For miles on every hand it could be seen.

The sound of its crackle and hiss and roar was deafening.

The twigs, dry and dead, caught fire from the surrounding blaze of moss, and communicated their flame to the thicker branches and to the tree's towering summit.
And thus the fierce vividness of blazing wood was added to the lighter glare of the inflammable moss.
The spectacle was incredibly beautiful, but still more awesome and terrifying.

The crackle and snap of burning wood broke forth on the night air like the purr of fifty machine guns.
But Gavin Brice had not waited to gaze on what was perhaps the most marvelous display of pyrotechnics ever beheld on the Florida coast.

At first touch of flame to the first festoon of moss, he had taken to his heels.
Claire Standish gazed in unbelieving horror at the seemingly panic flight of the man who had so strangely dominated her life and her brother's, during these past few hours.