FIRE.
“Well, what now?” one of his neighbors called out, as Sam struck his
shovel into the ground and turned over his pan face downwards, one fine
April morning. The men were in high spirits, for the rains were nearly
over, and every thing promised a successful season.
“I’m going to the States—that’s all—off in the first boat, and want to
sell out cheap.—What’ll you give for every thing as it stands, tent and
all—give us a bid.”
“Two ounces; they ain’t much use now, the dry season’s coming,” said the
man, concisely. He had been sharing the tent and accommodating himself
with its kitchen department, for a weekly sum, since his arrival at Free
Man’s Diggings, a month before, and did not mind becoming proprietor
instead of boarder. It did not need much time or many words to make a
bargain in those early days of California.
“I’ll take it,” from Sam was all that was necessary, and with this, in
addition to his careful winter’s work, he was the possessor of nine
hundred dollars. It was very little,—but it would take him home, and they
could hire the old place, which he had hoped to buy back again. This hope
had helped him through many a hard day’s work. Never mind—it was not the
first disappointment he had met with. He could help his mother along
somehow—and see her he must. The feeling was not exactly home-sickness;
it was a hearty disgust of every thing around him. The monotony of a
miner’s life seemed unbearable that morning, with the bright sunshine and
perfumed foliage reminding him of the spring at home. No such intention
as starting for it had crossed his mind when he went out as usual. The
fresh wind made him think of what the farmers were doing on the hill
sides of New England. The lowing of oxen, the tinkle of bells from the
pasture, seemed to sound in his ears. He thought of the brown earth,
turning up with its fresh smell, in long unbroken furrows,—the children
going to school along the road, with their books and dinner baskets!
He struck down his shovel, and said to himself, he would go home to
civilized life, that was the end of it. He had enough to take him there
and hands to work with afterwards.
In two hours more he was on the road to San Francisco; his gold dust,
sewn up in a little canvas bag, was not a very heavy burden. He whistled
as he went along with a lighter heart than he had had for many a day; and
found himself once more floating on the Sacramento, before he had time
to change his mind. Perhaps it was just as well,—many a man worked on
and on, to find himself without the means to come home when health and
strength gave out.
Sam did not “rub his eyes” at this first glimpse of San Francisco,—as
his favorite princes in the Arabian Nights always used to when things
astonished them; but it seemed quite as much like the change of magic, as
any thing in those enchanted pages. He had left, not a year ago, a crowd
of tents scattered along an open beach, with a few old frame houses,
looking like any thing but a city. Now a flourishing metropolis, with
streets, and stores, and hotels, invaded the hills and extended into
Happy Valley, where the smoke of manufactories was going steadily up.
Warehouses stood beside the bay, and a wharf stretched out at the very
spot where he had landed, on an empty beach, with vessels discharging
their cargoes, as he had seen on the piers and docks of New-York. When he
landed and went into the hurry of the crowd, it seemed stranger still.
The rough dress of the miners was conspicuous among them, and he saw
shops, with every article of use and luxury for sale as in the States.
Hotels had grown up around the old Plaza, now re-named as Portsmouth
Square; and merchants collected in the piazzas and talked of business,
and “the markets,” the day’s transactions being over, as they would have
done on the steps of the Astor or the Tremont House.
It was, indeed, “magic,” but the magic of industry and enterprise, such
as never has been heard of in the history of the world. San Francisco
seemed to reverse the meaning of the old proverb, “Rome was not built in
a day.”
Sam went to bed that night, one among twenty tenants of a large room in a
lodging house, near Portsmouth Square; the first time he had slept under
a roof, since leaving the coast. He was completely bewildered with all
he had seen and heard, and so tired that he fell asleep, in the midst of
the talking and confusion around him five minutes after he had placed his
travelling companion, the canvas bag, under his head for safe keeping.
He woke with a strange roar, sounding through his dreams, and half
roused, thought he was at sea, homeward bound, and the vessel was nearing
breakers. But he was in the midst of a more awful storm, than any which
ever swept over the ocean. A thick, choking cloud, a quick crackling
of fire, a heat so intense that he groped blindly along, his hands
blistering on every thing he touched, were all around him, and he had
scarcely reached the outer air, when a volume of flame and smoke, red
and dense, burst through the adjoining roof, and swept down on the pine
building from which he had escaped, with a shower of sparks and crash
of falling timber. The scene was more fearful, that no help could avail
to check the advancing flames. Men worked with desperate energy to save
their goods and papers, but were driven back, square after square,
and street after street, by the rush and roar of the fiery tide, that
ran along the dry, wooden pavements, like water forcing a channel from
the hills, and sweeping down all before it. Some shut themselves up in
buildings that were thought fire-proof, and perished with the goods they
had heaped together for safety. Men cried, and wrung their hands like
women, when they saw their property burning like tinder, before their
eyes, and the offer of boundless rewards, could bring them no help. When
noonday came, and the fury of the fiery storm went down, the very heart
of the town was desolated. Heaps of ashes, and smouldering blackened
timbers, only marked the places, where rich warehouses stood. The crowds
of men were still there, but climbing over ruins, instead of counting
up their gains, and among them, once more penniless, was the boy whose
strange history we are describing.
He discovered in the first moment of safety, that he had left his gold
in the burning house, but saw at the same instant how useless trying to
reach it would be. It seemed nothing to him then, in the thankfulness
for his own escape, and the wild excitement of the fire. It scarcely
crossed his mind, as he worked among men who were losing hundreds of
thousands, plunging in the thickest smoke, and venturing on the edge
of frightful explosions, with almost reckless courage; wild with the
excitement of the scene. But that was all over now—only the certainty of
loss remained to the merchants, whose warehouses were in ashes, and the
boy, whose few hundreds had been his all.
He slept on the ground again that night with only the sky above him, and
woke with the old heart-sickness and despondency; as far from home as
ever, though the waves of the Pacific broke on the beach before him.
So many had been thrown out of business and employment the day before,
that he felt it would be useless to seek for work where no one knew
him. He might earn enough to carry him up to the mines, perhaps, but he
could not bear the thought of going back to the men and the employment
he had quitted. It was like returning to hopeless slavery; “he would
die first”—he thought, as he made his way among the piles of goods,
and falling timber, where men were already at work, clearing away the
ruins and preparing to build again, that business might not be swept out
of their hands. Many of these men had lost every thing in the fire of
December, and now what they had made since then, but were ready to go on,
and trust once more the treacherous element. They showed a perseverance
equal to their industry, and _he_ had borne up bravely before. Business
was going on the same, when the fire had ceased, as if nothing had
interrupted it. He met people hurrying along to and from the post-office,
with letters and papers from the States. It was long since he heard a
word from home, and he had no reason to think a letter would be directed
to him there; he did not expect any thing as he followed after them, and
inquired among the rest. There was a few minutes’ delay, and he fell back
among the little crowd, as if he already had heard “nothing for you.” No
one would have known him as the light-hearted, cheerful, Yankee boy, who
had battled bravely through so much. He had grown both taller and thinner
the past winter. His clothes were blackened and scorched by the fire,
his hands blistered, and there was a deep cut or bruise on his forehead.
With bodily pain to bear, and faint from want of food, he scarcely
cared what became of him. For the first time he doubted God’s help and
goodness, and felt as if he was given up to evil fortune.
The general mail from the States had been distributed several days
before, and letters from business correspondents in the interior, were
not so eagerly looked for. The space in front of the window at which Sam
applied was nearly empty, when his name was called, and to his great
astonishment a letter was held out to him. But postage in those days
was no trifle. “Forty cents,” the clerk said, and Sam had not forty
farthings. He saw that it was, indeed, for him, and in his mother’s
handwriting.
“Forty cents,” the clerk repeated mechanically, thinking he had not
understood.
“Oh, dear, what shall I do!” burst out involuntarily,—that precious
letter lying within his reach, yet it might as well have been in the
New-York post-office, for want of a single half dollar.
“Do about what? Why don’t you take your letter and be off; and give
somebody else a chance?”
The words were rough, but the voice was cheerful and kindly. Sam turned
with a piteously anxious look; his voice trembled, and his hands shook as
he pointed to the letter.
“Oh, sir—it is from home, from my mother,” he said, “and I haven’t
a dollar, not a cent in the world. I lost every thing in the fire
yesterday.”
Even the post-office clerk in the hurry of business looked interested,
for the tears were rolling down the poor boy’s face.
“You look as if you’d nearly lost yourself in the bargain,” the gentleman
said. “Here, give the boy his letter,”—and he threw down a gold piece
carelessly. “Any thing for Frank Hadley? I don’t expect to empty a
steamer’s mail.”
The manner and the voice sounded very familiar to Sam; he noticed it even
in his thankful joy at having the letter in his possession. He had never
heard the name before—no, he had known Frank Hadley,—but only as “the
Major.” His outward man had altered almost as much as his name, since
they parted that morning at the mines. His hair and beard were shorn of
their immoderate length, though still several inches longer than he would
have worn them in Broadway. Pantaloons made a difference too.—Sam thought
them a decided improvement on the red flannel drawers, and his teeth were
whiter than ever.
“Oh, sir, I can’t thank you,” he began to say, grasping the letter as if
he was afraid some one would claim it back.
“Well, then, I wouldn’t try—I’d read the news. Hurry up there, if there’s
any thing for me—this sun’s as hot as a furnace.”
“But I thank you so much, and I’m so glad to see you again”—Sam went on
eagerly.
“Wasn’t aware you ever had that pleasure before”—returned Hadley, facing
around suddenly. “Well, if it isn’t _you_, what business have you here
I’d like to know, cutting such a figure as that! I thought you were in
the States, long ago. Did not I send you home?”
“I couldn’t go—truly I couldn’t, he stole all I had—Colcord, the man that
used to be with us.”
“And you have been lying round ever since. Why did not you jump up and
try it again, as the fellows down there are doing?”
“But I did, and that’s all gone too, in the fire. I only got here
yesterday, and the house I slept in was burnt down, and now I don’t know
what to do.”
“A mighty hard case,” said the clerk, appearing again. “One letter,
sir—here’s your change;” for Hadley was walking Sam off as fast as
possible, in utter forgetfulness of the five dollar piece he had thrown
down.
“I’ll tell you what to do; read your mother’s letter right off, and see
what she says. No—come along and get some breakfast”—he said, thrusting
the change uncounted into his pocket. You look as thin as a weasel. Well,
Colcord’s got his deserts, that’s one consolation. I always thought he
had a hang dog look.
“Robbed and murdered, coming from the mines,” he answered to Sam’s
questioning eyes, as the boy tried to keep pace with his quick strides
down the hill. “I should have thought you’d have heard of it—’twas in
all the papers; there, read your letter—and break your neck stumbling,
if you want to, I’ll pick you up”—and the good-natured fellow broke the
seal of his own by way of example. Sam tried to read, but the words
were blurred and confused, and he comprehended little more than that
all were well, until he was seated in the comparative quiet of a little
restaurant, and Hadley was calling for coffee and mutton chops.