“Good heavens!  What is that?” I exclaimed, as a plaintive cry, which ended in a wail of anguish, such as might be given by a lost soul in torment, rang through the forest.

“It’s an araguato, a howling monkey,” said Carmen, indifferently.  “That’s only some old fellow setting the tune; we shall have a regular chorus presently.”

And so we had.  The first howl was followed by a second, then by a third, and a fourth, and soon all the araguatoes in the neighborhood joined in, and the din became so agonizing that I was fain to put my fingers in my ears and wait for a lull.

“It sounds dismal enough, in all conscience—­to us; but I think they mean it for a cry of joy, a sort of morning hymn; at any rate, they don’t generally begin until sunrise.  But these are perhaps mistaking the fire for the sun.”

And no wonder.  It was spreading rapidly.  The leafless trees that bordered the western side of the azuferales were all alight; sparks, carried by the wind, had kindled several giants of the forest, which, “tall as mast of some high admiral,” were flaunting their flaring banners a hundred feet above the mass of the fire.

It was the most magnificent spectacle I had ever seen, so magnificent that in watching it we forgot our own danger, as, if the fire continued to spread, the forest would be impassable for days, and we should be imprisoned on the azuferales without either food or fresh water.

“Look yonder!” said Carmen, laying his hand on my shoulder.  A herd of deer were breaking out of the thicket and bounding across the moor.

“Wild animals escaping from the fire?”

“Yes, and we shall have more of them.”

The words were scarcely spoken when the deer were followed by a drove of peccaries; then came jaguars, pumas, antelopes, and monkeys; panthers and wolves and snakes, great and small, wriggling over the ground with wondrous speed, and creatures the like of which I had never seen before—­a regular stampede of all sorts and conditions of reptiles and beasts, and all too much frightened to meddle either with us or each other.

Fortunately for us, moreover, we were not in their line of march, and there lay between us and them a line of hot springs and smoking sulphur mounds which they were not likely to pass.

The procession had been going on about half an hour when, happening to cast my eye skyward, I saw that the moon had disappeared; overhead hung a heavy mass of cloud, the middle of it reddened by the reflection from the fire to the color of blood, while the outer edges were as black as ink.  It was almost as grand a spectacle as the burning forest itself.

“We are going to have rain,” said Carmen.

“I hope it will rain in bucketfuls,” was my answer, for I had drunk nothing since we left San Felipe, and the run, together with the high temperature and the heat of the fire, had given me an intolerable thirst.  I spoke with difficulty, my swollen tongue clove to the roof of my mouth, and I would gladly have given ten years of my life for one glass of cold water.