From one end to the other, the city seemed wrapped in sheets of flame, and every street, and alley, and lane within it shone in a lurid radiance far brighter than noonday.

All along the river fires were gleaming, too; and the whole sky had turned from black to blood-red crimson.

The streets were alive and swarming--it could scarcely be believed that the plague-infested city contained half so many people, and all were unusually hopeful and animated; for it was popularly believed that these fires would effectually check the pestilence.

But the angry fiat of a Mighty Judge had gone forth, and the tremendous arm of the destroying angel was not to be stopped by the puny hand of man.
It has been said the weather for weeks was unusually brilliant, days of cloudless sunshine, nights of cloudless moonlight, and the air was warm and sultry enough for the month of August in the tropics.

But now, while they looked, a vivid flash of lightning, from what quarter of the heavens no man knew, shot athwart the sky, followed by another and another, quick, sharp, and blinding.