midnight
With a dull explosion , the mass burst into flame . Shouting in his exultation , the little torch-bearer rushed on , igniting pile after pile , and leaving behind him almost at every step a mighty conflagration . At each new instant , as the night advanced , a new outburst of light illumined the darkness , until ten , twenty , fifty great heaps were roaring and seething with flames ! Great jets spouted up into the midnight heavens as if about to kiss the very stars , and suddenly expired in the illimitable space above them . Immense sparks , shot out from these bonfires as from the craters of volcanoes , went sailing into the void around them and fell hissing into the water of the brooks or silently into the new-plowed furrows . The clouds above the heads of the subdued and almost terrified beholders , for no one is ever altogether prepared for the absolute awfulness of such a spectacle , were glowing with the fierce light which the fires threw upon them . Weird illuminations played fantastic tricks in the foliage from which the startled shadows had vanished .