The wind, which had increased, hurried forward the fire with terrific rapidity, and drove the smoke in dense masses round us, so that, bright as were the flames, we could often see but a short distance ahead.  The shouts and cries of the terrified settlers increased in loudness.  All hope that the village would be preserved must by this time have been abandoned.  The fire was coming up from the west and north-west, leaping at a bound, as it seemed, over the clearings; the burning branches, driven by the wind, quickly igniting all combustible matters amid which they fell.