Torchlight

“ They wander, breathing a foul and sickening atmosphere, under the shadow of an awful darkness, a darkness which knows no morning, no stars, no moon; a darkness palpable and visible, lighted only by electrical discharges from the abyss of clouds, with such roars of thunder as we, in this day of harmonious nature, can form no conception of. It is, indeed, "chaos and ancient night." All the forces of nature are there, but disorderly, destructive, battling against each other, and multiplied a thousand-fold in power; the winds are cyclones, magnetism is gigantic, electricity is appalling. ”

“ What torches are those that dispel the distant darkness of midnight, and gleam, like meteors, athwart the blackness of the tempest? They throw a wavering light over the thickness of the storm: they wind along the mountains: they pass the hollow valleys. Hark! the howling of the blast has ceased,—the thunderbolts have dispersed, but yet reigns darkness. Distant sounds of song are borne on the breeze; the sounds approach. A low bier holds the remains of one whose soul is floating in the regions of eternity: a black pall covers him. ”

“ His eyes sought the end of the hall, saw the turn at the end, saw the light which seemed to come from the end; and then in an instant he was running down the damp passageway, his pulse pounding at his temples, until he could hardly gasp enough breath as he ran. Finally he reached the turn in the corridor where the light was brighter, and he swung around to stare at the source of the light, a huge, burning, smoky torch which hung from the wall. ”

“ First came a number of torch-bearers, whose duty it was to light the great brush torches that are planted at intervals all down the avenue. These torches are as thick as a man's body and ten feet high; and as they flickered, crackled and then sent up a spire of lurid, smoky flame, they seemed to turn everything blood-red, and made the advancing ranks of the procession look more like a company of fiends than of human beings. ”

“ Travers began to walk toward the featureless black mass of the stockade. When after a few steps she looked back over her shoulder, the lagoon, the beach, the canoe, the men she had just left had become already invisible. She was alone bearing up a blazing torch on an earth that was a dumb shadow shifting under her feet. At last she reached firmer ground and the dark length of the palisade untouched as yet by the light of the torch seemed to her immense, intimidating. ”

“ After a little while in the intense silence of the forest she ventured to touch the switch of her torch, very cautiously.
In the faint, pale lustre she saw a tiny rivulet flowing westward from a spring, and, beside it, in the mud, imprints of a man's feet.
The tracks were small, narrow, slimmer than imprints made by any man she could think of. Under the glimmer of her torch they seemed quite fresh; contours were still sharp, some ready to crumble, and water stood in the heels. ”

“ Man's battle with darkness really began with the torch, which was lighted at the fire in the cave or in the wigwam and kept burning for purposes of illumination. A burning stick was the first lamp (Fig. 2) . The first improvement in the torch was made when slivers or splinters of resinous or oily wood were tied together and burned. We may regard this as a lamp which is all [30] wick. This invention resulted in a fuller and clearer light, and one that would burn longer than the single stick. A further improvement came when a long piece of wax or fatty substance was wrapped about with leaves. ”

“ False Flames, Love's Meteors, yield my Torch no Light.
BOTH WOMEN
Turn then thine Eyes upon those Glories there,
And catching Flames will on thy Torch appear.
HYMEN
My Torch, indeed, will from such Brightness shine
Love ne'er had yet such Altars, so divine.
They shall be as happy as they're fair;
Love shall fill all the Places of Care
And every time the Sun shall display his Rising Light,
It shall be to them a new Wedding-Day ”

“ ISABELLA’S CHRONICLE. CHAPTER VII.
THE TORCH. I did not know what had happened. I did not see the walls fall down. It was very dark, and some one held my arm. Then I saw the flare of a torch.
I could hear no voice in the commotion, but it was upon Roy Lee’s face that the light of the torch fell. I saw his steel blue eyes in quick search for the cave look swiftly around.
Above our heads the tunnel walls were roofed with trees laid crosswise. These were coated with ice; long icicles depended like white swords, gleaming above our heads.
When the torch expired we should die in darkness! ”

“ So, with a little electric torch in one hand and the other held out blindly before me, I crept into the darkness that was, presumably, Vining’s entrance hall.
After a moment I heard the front door close softly behind me, and then I ventured to use the torch.
Have you ever gone into a strange house and tried to make out the lay of the land with a pocket torch? The torch shows up only one tiny spot at a time, and when you have swept it all over one article of furniture and made out its general dimensions, you have forgotten everything else! ”

“ The torch of Fortune seemed ever to light him on his way, and never to shine obscurely for him in the momentous affairs of life:—like the fabled light of the Rosicrucian's ever-burning lamp, the halo of that torch appeared constantly to attend upon his steps. ”

“ The lightning, which till now had shaken quivering lances of flame across the black water, a flash, then darkness, then again a flash, now became continuous, playing in lambent flames amid the blackness, lighting up the wild turmoil of wind and wave and cloud. ”

“ Even as if one should inclose a torch within a Lantern of cut-stone, or the like obscure and dark matter, where its light would remain as quenched and buried, without ability to extend it self abroad for the obstacle that hinders it. ”

“ The ghostly radiance of the torch wavered again on the background of shadow—the dog barked savagely, and suddenly a pinkish-red flash threw a momentary sinister glare on the dark trees, followed instantly by a sharp, echoing report, and another immediately after it. ”

“ As in the ancient torch-race, which seemed to Lucretius to be the symbol of all life, we press forward torch in hand along the course. Soon from behind comes the runner who will outpace us. All our skill lies in giving into his hand the living torch, bright and unflickering, as we ourselves disappear in the darkness. ”

“ So it was that by torch-light gathered fully a hundred of the little people, prepared to battle the Evil One in his hidden fast-hold. With the coming of night they began marching in ragged columns into the foot-hills beneath the fulgent lunar rays. ”

“ But it's all right now that you are here. Light a torch, and we shall look at the Pope's treasure." I took a torch out of the box and lit it; she laid it so that the lighted end projected well beyond the shelf of rock and gave a fine if fitful, light to all around. We found water about three feet deep at its worst; in the glare of the torch and because of its crystal purity, it did not look even so much. We stooped down to examine the box, which was only one of several lying in front of a great heap of something, all dark with rust and age, which filled up a whole corner of the cave. ”

“ TORCH. To see a bright torch-light at a distance in a dark night, and go toward it, foretells a successful journey; but if you stumble by the way you will experience an accident: to dream of carrying a lighted torch at night, is a sign that some distant friend will pay you a visit. ”

“ KUMASAKA.
Then is all lost. For of these torch-diviners they sing that the first torch is the soul of an army, the second torch is the wheel of Fate, and the third torch—Life itself. All three are out, and there is no hope left for this night’s brigandage. ”

“ Against that thick blanket of mist the penetrating power of the torch's gleam was so effectually blunted that it could do nothing more than throw a pale, weak circle of light a few feet into the depths of a crowding vapour, leaving all beyond and upon either side doubly dark in contrast. ”

“ A lighted torch was applied to the fuel, and a tongue of flame, darting from amid the thick cloud of suffocating smoke, licked the grim stone walls, while the spiral staircase, acting like a lofty chimney, fanned the fire till it glowed like a potter's furnace. ”

“ Standing under cover of the darkness, but haunted by these ghostly footsteps, I saw, twenty yards on my right, a dim glow. As soon as this caught my eye I knew what was going to happen. Somebody was blowing a piece of smouldering dry punk into a blaze; a torch, or several torches, would be lighted, and I would be hunted out like a rat. I was determined that this should not be if I could possibly help it. I much preferred the dark and the ghostly footsteps. Now the punk was glowing red, and, just above it, the wizened face of someone blowing it appeared distinctly. ”

“ Like a tornado, an icy blast rushed upon us with a howl and a roar, blowing our fire out in a moment while the red flames leaped back to the glowing brands only to be hurled off into the darkness again and again. ”

“ Suppose a torch enclosed in a cell of earth, in the midst of ten thousand thousand torches that shine at large in a spacious amphitheatre. While it is enclosed, its beams strike only on the walls of its own cell, and it has no communion with those without. But let this cell fall down at once, and the torch that moment has full communion with all those ten thousands; it shines as freely as they do, and receives and gives assistance to all of them, and joins to add glory to that illustrious place. ”

“ To my considerable satisfaction I discovered that the air remained as pure as above, and there was no sign of the ropes yielding or parting; but the light from my electric torch showed nothing in the wall in the way of steps or break. It was as nature had left it, smooth and unbroken. ”

“ My friend shortened the harangue, by taking the man's torch from him; and we proceeded alone.
The passage, which at first scarcely admitted us, quickly grew narrower and lower; we were almost bent double; yet still we persisted in making our way through it. At length we entered a wider space, and the low roof heightened; but, as we congratulated ourselves on this change, our torch was extinguished by a current of air, and we were left in utter darkness. The guides bring with them materials for renewing the light, but we had none—our only resource was to return as we came. ”

“ These doings had occupied as much time as allowed the glimmer of early dawn to pass into a grey light, that, while it did not render the torches unnecessary, exhibited in strange and grotesque shades the group of dark figures, their changing faces, moving heads, and inauspicious gestures, on which the gleams of the torches flickered faintly, in struggles with the rising morn. Above them, the dangling noose claimed her averted eye, and sent through her nerves shivers that seemed to make the blood run back in the veins, and stagnate about the heart. ”

“ As night draws on, the single figures melt into the dusk, until only an obscure stir and coming and going of black clusters is visible upon the loch. A little longer, and the first torch is kindled and begins to flit rapidly across the ice in a ring of yellow reflection, and this is followed by another and another, until the whole field is full of skimming lights. ”

“ Heralded by the increasing fierceness of the squalls, sometimes by a faint flash of lightning like the signal of a lighted torch waved far away behind the clouds, the shift of wind comes at last, the crucial moment of the change from the brooding and veiled violence of the south-west gale to the sparkling, flashing, cutting, cleareyed anger of the King's north-westerly mood. ”

“ The deep lowering gloom of the thunder-cloud, the overwhelming burst of the explosion, the flash from which the steadiest eye shrinks, and the irresistible arrow of the lightning which no earthly substance can withstand, speak of something fearful, even independently of the personal danger which they may whisper. ”

“ Let us then collect those rays, of which we are not yet deprived, and its obscurity will decrease; and though the road may not in every part be equally filled with light, we yet shall have a torch that will prevent us from going astray. ”

“ Ritter, I agree with you. But then, we are not dismayed; we have the lessons of history to fortify us; for whenever the torch of essential culture has been raised, [She raises the lead-pencil as though it were a torch.] there has unfailingly been the concomitant exactment of a human life. [She stands holding the torch aloft until the little cuckoo-clock over the door at the left cuckoos the half-hour. Ritter looks at it, and Nelly Fell gives it a glance. Florence, too, turns and looks up. Then Mrs. Pampinelli turns her eyes slowly upon it and withers it with a look.] ”

“ To trust that slight and fragile bark
Upon a stream so fierce, so dark;
Such sullen waves, the torch's glare
Fell wholly unreflected there.
'Twas but a moment; on they went
Over the grave-like element ”

“ To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. ”

“ The scene becomes continually clearer and brighter; the individual torches and their bearers appear distinctly, and behold! the mass of people separates before our eyes. To right and left they shrink back, as if the multitude feared that advancing train would yet snatch another out of this moving throng, out of the gladsome drift of life into the chill of the grave.
A numerous band of music comes at the head of the procession, lighted by torch-bearers. ”

“ There is, in fact, going on within us a perpetual combustion, respiration furnishing the necessary air, and food supplying the fuel. To live is to consume oneself, in the strictest sense of the word; to breathe is to burn. In a figurative sense man has long used the expression ‘the torch of life’; but this figurative term proves to be the exact utterance of the truth. Air consumes the torch; it consumes the animal no less; it makes the torch give out heat and light, and it produces in the animal heat and motion. Without air the torch goes out; without air the animal dies. ”

“ A gathering storm is accummulating fearfully in every region, the lightning is already seen gleaming in the heavens and passing in quick succession from one distant cloud to another as if every tree in the forest would be enkindled, and the devastating tempest before purifying the atmosphere would spread ruin on every side. ”