...'

The peasant tugged with his elbows, pounded with his heels on the
horse's sides.... It galloped off.

Kondrat, too, whipped up his pair. We drove straight towards the smoke,
which was spreading more and more widely; in places it suddenly grew
black and rose up high. The nearer we moved to it, the more indefinite
became its outlines; soon all the air was clouded over, there was a
strong smell of burning, and here and there between the trees, with a
strange, weird quivering in the sunshine, gleamed the first pale red
tongues of flame.

'Well, thank God,' observed Kondrat, 'it seems it's an overground
fire.'

'What's that?'

'Overground? One that runs along over the earth. With an underground
fire, now, it's a difficult job to deal. What's one to do, when the
earth's on fire for a whole yard's depth? There's only one means of
safety--digging ditches,--and do you suppose that's easy? But an
overground fire's nothing. It only scorches the grasses and burns the
dry leaves! The forest will be all the better for it. Ouf, though,
mercy on us, look how it flares!'

We drove almost up to the edge of the fire. I got down and went to meet
it. It was neither dangerous nor difficult. The fire was running over
the scanty pine-forest against the wind; it moved in an uneven line,
or, to speak more accurately, in a dense jagged wall of curved tongues.