As we go on I notice that the character of the vegetation begins to change.  The trees are less leafy, the undergrowth is less dense, and a mephitic odor pervades the air.  Presently the foliage disappears altogether, and the trees and bushes are as bare as if they had been stricken with the blast of an Arctic winter; but instead of being whitened with snow or silvered with frost they are covered with an incrustation, which in the brilliant moonlight makes them look like trees and bushes of gold.  Over their tops rise faint wreaths of yellowish clouds and the mephitic odor becomes more pronounced.

“At last!” shouts Carmen, as we reach the end of the trail.  “At last! Amigo mio, we are saved!”

Before us stretches a wide treeless waste like a turf moor, with a background of sombre forest.  The moor, which is broken into humps and hillocks, smokes and boils and babbles like the hell-broth of Macbeth’s witches, and across it winds, snake-wise, a steaming brook.  Here and there is a stagnant pool, and underneath can be heard a dull roar, as if an imprisoned ocean were beating on a pebble-strewed shore.  There is an unmistakable smell of sulphur, and the ground on which we stand, as well as the moor itself, is of a deep-yellow cast.

This, then, is the azuferales—­a region of sulphur springs, a brimstone inferno, a volcano in the making.  No hounds will follow us over that hideous heath and through that Stygian stream.

“Can we get across and live?” I ask.  “Will it bear?”

“I think so.  But out with your knife and cut some twigs; and where are your flint and steel?”

“What are you going to do ?”

“Set the forest on fire—­the wind is from us—­and instead of following us farther—­and who knows that they won’t try?—­instead of following us farther they will have to hark back and run for their lives.”

Without another word we set to work gathering twigs, which we place among the trees.  Then I dig up with my knife and add to the heap several pieces of the brimstone impregnated turf.  This done, I strike a light with my flint and steel.

“Good!” exclaims Carmen.  “In five minutes it will be ablaze; in ten, a brisk fire;” and with that we throw on more turf and several heavy branches which, for the moment, almost smother it up.

“Never mind, it still burns, and—­hark!  What is that?”

“The baying of the hounds and the cries of the hunters.  They are nearer than I thought.  To the azuferales for our lives!”

The moor, albeit in some places yielding and in others treacherous, did not, as I feared, prove impassable.  By threading our way between the smoking sulphur heaps and carefully avoiding the boiling springs we found it possible to get on, yet slowly and with great difficulty; and it soon became evident that, long before we gain the forest the hounds will be on the moor.  Their deep-throated baying and the shouts of the field grow every moment louder and more distinct.  If we are viewed we shall be lost; for if the blood-hounds catch sight of us not even the terrors of the azuferales will balk them of their prey.  And to our dismay the fire does not seem to be taking hold.  We can see nothing of it but a few faint sparks gleaming through the bushes.