And then Burl saw it plunge downward, straight into the thickest and fiercest of the leaping flames. It flung itself into the furnace as a willing, drunken victim of their beauty.
Flying beetles flew clumsily above the pyre also, their horny wing-cases stiffly outstretched. In the light from below they shone like burnished metal. Their clumsy bodies, with spurred and fierce-toothed limbs, darted through the flame-lit smoke like so many grotesque meteors.
Burl saw strange collisions and still stranger meetings. Male and female flying creatures circled and spun in the glare, dancing their dance of love and death. They mounted higher than Burl could see, drunk with the ecstasy of living, and then descended to plunge headlong in the roaring flames below.
From every side the creatures came. Moths of brightest yellow, with furry bodies palpitant with life, flew madly to destruction. Other moths of a deepest black, with gruesome symbols on their wings, swiftly came to dance above the glow like motes in sunlight.
And Burl crouched beneath a toadstool, watching while the perpetual, slow raindrops fell and fell, and a continuous hissing noise came from where the rain splashed amid the flames.
The night wore on, while the creatures above the firelight danced and died, their numbers ever reinforced by fresh arrivals. Burl sat tensely still, his eyes watching everything while his mind groped for an explanation of what he saw. At last the sky grew dimly gray, then brighter, and after a long time it was day. The flames of the burning hills seemed to dim and die as all the world became bright. After a long while Burl crawled from his hiding-place and stood erect.
No more than two hundred paces from where he stood, a straight wall of smoke rose from the still-smouldering fungus-range. Burl could see the smoke rising for miles on either hand. He turned to continue on his way, and saw the remains of one of the tragedies of the night.
A great moth had flown into the flames, been horribly scorched, and floundered out again. Had it been able to fly, it would have returned to its devouring deity; but now it lay upon the ground, its antennae hopelessly seared. One beautiful wing was nothing but gaping holes. The eyes had been dimmed by flame. The exquisitely tapering limbs lay broken and crushed by the violence of landing. The creature was helpless on the ground, only the stumps of its antennae moving restlessly and the abdomen pulsating slowly as it drew pain-racked breaths.