of natural
gas-jets that came up out of the earth. Many times he had seen
fires like these burning up and down the Three Rivers. He had
lighted fires of his own; he had cooked over them and had
afterward had the fun and excitement of extinguishing them with
pails of water. But he had never seen anything quite like this
that was unfolding itself before his eyes now. There were seven of
the fires over an area of half an acre--spouts of yellowish flame
burning like giant torches ten or fifteen feet in the air. And
between them he very soon made out great bustle and activity. Many
figures were moving about. They looked like dwarfs at first,
gnomes at play in a little world made out of witchcraft.
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