I had not courage to walk straight into the apartment; but I desired to divert him from his reverie, and therefore fell foul of the kitchen fire, stirred it, and began to scrape the cinders.
" she answered, skurrying away with a pan of hot cinders.
" I stirred up the cinders, and fetched a scuttleful myself.
—I dine between twelve and one o'clock; the housekeeper, a matronly lady, taken as a fixture along with the house, could not, or would not, comprehend my request that I might be served at five)—on mounting the stairs with this lazy intention, and stepping into the room, I saw a servant-girl on her knees surrounded by brushes and coal-scuttles, and raising an infernal dust as she extinguished the flames with heaps of cinders.
So much smoke, and possibly scoriae and cinders were mingled with them, that their light gleamed but faintly amid the gloom of the night.
But it is probable that at the lower part of the chimney, time may have accumulated rocks, cinders, hardened lava, and that this valve of which I spoke, may at any time become overcharged.
At the back was a rude fireplace, with a few cold cinders, supporting an armful of dry wood.
From the extremity of the promontory which formed the tail of the peninsula the coast was rounded for a distance of five miles, which was rapidly passed over, without even the most minute investigations bringing to light the least trace of any old or recent landings; no debris, no mark of an encampment, no cinders of a fire, nor even a footprint!
They then left the transformation to complete itself, and it would not take less than ten or twelve days for the sulphuret of iron to be changed to sulphate of iron and the alumina into sulphate of alumina, two equally soluble substances, the others, flint, burnt coal, and cinders, not being so.
In some places the sulphur had formed crystals among other substances, such as whitish cinders made of an infinity of little feldspar crystals.
The fire was out; the drowned cinders were nothing but mud; the burnt linen, which was to have served as tinder, had disappeared!
Pencroft knew fifty ways of cooking eggs, but this time he had no choice, and was obliged to content himself with roasting them under the hot cinders.
When the cook had recovered from her fright she lifted up the fish which had fallen into the ashes, but she found them as black as cinders, and not fit to serve up to the Sultan.
At length the cook took him into his service, and said he might carry wood and water, and rake the cinders together.
His mother gave him a cake made with water and baked in the cinders, and with it a bottle of sour beer.
In the evening when she had worked till she was weary she had no bed to go to, but had to sleep by the hearth in the cinders.
