And now a moment of breathless silence followed. Many faces were raised to the roof, perhaps expecting the fire to drop through the quiet shaft of light above, or the dove, which used to be let loose, to appear. Two priests stood bareheaded by the fire-hole, guarded by the giants on either side.
Suddenly a lighted torch was in their hands passed from within, where was the Patriarch. The two priests turned and fled, and the giants closed in round them, trampling like furies through the crowd. In a moment the thin line of soldiers was gone, and two huge hustling masses surged up like waves round the great torch, which, now high, now low, was tossed on the seething flood, scattering sparks right and left, but gradually drifting towards the exterior of the church, where the horseman sat, ready to take the fire to Bethlehem. A great forest of arms was stretched out towards the torch, and they seemed to writhe like serpents after it; but not a single taper was lighted. Soon, however, other torches were passed out of the fire-hole, and the fire spread over the church, as the roar grew louder and louder. A flame next broke out behind the grating of the Coptic chapel, and a yet more wonderful scene here presented itself. The dark mass of blue and black was streaked with livid flesh-colour, as bare arms stretched towards the light with their bundles of tapers. Woe to the owner of the taper first lit; it was snatched from him, and extinguished by a dozen others thrust into it. Delicate women and old men fought like furies; long black turbans flew off and uncoiled like snakes on the ground, and what became of the babies I do not know.
The change from the stagnation of the motionless crowd to the wild storm now raging was as marvellous as it was sudden. The flame spread, seeming to roll over the whole crowd, till the church was a sea of fire, which extended over the roof of the chapel, and ran up the galleries and along the choir. Meantime a dreadful bell was clanging away, and the grey-bearded Patriarch was borne out aloft into the chancel, on the shoulders of a body-guard of priests. A dense blue fog, made by the smoke, and a smell of burning wax rose up, and above all the quiet gleam of light shone down from the roof.