n of the forecastle, to go into the hut, take the
bung out of the cask, and start the contents. This order was obeyed,
while the contest was continued outside, till McDermot, the leader of
the Irish, called off his men, that they might recover their breath for
a renewal of the attack.

"If it's the liquor you want," cried Conolly to them, by the direction
of Seymour, "you must be quick about it. There it's all running away
through the doors of the shealing."

This announcement had, however, the contrary effect to that which
Seymour intended it should produce. Enraged at the loss of the spirits,
and hoping to gain possession of the cask before it was all out, the
Irish returned with renewed violence to the assault, and drove the
English to the other side of the shealing, obtaining possession of the
door, which they burst into, to secure their prey. About eight or ten
had entered, and had seized upon the cask, which was not more than half
emptied, when the liquor, which had run out under the door of the hut,
communicated, in its course, with the fire that had been kindled
outside. With the rapidity of lightning the flame ran up the stream
that continued to flow, igniting the whole of the spirits in the cask,
which blew up with a tremendous explosion, darting the fiery liquid over
the whole interior, and communicating the flame to the thatch, and every
part of the building, which was instantaneously in ardent combustion.
The shrieks of the poor disabled wretches, stretched on the sails, to
which the fire had communicated, and who were now lying in a molten sea
of flame like that described in Pandemonium by Milton--the yells of the
Irish inside of the hut, vainly attempting to regain the door, as they
writhed in their flaming apparel, which, like the shirt of Nessus, ate
into their flesh--the burning thatch which had been precipitated in the
air, and now descended in fiery flakes upon the parties outside, who
stood aghast at the dreadful and unexpected catastrophe,--the volumes of
black and suffocating smoke which poured out from every quarter, formed
a scene of horror to which no pen can do adequate justice. But all was
soon over. The shrieks and yells had yielded to suffocation, and the
flames, in their fury, had devoured everything with such rapidity, that
they subsided for the want of further aliment. In a few minutes,
nothing remained but the smoking walls, and the blackened corpses which
they encircled.

Il