With a spring sideways he reached the huge vat filled with brandy, threw the burning torch down in front of it and placing his muscular shoulders against the vat, with a desperate exertion of strength scattered its contents on to the floor of the cavern from end to end.
In an instant the whole cavern was in flames! The floor was of stone so that it could not absorb the spirit as it leaked out and it flashed up as it caught the flame of the torch close at hand.

It spread rapidly like a lake of fire that has burst its dams.
The blue spirit-flame filled the whole of the empty cavern with a pale, ghastly glare, the air, the empty space itself seemed to burst into flame.

Hundreds of torches, burnt down to their very roots, flickered luridly in the midst of this blue fire of hell, and the heaped-up fire works,--the Bengali pyramids and the rockets and crackers--flamed, fizzled and banged about in the midst of the terrible heat.

And in the thick of this infernal blaze black figures, like the souls of the Accursed, were running frantically about, howling, shrieking and toppling over one another and seeking a refuge on the higher rocks whither the flames, spreading through the air, leaped after them.

Juon Tare lost his eyesight in the flames.