blazing fiercely, spouting showers of sparks into the darkness, and
gleaming wide over Lake Erie,--a beacon for perplexed voyagers leagues
from land.

All around and above the furnace, there was total obscurity. No trees
or other objects caught and reflected any portion of the brightness,
which thus wasted itself in the immense void of night, as if it quivered
from the expiring embers of the world, after the final conflagration.
But the Irishmen were continually emerging from the dense gloom, passing
through the lurid glow, and vanishing into the gloom on the other side.
Sometimes a whole figure would be made visible, by the shirtsleeves and
light-colored dress; others were but half seen, like imperfect
creatures; many flitted, shadow-like, along the skirts of darkness,
tempting fancy to a vain pursuit; and often, a face alone was reddened
by the fire, and stared strangely distinct, with no traces of a body.
In short these wild Irish, distorted and exaggerated by the blaze, now
lost in deep shadow, now bursting into sudden splendor, and now
struggling between light and darkness, formed a picture which might have
been transferred, almost unaltered, to a tale of the supernatural. As
they all carried lanterns of wood, and often flung sticks upon the fire,
the least imaginative spectator would at once compare them to devils
condemned to keep alive the flames of their own torments.