It caught in an instant.

Still holding the lighted match, he repeated this ticklish process time after time, tossing handfuls of the blazing stuff down onto the floor at his side.
In two minutes more he had a gayly-flaming pile of inflammable material burning high there.

Its gleam lightened every inch of the gloomy room.

It brought out into hideous clearness the writhing dark bodies of the crawling moccasins, even to the patches of white at their lips which gave them their sinister name of "cottonmouths." Fat and short and horrible to look upon, they were, as they slithered and twisted here and there along the bright-lit floor or coiled and hissed at sight of the flame and of the fast plying hand and arm of the captive just above them.
But Brice had scant eyes or heed for them.

Now that his blaze was started past danger of easy extinction, he plunged both hands again into the box.