Then suddenly an idea struck him, and, tearing off his jacket, he removed his shirt, which had been kept quite dry, and kneeling down with his back bare to the cold, scourging rain put the two lumps of charcoal in the folds of it and blew on them. For a couple of seconds the linen smouldered only, but then--and no Angel Gabriel would have been a gladder sight to him--a little tongue of flame shot up. Mitsos took the brandy bottle, and with the utmost care shook out a few drops onto the edge of the flame. These it licked up, burning brighter, and soon the whole of the back of the shirt took the fire. He crammed it under the thick core of moss and brushwood, and feeding them plentifully with brandy coaxed the flame into the driest part of the stuff. Now and then a little spark would go running like some fiery insect through the fibres, leaving a gray path of ash behind, only to perish when it reached the damper stuff, and once even the flame seemed to die down altogether; but meantime it had penetrated into the centre of the pile, and suddenly a yellow blade of smoky fire leaped out and licked the dripping branches of fir outside. These only fumed and cracked, and Mitsos pulled them off, for they were but choking the flames; and, running down to the edge of the wood, he tore up great handfuls of undergrowth, which had been partially protected from the rain by the trees, and threw them on. Then the fire began to take hold in earnest, and through the thick volumes of stinging smoke, which were streaming away westward, shot lurid gleams of flame. Now and then with a great crash and puff of vapor some thicker branch of timber would split and break, throwing out a cloud of ignited fragments, or again there would rise up a hissing and simmering of damp leaves, like the sound of a great stewing over a hot fire. The place where he had first lit the beacon was all consumed, and only a heap of white frothy ash, every now and then flushing red again with half-consumed particles as some breeze fanned it, remained, and from the fir branches which Mitsos had taken off ten minutes ago, but now replaced, as every moment the hold of the fire grew steadier, there were bursting little fan-shaped bouquets of flame.