Gwynne, as his eyes travelled more precisely, picked out more and more

evidences of the power of the earthquake. Steeples were gone, walls

fallen outward, roofs caved in, or yawning where a heavy chimney had

gone through, old houses were on their knees, or had fallen into their

cellars. Great cracks and rifts in walls and asphalt, fallen cornices

and shattered windows detached themselves from the general picture of

the half-ruined but oddly indifferent city. Almost immediately, through

the smoke in the southeast, he had caught a glimpse of The Otis, an

immense skeleton of steel, that had defied the earth, and offered

nothing to the fire. But although he experienced a passing gratitude

that he should lose nothing by the disaster, he forgot the incident in a

moment: he felt wholly impersonal.

Everybody in the city, apparently, was out-of-doors. The squares were

black with people, quiet crowds, it would seem, moving slowly where they

moved at all. He saw mounted officers and parading soldiers, and groups

of firemen standing impotently by their hose and engines. In the burning

South of Market Street district rivers of people were pouring towards

the great central highway, their arms and shoulders burdened; fleeing no

doubt with their household goods. Then Gwynne began to study the fires,

and it dawned upon him that he was looking down not upon a mere

conflagration but a burning city. It was more than likely that the fires

would not cross Market Street, and that those near the water-front would

be extinguished by water pumped from the bay; but "South of Market

Street" was a city in itself, and not only did he feel a certain pity

for all those terrified black pigmies down there, but a pang for the

extinction of a region so identified with the early history of San

Francisco. Rincon Hill was obliterated by the smoke, but no doubt she

would go; with all her pretty old-fashioned houses, so unlike the

horrors on the plateau below him--and South Park with its tragic

memories. Moreover, if all the factories and warehouses, and the blocks

devoted to the wholesale business, were destroyed, the city would be

poorer by many millions.

He shifted his glass away from the fires. More and more details arrested

his eye. Inert forms were being carried out of houses where chimneys or

skylights had gone through the roof. Automobiles were flying about,

hundreds of them. Mounted orderlies were dashing at breakneck speed

between the Presidio and the city. For a moment he wondered, then

remembered that General Funston lived on Nob Hill. He inferred that the

Mechanics' Fair Building, down in the western section of the valley, had

been turned into a hospital, for automobiles were constantly dashing up

and delivering limp and helpless burdens. The old Mission Church,

Dolores, was unharmed, but not far away, and in that crowded district

built upon the filled-in lake, or lagoon, of the Spanish era, he saw

that a large building, doubtless a cheap and flimsy hotel, had sunken

to its upper story, and that people were digging frantically about it.

Every house in the immediate neighborhood had dropped into its cellar or

lurched off its foundations. But it was all like some horrid picture by

Dore: the smoky darkening atmosphere, the jets, the bouquets, the square

masses of flame, each seeming to embrace a block if not more, the dark

slowly rolling clouds not far overhead, the tides of humanity dwarfed by

the distance, the broken dislocated houses, the great haughty defiant

buildings, with the superb conflagration behind them.

One of the neighbors, who lived on the crest, returning from a

reconnoitring expedition, paused and informed him that the mayor had

been persuaded to call a meeting of the more prominent citizens, to

decide, if possible, what might be done to save the city, and to keep

the people from falling into a panic. Mr. Phelan, the "Reform Mayor"--of

the city's last period of municipal decency--had suggested sending to

the military islands for dynamite enough to blow up a wide zone beyond

the fire; but property-owners were already protesting. Many felt sure

the fire would not cross Market Street, others were as certain that the

whole city would go. A corps of marines had been despatched from Mare

Island immediately after the earthquake and would undoubtedly save the

Ferry Building and the docks, but if the fire ran over from Market

Street a few blocks higher up, nothing could save all that great

business, shopping, and hotel district; to say nothing of Chinatown, and

possibly these hills. All South of Market Street was in motion, making

for the ferries or the bare western hills, the Presidio and Park; they

must answer for many of the fires, as they had not given a thought to

cracked chimneys when they wanted their breakfast; but of course crossed

wires and the overhead trolley system were responsible for as many more.

Then he advised Gwynne to order that all the bath-tubs in the house

should be filled with what water was left in the pipes, and that a stock

of provisions from the neighboring grocer and butcher should be laid in.

"Personally I don't believe the fire will ever come as far as this," he

said. "But there'll be a famine, no doubt of that. The wires are all

down, scarcely a train is running, the country may be as hard hit as

ourselves--and all that crowd down there to feed!"

Gwynne thanked him and replied that the launch was in waiting; but when

the man had gone he called the Japs, gave them money, and ordered them

to follow his neighbor's suggestion. He realized that he had no desire

to leave this city where life was suddenly keyed to its highest pitch,

and retire to the security and inaction of the country. Moreover, he

recalled the promise he had given Hofer and his other friends on the

night of the ball: this might be the emergency, and what services he

could render should be given freely enough.

Lady Victoria and Isabel came forth, and they all made their way rapidly

down to Nob Hill. The stair was more rickety than ever, and many of the

older houses they passed looked badly shaken within, if not

without--every door was open. The floors were covered with plaster; more

often than not the furniture and ornaments, and even mantels, were

massed in an indistinguishable heap. The Hofers' door, like the rest,

was open, and they saw that the spiral marble stair was a pile of

glittering splinters and that the pictures had been turned completely

round or flung across the hall. Mrs. Hofer had been too eager to reign

on Nob Hill to wait for a new foundation. Several of the servants were

sitting on the steps, and informed Gwynne that all the family, including

the children, had gone out in two automobiles an hour before, to see the

city.

They walked down the hill, stopped many times by returning citizens

anxious to impart information. The Italians on Telegraph Hill were mad

with terror: "they were no Californians," in accents of bitter contempt.

Portsmouth Square was full of Chinamen laughing at the women that had

run there from the hotels without shoes on their feet, and only an opera

or automobile cloak over their night-clothes. Even more amused were

those Oriental philosophers at the white scared faces of the prisoners

clinging to the bars of the jail. Nobody could tell how many people had

been killed by falling roofs and walls, although the wildest stories

were current, but so far there were more doctors and nurses attending to

business than patients to care for. Down in the Mechanics' Fair

Building, which had been converted into an emergency hospital, they were

working as methodically, with book and pencil, as well as with bandage

and instrument, as if earthquake and fire were a part of the daily

routine. "Almost everybody was quiet, but there were sights down there,

Oh, Lord, there were sights!" One man button-holed Gwynne, as he had

button-holed others on his ascent, and informed him that he had "got

down there" just in time to see two hundred and fifty thousand dollars

go up in smoke. "Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and it has

taken me twenty years to make it!" he reiterated, with an excited

bitterness that was almost hilarious. He did not ask Gwynne if he had

lost anything, but passed on to button-hole the next man and pour out

his tale of individual protest; upon him the earthquake and fire had

made a personal attack.

"How strange it seems to be in the midst of so much _life_--mere

physical life," said Lady Victoria. "A whole city tense and helpless! I

wonder that man could think of himself. We are all mere fragments of one

great whole."

Her eyes were still restless and bright, her mask had fallen, and with

it, curiously, many of her years. For a time, at least, the heavy burden

of self had slipped from her tired spirit.

Few stood in the doorways, or even gardens; nearly every one not

exploring the city was in the middle of the street. In the

boarding-house district, half-way down the hill, the corners were

crowded with people watching the fires, although as many more had gone

to the heights to command a better view. Some were still dazed and white

with terror, a few looked distraught; more than one man was as nervous

as his wife. But the majority were calm, although they wore an

expression of being ready for anything. A few, mindful of the California

tradition, were joking and relating the absurdities of their experience.

There was no question that the shock had been far greater in the city

than in and about Rosewater, and both Isabel and Gwynne, to Lady

Victoria's disgust, expressed a regret that they "had missed anything."

But it was possible that the convulsion had been even worse elsewhere.

St. Peter was built over a known fault, and San Francisco was not; and

indeed news was already coming into the city of coast hamlets that had

literally been torn to pieces. Other wild rumors were flying about. New

York had disappeared. Chicago had been swept by a tidal wave. As the

telegraph wires were all down no one attempted to account for these

items of news, but so much had already happened that if the eastern

hemisphere had dropped to the level of Atlantis, no one would have

stared.

When they reached Union Square they found it so crowded that they hardly

could make their way. Not only the guests of the St. Francis Hotel, that

flanked it, had taken refuge in the open, but those of many other

hotels. A few of the men were still in pyjamas, and of the women in

dressing-gown or opera-cloak, caught up as they fled. But the majority

had ventured back and dressed themselves, so that the "sights" were not

what they may have been an hour earlier. But no one seemed to care for

shelter; at all events they liked companionship in misery, although few

besides the foreign members of the Grand Opera Company were voluble.

Gwynne and Victoria and Isabel saw many of their acquaintance, not all

recognizable at first, for even those that had returned to their rooms

to dress themselves had taken little pains with their hair. One woman of

great beauty, however, whose husband's hat surmounted her flowing locks,

was just informing Isabel that she had reached that frame of mind where

vanity was pressing apprehension to the wall, when there was an

explosive sound, another as of rushing wings, the crowd stumbled against

one another, and the large buildings about the square rocked. Again

there was an exodus, and some clutching and gasping; but only a few of

the refugees from the burning district, sitting on the furniture they

had dragged with them, screamed. It was over in a few seconds, and then

Gwynne pressed his women gently out of the crowd and down, through the

tide of refugees, to Market Street. They walked in the middle of the

street, for the sidewalks in this business district, where many of the

buildings were of brick or stone, were littered with the debris of

fallen cornice and shattered windows and chimneys. Market Street was

kept open for automobiles, and the crossing refugees; the spectators

stood on the edge of the northern pavement only, and in some cases on

the top of bricks that represented an outer wall. A number of the

refugees were marching towards the ferries, although a curtain of smoke

bounded the lower end of Market Street. Others were moving stolidly

towards the western hills. All were burdened with pillow-cases packed

with clothing, or dragged trunks, cribs, baby-carriages, in which was a

strange assortment of utensils, children, and household pets. The

scrape, scrape of these unwieldy objects could be heard in a monotonous

reiteration above the distant roar and crackling of the flames. Behind

the tide of humanity rolling in from the burning district, at the end of

every street, was a vista of flame and smoke. And the dark clouds were

mounting higher and higher, lit with a million golden sparks. The

temperature was tropical.

People were already beginning to talk in phrases: The doomed city. The

fire zone. Razed to the ground. Brains were not active, and any one

energetic enough to put a few expressive words together was sure of

disciples. Here, more than elsewhere, it was apparent that the army was

in possession of the city. Mounted officers rode slowly up and down, and

at the mouth of each of those dusky and menacing avenues was a guard

with drawn bayonets. They permitted the unfortunate to emerge, but few

to enter. In spite of the audible energy of the fire, the slow tramp of

the refugees, the scraping of their furniture on the ill-paved streets,

the city was extraordinarily silent. People scarcely spoke above a

mutter. There was no shouting of orders. Even the children were not

whimpering, the tawdry women were not hysterical, not a parrot raised

his voice nor a dog whined. Faces were dazed, blank, imprinted with a

stolid determination to get to a place of safety and keep families and

belongings together. The present moment was as much as they could grasp,

and truth to tell there was a good deal in it.

Some of the sightseers speculated mildly--those that owned no property

in this district--as to what would happen if the wind drove the fire

much farther north. The opposite side of the street was lined with some

of the greatest business houses in the city. The Palace Hotel looked

like the rock of Gibraltar. Not a vase in its court had been overturned,

some one said. The other buildings were of stone, brick, concrete. They

had stood the earthquake; even the great square tower of the Call

Building, unsupported by other buildings, had barely lost a cornice. Was

it possible that the fire would take them? But the fire was rolling

nearer every moment, for it met little to resist it but wood. Down by

East Street several of the Market Street buildings were blazing. But no

doubt the marines would extinguish those, and surely that sea of flame

would break and retreat before the wall of rock opposite; and behind it

were other structures of stone and brick and concrete. Now and then a

refugee, permitting his attention to be drawn from his own little

affairs, told that the back windows of these buildings were already hung

with wet blankets, and that people stood by the cisterns on the roofs,

hose in hand. But the South of Market Street fraternity shook a united

head, and when the new phrase, The doomed city, was wafted into its dull

ears, it adopted it promptly, and marched on muttering it over and

over.

XI

Already a number of automobiles had flown by, some filled with people

anxious to leave town before it might be too late, but most of them

containing surgeons and their assistants, or relays of firemen, alone

permitted to enter the burning district; or prominent men bound for the

citizens' meeting to be held in the cellar of the old jail in Portsmouth

Square, a site upon which their ancestors had gambled and Jenny Lind had

sung. Gwynne, who was already beginning to chafe at inaction, to feel

the excited blood shake his pulses, was revolving excuses to send his

mother and Isabel home, when an automobile came charging down Market

Street at a terrific rate of speed. From some distance he recognized

Hofer sitting beside the chauffeur. Not in the least considering his

act, he stepped in front of the crowd and made a signal. Hofer responded

with a shout, the automobile slowed slightly, two men stood up and

clutched Gwynne, dragging him into the machine. Gwynne's long legs flew

backward as if he were plunging head first over an embankment, and he

had only time to right himself, turn and shout "Go home," before the

automobile had regained its speed and was out of sight.

Victoria turned to Isabel with wide eyes. "It looked like kidnapping!"

she exclaimed.

"I fancy they merely want him at the citizens' meeting. No doubt they

want every steady clear brain they can muster. I think I had better go

out and see what has become of Paula and the children. Will you come?"

Victoria shook her head. "This is all too interesting," she said. "I

must see more of it, and I am no longer afraid. When I am tired I will

go home. Shall we agree to meet there for luncheon?"

Isabel nodded and started up Stockton Street alone, intending to take

the first car that led in her sister's direction. Some of the trolley

wires were down, but no doubt others were uninjured, and the cable-cars

had always seemed to her as fixed as fate. She could no more conceive of

their system being dislocated for more than an hour at a time than of

the city burning. So far she was merely interested, and although sorry

for the unfortunate poor, felt that the fates had conspired to do the

city a service in cleaning out so objectionable a quarter. Of the

millions invested in that district she did not think, but sighed as she

thought of South Park and Rincon Hill. Still, they would have been

obliterated in the course of events and before long; and as for the fire

itself it would be stopped by the great walls of masonry on and near

Market Street. She looked eastward down the deserted streets towards the

bay, and although the vista there also was closed with flame and smoke,

the fires were far away, and the marines were fighting it.

She passed many people ascending and descending, some with pressed lips,

others arguing with a certain fettered excitement against the

pessimistic attitude. After she left the business blocks the sidewalks

again were free of debris, although she could see the ruin within. The

disreputable section of this street, known as the "Red light district,"

was crowded with women, to whose rescue or comfort no man would seem to

have come. Isabel looked at them with an irresistible curiosity, but no

sense of repulsion; she even stopped and answered their eager questions

as best she could. She was possessed with the idea that there was but

one person in San Francisco that day, no matter what the optical

delusion. She was not at all dazed, but utterly impersonal.

Even in the blazing sunshine most of these women were handsome, and

young. But all assurance was gone; when not strained and haggard from

the recent and the menacing terror, they looked indescribably forlorn.

But they were very quiet. Isabel heard but one excited cry, and

something of its thrill ran along her own nerves. "My God! The wind is

blowing from the southeast and it's blowing strong!"

Isabel glanced back. It seemed to her that the great suspended waves of

smoke, red-lined, were rolling with more energy, and they certainly were

inclining west as well as north. She wondered, with some irritation, why

the wind blew from the southeast when the first of the trades should be

roaring in from the Pacific. A strong steady west wind and the fire

would be blown towards the bay, where it could be extinguished from the

marine boats. Every time a gust ruffled her hair she shook her head

irritably, wondering that she had ever loved the wind.

She reached California Street. The cars were not running. Far down where

they should have started she saw nothing but smoke. Nor was there the

usual rumble indicating that the cable was at work, a sound which was

among the first of her memories. She turned west and climbed the almost

perpendicular blocks to the summit of Nob Hill. The beautiful massive

pile of white stone, to be known when finished as Fairmont Hotel, and

which had already done so much to redeem the city from its architectural

madness, looked as serene and unravaged as if it crowned a hill of

ancient Athens; but so, for that matter, did its neighbors, two as

faultless in their way; the others appearing even more outrageous than

usual, inasmuch as they had had their opportunity to disappear and

failed to take advantage of it.

From the summit of the hill Isabel gave a hasty glance southward, then

walked rapidly west; the fires seemed to cover far more ground than when

she had first looked at them from Russian Hill, an hour ago.

After she had tripped over two large paving-stones that had met in an

upward bulge, she took more note of detail. Some of the houses had

private cisterns, and their roofs and walls were still quite wet.

Pretentious garden walls, and stone pillars supporting facades, had

fallen, while next door an apparently more delicate structure was

intact. It seemed to be a matter of foundation. And everywhere there

were groups of silent people watching the fire. Even when the Red Cross

men and women carried out the injured, Isabel did not hear a groan. And

all were losing their dazed and frightened expressions. The careless

philosophy of the city was reasserting itself, although in a more

dignified phase.

At Van Ness Avenue, the wide street that runs through the residence part

of the city from north to south, Isabel shuddered for the first time,

and, as she was ashamed to run across, stood and stared with a new sense

of fascination at the inexplicable old earth. The street lay in a narrow

valley, what would have been a mere canyon in the mountains, and the soil

was loose and sandy, although the great houses sat upon most of the

brief level and held it firm. But the stone blocks in low garden walls

were bulging and broken, and the street itself was horribly torn. Here

and there it had sunken, and looked as if a wave had passed over it and

left an impress. A large stone church had fallen, one tower into the

street and another upon the neighboring house. The stone walls of houses

were cracked; one of the "mansions" had a zigzag crevice from top to

bottom.

And the proudest had brought forth chairs and were sitting in their

gardens or on the pavement. Isabel recognized a girl who had been one of

the belles of Mrs. Hofer's ball, clad in a bath-gown and a pair of

socks, and another, noted for her gowns, passed in a wagon, a

handkerchief tied about her head and a half-filled pillow-case on her

lap. Isabel knew that both had lived in one of the beautiful private

hotels on the avenue, and she had already heard that it was so badly

wrecked that the guests had been thankful to get out alive and had not

ventured to return for their clothes. The stately building had been run

up in a night, its feet set in sand, and the wonder was it was not lying

across the avenue.

Many of the refugees had already reached this third and last wide street

of refuge, and although the greater number were still down at the

southern end, others had pushed on, intending to walk to the Presidio,

where they were likely to be fed. They were resting on their cumbrous

belongings, strange groups, unkempt and half dressed. Many of the

householders had sent within for food, and one wealthy dame, whose maid

had had time to build her coiffure and groom her properly, sat with a

dirty frowsy baby on her lap and was coaxing it to take milk from a

spoon, its bottle having been overlooked in the flight. The mother was

sitting on the bureau her husband had rescued, by no means abashed, nor

even surprised.

Isabel crossed the street and ascended and descended again, traversed

several blocks to the north, and finally approached the house in which

the Stones had their apartment. Although high-perched, it was uninjured,

and as Isabel climbed the hill she saw Paula and her children seated,

with many others, on the long flight of steps. Paula waved her hand and

walked down composedly to meet her sister. She was dressed, laced, and

painted. A sufficient time had elapsed since the earthquake to permit

her ruling passion to regain its throne.

"Well, I am glad to see you!" She greeted Isabel with something of the

grand air. She felt almost pompous with the sense of playing her part in

a great event, fancied herself, perhaps, its central figure. "Of course,

I knew you were all right up there, especially as we came off fairly

well. But you should have been here. You've missed it!"

"I know," said Isabel, humbly. "But I am glad you were not hurt. And not

frightened?"

"Oh, fearfully. And being up so many flights of stairs made it seem so

much worse. But Lyster and I managed to get out of bed and into the

nursery before it was half over, and hold the children in the doorways.

I didn't make a fool of myself like so many others, and run out in the

street before I was dressed; my hair was up on pins. Lys was more

frightened than I was--it's a wonder he has any nerves at all--and now

that there are so many fires he is fearfully excited at the idea that

all his favorite haunts may go. He has gone down-town to see what is

happening--also," in a happy afterthought, "to try and borrow some

money. He literally had not ten cents in his pocket. We have some in the

bank for a wonder, but everybody says the banks will go, and also that

there will be hard times."

Isabel handed over her purse mechanically. "Victoria and Elton have

plenty, I shall not need it," she said. But the desire to save Mrs.

Stone's feelings was superfluous. The purse disappeared with a polite

"Thanks, dear," and Paula hastily changed the subject, lest the luxury

of a carriage for the return to Russian Hill should appeal to Isabel.

"Of course you'll go back to the ranch where you can be comfortable,"

she remarked.

"I have no plan. The launch is ready for us, but it will depend upon the

others. Should you care to go to the ranch? I don't suppose you are in

any danger from fire, out here, but things may be very uncomfortable for

a time."

"Oh, I'll take the risk," said Paula, easily. "I should be bored to

death up there, and here there are so many people to talk to. I have

heard about fifty experiences this morning, and all fearfully

interesting. I guess we'll make out. It will only be for a day or two

anyhow, and everybody that has food in the house is offering to share

with the rest. I never have much on hand, but Mrs. Brooks, who lives

under me, always keeps her store-room filled, and has invited me to

lunch. You had better stop, too."

"I have promised Victoria to return. Just suppose the fire should come

out here, what should you do?"

"Oh, take a mattress or two out to the Presidio. It's not far, and would

be a regular picnic. But it won't."

"Well, I'll go, then. If you change your mind you can have the launch.

Only come to me first. Mr. Clatt is standing over it with a

six-shooter."

"Thanks. Sorry you won't come in. Lys won't sit down for about a week,

he's _that_ nervous, so you'll probably see him up on the Hill."

Isabel started for home, and when she reached Fillmore Street discovered

that she was tired. It was then that she regretted not having reserved a

dollar or two; but no doubt Victoria was at home by this time. She found

a livery-stable, and asked the proprietor, lounging in the entrance, if

he could send her to the foot of her bluff.

"Yes, for fifty dollars," he said, coolly. Fillmore Street was a

prosperous slum, another brief level between two steep acclivities. It

was not yet aware of the proud destiny that awaited it, that for the

next year or more it was to be the teeming centre of the abbreviated

city's life, but there never was a time when it was burdened with

manners, or the grand point of view. When Isabel stared, the man

continued: "Yes, ma'am! Fifty's the ticket. And two hours later it may

be five hundred. Some people are getting mighty nervous, and I've let

five hacks and buggies already, at my own figure, to them as wants to

get out of town quick."

Isabel turned her back on him, and climbed and descended again. Lower

Van Ness Avenue was even more torn and lumpy than where she had crossed

it at California Street, and hundreds of the South of Market Street

refugees were sitting or lying in the middle of the street, worn out but

stolid. Just beyond, she caught up with a teamster, who, noticing the

fatigue in her eyes, stopped his horses and offered her a "lift,"

provided she was "going his way."

Isabel gratefully climbed to his high perch, after stating that she had

no money, and being royally silenced.

"Oh, shucks!" said the man. "I guess this is the time to do other folks

a good turn. You'd do the same for me, I'll bet. What do you think of

this business, anyhow?"

Isabel replied hopefully, but he shook his head.

"City's doomed. Far as Van Ness, anyhow. Nothin' ain't goin' to stop

that fire but water, and water's just what they haven't got. Lord! to

think of that bay on three sides of the city. Talk about the Ancient

Mariner. I don't live in the city, but I'll be sorry to see it go. Lord!

warn't that a shake? I was flung plumb out of bed and against the wall,

and the house next to mine, or the one I war in, went plumb out into the

middle of the street. Lord! what a yellin' there was inside! Nobody

hurt, but one woman went plumb out'r her mind. They've got her tied to

the bed-post now. And what a lootin' of saloons there was until the

soldiers marched in! Now, I hear, that there mayor has issued an order,

which is to be pasted up all over, that any man caught lootin' anything,

saloons or otherwise, is to be shot dead and no questions asked. Good

job, that. I guess we're in for high old times, miss. I'm makin' for

Oakland, where I live. I brought in a load last evenin' and stopped

over. Some of my friends live down by the ferry, and I'll pick them up,

if they want to get out. Don't you want to come along? My wife and me'll

be glad to put you up if you can't do any better."

Isabel thanked him warmly, and assured him that she would be safe in any

case, then discovered a loose half-dollar in the pocket of her jacket.

The man accepted it philosophically.

"You were welcome to the ride, but I'm not the one to say nay to a bit

of silver so long as you say you're not hard up yourself. Guess it'll

come in handy. Well, s'long. Good luck to you. I've enjoyed your society

very much."

XII

The teamster had deposited her at Taylor and Jackson streets, and as she

passed the Trennahans' door it occurred to her to ask how they fared.

The house appeared to be uninjured, but the electric bell was useless,

and it was not until she had knocked several times that an old Mexican

servant answered the summons. Then she learned that the family had left

for Menlo Park in their touring car immediately after the earthquake, as

the boys were at the country-house with their tutor. The woman had been

maid for many years to Mrs. Polk and had lived with Magdalena since her

aunt's death. She was a privileged character, and during Isabel's visit

had accepted her relationship to the house of Yorba and waited on her

personally.

"So tired you look," she said. "Come in, no?" Then, as the invitation

was declined, she leaned her stout shapeless figure against the

door-frame and begged Isabel for an account of her experience. Isabel

gave it briefly, and the old woman shook her head. "So terreeblay

thing!" she sighed. "Seventy years I live in California and this the

more bad earthquake I never feel. My mother she feel the great

earthquake of 1812 in the south, when the padres plant a long straight

branch in the middle of the square of San Gabriel, and it never stop

shake for four months. Ay yi, California! I theenk we all go into the

bay this morning, and I fall down twice when I run to see how little

Senorita Inez she feeling. Ay yi!"

"Why did you not go to the country?"

"And who take care the house? The car come back bime-by for the other

servants, but I no go. Si, I can go in the train--then--perhaps. But no

in automobilia. Is devil, no less."

"Well, if you should be frightened come up to me," and Isabel went on

hurriedly to her own home, suddenly reminded of the uncertainty of her

relative's nerves. But Victoria was standing on the porch staring

outward with such an intensity of gaze that she took no notice of

Isabel's approach. And when Isabel reached her side, she too stood

silent for a time. _The Call_ Building was on fire. This square tower of

seventeen stories and a dome, with some seventy windows on each side,

had caught fire at the top, and as the flames devoured the contents of

one floor as quickly as possible that they might dart down another

flight and gorge themselves anew, in an incredibly short time the two

hundred windows in sight, and no doubt those in the rear, were spouting

flames like the mouths of so many cannon: each sharply defined, owing to

the indestructible nature of the walls. Volumes of white smoke poured

upward to be lost in the black clouds above. At times the fire and

smoke, on either side, torn by the wind, seemed to dance and gyrate in a

Bacchanalian revel, taking monstrous forms, that exploded in showers of

sparks, glittering like the fabled California sands. Above the burning

district the smoke clouds changed form constantly. Sometimes they reeled

along like colossal water-spouts. The roar of the fire waxed louder as

one listened to it: a deep persistent energetic roar, as of a sea

climbing over a land its time had come to devour.

Suddenly a curtain of smoke swept down and obliterated the scene,

conveying a sense of respite, challenging the memory, although a moment

later it was shot with a million sparks.

Victoria announced briefly that they were to have lunch of a sort, but

for her part she would prefer a bath.

A bath, however, was out of the question, and, without washing the

cinders from their faces and hands, they sat down to beefsteak fried on

one of the oil-stoves used for heating the Mansard story, and canned

vegetables. That much indulgence they might have permitted themselves,

but human nature is prone to extremes, and they were tuned to a severe

economy that might embrace more than water for some weeks to come.

Isabel sent a plate of sandwiches and a bottle of beer down to Mr.

Clatt, and the servant returned with the information that the faithful

wharfinger was sitting on a chair in front of the launch, a pistol on

his lap; and that already a small crowd was crouched like buzzards in

front of him. Isabel asked Victoria if she cared to retreat, but the

older woman shook her head.

"Do you?" she asked.

"Oh no. I shall remain until the last minute, certainly until I know

what Elton's plans are. If the launch is seized we can go down to Fort

Mason or out to the Presidio. Every one is in the same boat. I should

hate being too comfortable. But I don't think you should sleep

out-of-doors. It is always damp at night."

"I can stand as much as you can. I am quite fit again. And this is the

first time, for heaven knows how many years, that anything has

interested me. I shall stay till the last minute; and surely no fire

could climb this hill. Did I tell you that Mr. Trennahan came up at once

and asked me to go to Menlo Park with them? Ungrateful--but I have not

thought of it since."

Isabel announced her intention to take a nap. "No one knows what may

happen to-night," she said. "And I feel as if I had not slept for a

week."

She fell asleep at once. Lady Victoria awakened her by bursting

unceremoniously into her room.

"You must get up and look!" she cried. "The Palace Hotel and the other

big newspaper buildings are on fire. The sight is something awful--and

wonderful."

Isabel ran to the window. All the valley was a rolling sea of flame, and

all space seemed to be filled with enormous surging billows of smoke.

From every window of the Palace Hotel, an immense square building of

some seven stories, from the great newspaper buildings, and from other

brick and stone structures near by, tongues of flame were leaping; the

wooden buildings were mere shapeless furnaces. Again a volume of smoke

descended, and for the moment nothing was to be seen but a red blur

somewhere in the midst of rolling black.

Victoria communicated to Isabel the information she had received from

the neighbors, always coming and going. People were pouring out of the

city, not only by the Southern Pacific boats to Oakland, and indirectly

to Berkeley and Alameda, but by freight-boats and launches to the Marin

towns. They were obliged to make a long detour round the base of the

northern hills, as the water-front and the streets behind were a roaring

furnace, although the fires had not crossed East Street. All houses in

the towns across the bay had opened to the refugees, tents had been

erected in the public squares, and emergency hospitals had been started

before nine o'clock. The militia had been called out to assist the

regulars, and also the Cadet Battalion of the State University. A

Citizens' Patrol had been formed to protect the still unburned

districts, each man provided with arms at the Presidio. People on the

lower slopes were now in full flight towards the western parks and

hills, as well as the Presidio, many being under the impression that the

ferry-boats were not running. It was doubtful if a hotel or a

boarding-house would harbor a soul that night; not east of Van Ness

Avenue, at least, and many in that region were preparing to sleep in the

Park and squares, lest the fire attack them from the south. Refugees,

exhausted, were lying on the doorsteps and in the streets of the Western

Addition.

Victoria relapsed into silence and Isabel gazed down upon the beautiful

terrible scene--the curtain had rolled upward again--at the enormous

tongues of flame leaping from every window, the showers of golden

sparks, the swooping and soaring clouds, many of them white, with

convoluted edges, and faintly tinted like the day smoke of Vesuvius.

These curled white masses rolled among the black waves towards the west,

and the low deep roar waxed louder as one listened to it.

All the wooden bow-windows of the Palace Hotel had been eaten off, but

it would be hours before the stoutly built old hotel ceased to feed the

flames. Sometimes sheets of fire seemed to drive from the apertures

across the great width of Market Street, to be beaten back by a solid

wall of flame. In the intense clear yellow light that bathed the street

Isabel could see the twisted car tracks. More than once she fancied she

saw a prostrate body, but it may have been an achievement of the

shifting flames, and certainly nothing living moved down there. The

mounted officers and their men were patrolling the blocks along all the

northern front of the fire.

"Are you not in the least worried about Elton?" asked Isabel, abruptly.

"Not a bit. I never worried about him when he was a child. He was always

the most agile and ready youngster I ever saw."

"But he is very venturesome. He might be caught in one of those furnaces

as well as another, or killed by falling bricks."

"He is a man of destiny," said Victoria indifferently. "He will live to

accomplish what he was born for."

Isabel, in truth, found worry as impossible as any other common emotion,

nevertheless thought it odd that he did not come to them for a moment or

send a message. She could appreciate his wholly masculine mood, his

temporary indifference to the charms of her sex, but he had an ingrained

sense of responsibility, and was more considerate than the average man.

Lady Victoria returned to her vantage-point on the veranda, and Isabel

went down to the garden fence where the three Japs were standing, and

asked them if they intended to remain--half the servants had already

fled from the city. Two replied that later in the day they should go to

Oakland where they had friends. Isabel told them that she should not

part with what little money there was in the house, and they answered

politely that they expected to wait for their wages. The oldest of the

three, a respectable man of thirty, who looked like, and no doubt was,

a student, announced his intention to remain.

"I can cook," he added. "Not well, but perhaps well enough for a few

days. And perhaps if we are driven out I may go to the country with you.

I should be willing to work for anything you could pay me until things

were restored to their normal condition--if you would be good enough to

give me my evenings for study."

Isabel promised him the protection of her ranch-house, and stood talking

to him for some time. His English was unusually correct and his remarks

were more intelligent than those of the average man of her acquaintance.

He told her something of Japanese earthquakes, and was good enough to

add that he had never felt quite so violent or so peculiar a series of

earth movements as California had achieved that morning. He was curious

to see the result as recorded on the seismograph, and to know at what

hour it registered in Japan.

"I think Professor Omori will come over," he said, modestly. "This

earthquake will interest him very much. He will wish to study the

ground."

"Were you not frightened?" asked Isabel, curiously.

"I appreciated the danger, but frightened--no, miss, I think I have

never felt frightened. But I do not like fire. I have seen Tokio burn. I

shall walk about constantly and see that it does not steal upon us from

the north or west. Some silly person might make a fire, and all the

chimneys must be cracked."

"I feel much relieved to know that you will patrol," said Isabel,

wondering if she were being gracious to a prince. "Would you mind going

up to the top of the hill and asking some one if he knows whether all

the injured were taken from the Mechanics' Pavilion? It is blazing like

a wood pile."

He went up the hill and returned with the information that all the

patients, as well as the doctors and nurses, had been taken out, the

last of them while the roof was blazing, and conveyed in automobiles to

other emergency hospitals far away; and that the prisoners in the City

Hall had been transported, manacled, to the army prisons in the same

manner.

"One of the gentlemen said he saw Mr. Gwynne running an automobile full

of nurses and patients--one of Mr. Hofer's machines," he added. "And

that he returned twice at least. All the young men that own machines are

acting very well, they say, transporting the injured, and making

themselves generally useful. Many are on the roofs of the greater

buildings with the firemen fighting the fire with blankets, and hose

attached to the cisterns. A few buildings have been saved in that way,

but not many, and more or less of the water has to be turned on the men,

who catch fire repeatedly from the sparks."

Isabel went into the house and put on her hat. "I cannot keep still any

longer," she said to Victoria, a moment later. "And now I am quite

rested. I shall go down and see Mrs. Hofer, and reconnoitre for myself.

If Elton should come, ask him to wait for me here--he must need a

rest--or walk down Taylor Street."

XIII

She found her lower neighbors still sitting on their doorsteps or

standing in groups, but was told that many more had already gone out to

the Western Addition with their valuables, fearing that the fire might

come up the southern or eastern slopes before night. A large touring car

was standing in front of the Hofers' door. The children and their nurses

were in it, and Mr. Toole came out and took his place as Isabel reached

the house. He greeted her for the first time since she had known him

without a smile; and he looked very old and sad. Isabel heard Mrs.

Hofer's light high rapid voice within. She was standing in the large

drawing-room, giving orders to a group of servants. When she saw Isabel

she cried out as if confronted with a ghost.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, but not kissing her as usual; her mind apparently

was divided into many parts. "I am relieved to see that _you_ are all

right. I didn't know what might have happened up State. Did you _ever_?

Well!--Great old country this. Talk about living on the side of

Vesuvius. And now everything is going, everything!"

"I keep hoping for a change of wind."

"Perhaps, but I've pretty well given it up. We are in disgrace to-day,

sure enough. And anyhow Mr. Hofer has lost millions, millions!

However--" She recovered herself with a bound. "He made them, so I

guess he can make more. And do you know what he's thinking about

already? He burst in here half an hour ago--as black as your hat--with

orders that I should take the family down to Burlingame at once, and

then began talking about the Burnham plans, and the opportunity to clean

up the city politically. There's a raging idealist for you. And do you

know what he and Mr. Gwynne are up to now? Carrying dynamite, no less,

between Fort Mason and the fire line. The two of them are running an

automobile apiece and have put themselves at the disposal of the

authorities. Nice thing for me to be thinking of all night. Don't you

want to come along?"

Isabel shook her head.

"Well, I'll move on then--before they change their minds and impress my

car. So far I have a gracious permit to keep it. The servants have

buried the silver and the pictures, but--" She glanced at the beautiful

frieze, which, without its electric lights, looked a mere blur of blue

and black, then shrugged her shoulders. "I just won't believe my house

will go," she said, defiantly; "not till the last minute, anyhow. When

the fire's over, or Mr. Hofer lets me, I'll come back and do something

for those poor wretches that have been burned out. Gather up what food

there is to be had in the country, and start an eating station or

something. Mr. Hofer says food will come pouring in from every direction

presently, and then they will need organizers. I'm good at that. Can I

rely on you? It will be an experience, anyhow; and of course it's my

place to do that sort of thing. Besides, I do feel terribly sorry for

those poor things, and I won't be able to sit still for a month."

"You can count on me. When this is over I shall find you somehow."

"Oh, don't worry. The newspapers won't miss anything. They're burned

out, but I hear that the editors are already over in Oakland scurrying

round after a plant. Well, _adios_. If you say the word I'll send the

car back for you--although I doubt if it would pass a squad without

those children in it. I suppose it would hold several tons of dynamite!

Heigh-ho, I suppose it is all in the day's work. What can you expect if

you live in an earthquake country?" They had reached the pavement and

she put her lips close to Isabel's ear. "I'd like to get out of the

damned place and never see it again," she whispered. "I'll keep a stiff

upper lip, but those are my sentiments and I guess I have company."

She stepped lightly into the car, nodded with a grim gayety, and in

another moment had disappeared round the corner of Taylor and California

streets.

Isabel started down the hill, and almost immediately met Anne

Montgomery. She had not recognized her as they approached each other,

for the glare was in her eyes; but Miss Montgomery ran forward and

kissed her.

"What on earth did you come to this God-forsaken place for, when you had

the country to stay in?" she demanded. "Oh, Lady Victoria? I did not

know she was here. Just come with me and look at a sight."

She put her arm through Isabel's and led her rapidly for several blocks

along California Street, then down Hyde towards moving columns of

people. The fire was far south of these refugees as yet, but they looked

down every cross street and saw it; and more than once during their slow

flight they had seen the soldiers at the visible end of each long vista

move a block farther north. "I tramped a long way with them," said Miss

Montgomery, "carrying things for a woman I never saw before. Then a man

took the burden over and I started up the hill to see how some friends

were faring."

From this point they could hear the roar and crackle of the fire and the

crashing of walls; but even more formidable was that tramping of

thousands of feet, the scraping of trunks and furniture on the tracks

and stones. Isabel, still feeling like a palimpsest, lingered for an

hour looking at these refugees. They were vastly different, in all but

their impotence, from those of the early morning. Hundreds were from the

"boarding-house district"; others were householders; a large number, no

doubt, owned their carriages or automobiles, but those had been

impressed long since. It was a well and a carefully dressed crowd, for

by this time nearly every one had recovered from the shock of the

earthquake; many forgotten it, no doubt, in the new horror. They had not

the blank expression of the poor, dazed by the second calamity following

so close upon the heels of the first, but their lips were pressed, eyes

were straining towards the distant goal, and all would have been pale

but for the glare of the fire. Fortunately for most of them, men as well

as women, they had either children, pets, or even more cumbersome

belongings to claim their immediate attention; no time for either

thought or despair. They pushed trunks to which skates had been

attached, or pulled them by ropes; they trundled sewing-machines and

pieces of small furniture, laden with bundles. Many carried

pillow-cases, into which they had stuffed a favorite dress and hat, an

extra pair of boots and a change of underclothing, some valuable

bibelot or bundle of documents; to say nothing of their jewels and what

food they could lay hands on. Several women wore their furs, as an

easier way of saving them, and children carried their dolls. Their state

of mind was elemental. They lived acutely in the present moment and

looked neither behind nor before--save to a goal of safety. Misfortune

had descended upon them, and ruin no doubt would follow, but for the

present they asked no more than to save what they could carry or propel,

and to get far beyond that awful fire. The refinements of sentiment and

all complexity were forgotten; they indulged in nothing so futile as

complaint, nor even conversation. And the sense of the common calamity

sustained them, no doubt, deindividualized them for the hour. Soon after

they became their normal selves once more, and accepted the hard

conditions of the following weeks with the philosophy that was to be

expected of them. But underneath all the recovered gayety and defiant

pride of the later time more than one spirit was sprained, haunted with

a sense of dislocation, permanently saddened by the loss not of fortune

but of personal treasures, of old homes full of life-long associations,

never to be replaced nor regained. Many no doubt were better off for

losing those old anchors that held them to the past and emphasized their

years, besides keeping their sorrows green, but others had one reason

less for living. Nevertheless the philosophy born of a lifetime in an

earthquake country, of the electric climate, of their isolation, as well

as the good Anglo-Saxon strain in so many of them, brought a genuine

rebound to all physically capable of it, both old and young. But to-day

they were primitive--and entirely human. They helped one another, the

stronger carrying the weaker's burdens as a matter of course. The men

were bent almost double with increasing properties.

Isabel felt neither pity nor admiration for them; they were a mere unit,

these thousands reduced to their primal component, the third fact in the

great day of facts.

Suddenly, however, she caught sight of Lyster Stone. He carried a baby

on one arm and several rolls of painted canvas under the other. Beside

him walked the mother pushing a loaded crib; and behind him the artist

friend, to whose aid he had evidently gone, dragged a large canvas trunk

bound with an ingenious system of ropes. Stone nodded gayly when he saw

Isabel.

"Hallo!" he cried. "I was going for you later on. We'll all sleep out

to-night. Better come along." Then as Isabel only shook her head he

said, hurriedly: "Awfully sorry I forgot--promised Gwynne I'd go up and

tell you he was in for a long day's work--transporting hospital patients

and hauling dynamite. He sent peremptory orders that you and his mother

were to go to the country with the afternoon tide."

The crowd bore him on and Isabel and Anne walked up the hill again,

meeting other streams of refugees, but thinner, as most of them

preferred the easier slopes. Isabel looked at Anne curiously. There was

an unusual restlessness about her, nothing of the rudimentary expression

of the crowd. Isabel was wondering if her apparent and unusual spirits

might be due to the fact that her flat was in the Western Addition, and

that she had hired a wagon at the first alarm of fire and carried her

silver to the Presidio, when Anne suddenly began to explain herself.

"Do you know," she broke out, "I have a wonderful sense of

freedom!--of--of--hope. Something has happened at last. All the ruts

have been ploughed over. Life will never be the same here, in my time at

least. It will be like beginning all over again, with a hundred barely

imagined possibilities and an equal chance for every one. It may be a

reprehensible thing--to feel as if the destruction of your city had set

your individual soul free--but I do, and that's the end of it. And I can

tell you I've seen that _expression_ in the eyes of many a man in the

last few hours. Not in those of the older men, perhaps, for they wear

out early enough in this climate, anyhow, and those that are close upon

sixty don't look as if they had much left to live for--although I've

seen a few flying about as if they had dropped thirty years; its all a

matter of temperament and physique. But for the rest of us! The still

energetic men, and the women that have been cankered with the tedium

vitae, and have the brains and brawn to work. It will be the Fifties all

over again--not only something more than a bare living in prospect, but

a constant, exciting, interest in life. I saw a good many men, just

after the earthquake, looking as if they had believed the end of the

world had come, but they braced up directly the city was threatened by

something they could pit themselves against. Every man worth his salt is

fighting fire, rescuing the helpless, dragging mattresses out to the

hills and Park, and helping the women down here save their belongings.

All with automobiles and carriages are helping the authorities and

hospitals. Political factions and personal enemies are working side by

side, particularly down on the fire line. Even the mayor has won a day's

respect from his fellow-citizens, although I'm told he's terribly torn

between the Committee of Fifty and the military authorities on the one

hand, who want to blow up a wide zone, and the property-holders who

won't have their precious possessions sacrificed when the wind may

change any minute. Meanwhile the fire has a headway that will give it

the best part of the city. I never felt so alive in my life; so vividly

in the present. Can you remember the name of a book you have read, that

there is any world outside these seven square miles?"

"Yesterday is a mere dream and to-morrow is only a bare possibility! The

Fifties! I feel as if we were at the beginning of things on another

planet. I shall never trouble my head with problems or psychology again.

We are mere dancing midgets on the scalp of stupendous forces that we do

not even dimly apprehend. Earth lets us play until her patience is

exhausted with our pretentions as mere human beings, at our insane

delusion that the intellectual are not only the equal but the superior

of the physical forces; and then she merely shakes herself, and the

wisest is as helpless as the idiot, the prince even worse off than the

pauper because he has a bigger house to run out of. They all dance to

her tune like so many wooden marionettes. Hofer is no better off than

his blacksmith--whose savings are probably in the fireproof vault of

some bank, while I happen to know that more than one millionaire has not

insured his Class A buildings, thinking the expense unnecessary. No

wonder you have a sense of freedom. So have I. We are dancing to the

tune of the unseen forces. They will do the thinking. I wonder,

by-the-way, if deep down in the brain of that fleeing ruined tide of

elemental beings there is not a prick of gratified vanity that they are

in the midst of a great and horrible experience? We have been reading so

much lately of the horrors in Russia, we have read, all our lives, of

horrors and atrocities somewhere, and this State has grinned at us so

unintermittently. Now we, too, are actors in a great life-and-death

drama. I don't fancy any one is doing even that much analysis, but I

can't help thinking that the vague appreciation of the fact sustains

them in a way--possibly gives them a calm sense of superiority to the

rest of the world----Look at this."

They had reached Jackson Street on the flat of Nob Hill. It was now

evening and the exodus from Chinatown had begun. The Mongolians were

streaming up from their threatened quarter, and, like the others,

tramping silently out to the Presidio. The merchants had put on their

fine clothes, and their families--exposed to the Occidental eye for the

first time--wore gorgeous garments of bright silks covered with

embroideries. The poor little respectable wives tottered along on their

foolish feet, held up by their lords or their "big-footed"

serving-women, while their children trudged along uncomplainingly and

stared at the fire with big expressionless eyes. Mingling freely with

the wealthy autocrats of Chinatown were the coolies, and the

disreputable women with which the quarter swarmed. The Chinese rarely

import their wives. The coolies wore their blue blouses and soft felt

hats, and the women had painted their faces and built up their hair as

usual, shining tower-like coiffures stuck with large-lobed pins, cheap

or costly, according to their grade. All were as stolid as their own

wooden gods. They would have looked like a solemn procession on a festa

day had it not been for the bundles and strong-chests they carried.

"Come up to dinner, such as it is," said Isabel, to Anne. "What are you

going to do to-night?"

"Camp down in the sand-lots by Fort Mason and see what I can do for

those poor refugees. There will be great suffering, I am afraid. Many

women should be in hospital with every attention; and with all this

excitement who knows what may happen? I fancy either a tent-hospital

will be erected, or the worst cases will be taken into the fort. I am a

good nurse, and I told the Leader I should be there. There will be many

children to look after, too. The parents, the best of them, won't be up

to much."

"Perhaps I will go down later. But I shall wait at the house until I

have seen Mr. Gwynne--he may need food, or be hurt in any of a dozen

ways. If you see him--and no doubt you will, if you are to be at the

fort--tell him that I have not gone to the country and have no intention

of going."

XIV

They had passed members of the Citizens' Patrol on every block, and they

found one pacing the plank walk on Russian Hill. He told them that the

edict had gone forth that not so much as a candle should be lit in a

house that night and that all cooking must be done out-of-doors. The

spectacled Jap was boiling soup on one of the oil stoves, which he had

carried into the garden and half surrounded by a screen. Beside him was

what looked like an open newly-dug grave, and the girls, startled,

demanded what it meant.

Sugihara, apparently, never smiled, but his eyes flickered. "Before

Cusha and Kuranaga went I made them dig a hole for the silver," he said.

"It is too heavy for the launch. If we are driven away, I will cut your

ancestors from their frames and take them with us."

"Well, you are a treasure," said Isabel, with a sigh. "You shall do

nothing but read when you get to the ranch."

Lady Victoria was pacing slowly up and down the porch, her eyes seldom

wandering from the fire. When dinner was ready, she merely shook her

head impatiently, and Isabel and her guest sat down in the little

tower-room, which was brilliantly illuminated from below. Sugihara

had made a very good soup of canned corn and tomatoes and had fried

bits of meat and potato. There was little conversation. The dynamiting

was now something more than sporadic. The detonations were so terrific

that it was not difficult for the San Franciscans to imagine

themselves--supposing they had a grain of imagination left--in a

besieged city. Isabel suggested, and Anne agreed with her, that they

might have been far worse off than they were; nature at her extremest is

never so pitiless as the human brute when the lust to kill is on him.

Isabel prepared the remains of the feast for Mr. Clatt, and asked

Sugihara if he would object to relieving the watch, that the wharfinger

might snatch a few hours' sleep. There was no longer any danger of fire

except from the conflagration itself, and now that the dynamiting had

begun in earnest it was possible that the flames would be isolated

before midnight.

The Jap went off with the dish in one hand and a book in the other,

hoping that he would be allowed to light a candle on the launch. He

returned in a few moments, and for the first time he was smiling.

"Mr. Clatt will not give up his watch," he said. "He says he might miss

the chance to put a hole in some--dago (his language was very bad,

Miss). He says there's not a wink of sleep in him."

"No doubt but that he will hold on to it, unless the military step in,"

said Anne. "Then, I fancy, he would surrender very meekly. They have

impressed a good many launches for prisoners and dynamite. But I hope

not, for whether the fire comes up the hills or not, there is going to

be terrible privation. Heaven knows how many days it will be before we

have enough water even to drink, and I heard a little while ago that as

soon as food comes in the authorities will establish relief stations,

where everybody, from the millionaire to John Chinaman, will have to

stand in line and wait for his loaf of bread. Wouldn't it be better for

you to go at once?"

"I fancy I can endure as much as any one, and if I am driven from here I

will go down to you. I shall go down anyhow when I have seen Mr. Gwynne.

I do not propose to lie in a hammock while several hundred thousand

people are sleeping on the ground. What do you take me for?"

"Somehow I don't see you as a nurse, or amusing children, or doling out

bread and raiment. You would be much more in the picture encouraging Mr.

Gwynne. However--I am going to impress your linen and a clothes-basket

to carry it in. No doubt the philosophical Sugihara will help me carry

it to the fort."

"Take what you like." Isabel directed her to the linen-closet, and went

down to the veranda. She paused abruptly in the doorway. Victoria's face

could be seen only in profile, but its expression, as she gazed down

upon that tossing twisting furious flame ocean, needed no analytical

faculty to interpret. It was voluptuous, ecstatic.

Isabel crossed the porch in a stride.

"What are you thinking of?" she demanded, imperiously.

Victoria did not turn with a start. She did not turn at all. "I am

thinking," she replied, automatically, as if in obedience to the

stronger will--"I am thinking that at last I understand what it is we

are so blindly striving for from the hour when we can think at all; what

it is--that unsatisfied desire that urges us on and on to so many fatal

experiments in the pursuit of happiness. The great goal, the real

meaning of our miserable balked mortal existence is not that dancing

will-o'-the-wisp we call happiness, for want of a better name. It is

Death."

"Well?" Isabel's voice rose, but she kept the anxiety out of it.

"I cannot imagine anything more delicious," went on Victoria, in the

same low rich tones, "than to walk straight down those hills and into

that sea of flame. I have always admired Empedocles, who cast himself

into Etna. Once I saw a friend cremated, and the brief vision of that

white incandescence, before the coffin shot down, seemed to me the

apotheosis, the voluptuous poetry of death. I could walk down into that

colossal furnace without flinching, and I believe that my last moment,

as the world disappeared behind me, and those superb flames took me into

their embrace, would be one of sublimest ecstasy."

Isabel caught her by the shoulders and whirled her about. "Well, you

will do nothing of the sort," she cried, roughly. "In the first place you

couldn't get through the lines, and in the second you are wanted at Fort

Mason. Anne is going down with a basket of linen for the poor women who

will be confined to-night. You are an uncommonly strong woman, and you

can make use of every bit of your strength. Anne and the Leader are

frail creatures, and no one else that I know of is going. They need you,

and you will soon have your hands so full that your head will be purged

of this nonsense. It is the fire lust--the same lust that incited a boy

to-day to attempt to set fire to a house in this district that he might

watch the whole city burn. I hope your egoism exploded in that climax.

Here comes Anne. You must go."

"Very well," said Victoria, suddenly dazed, and with a will relaxed

after the long tension of the day. "I will go."

"Where are your jewels?"

"Down in the bank."

"Well, gather up any other small things you treasure, and either conceal

them about you or give them to me."

"I shall not take anything. My laces are in the chiffonniere. I do not

care to enter the house again."

Isabel fetched her hat and jacket, for in spite of the fire it would be

cold near the water; and a few moments later she stood on the edge of

Green and Jones streets, on the other side of the hill, and watched

Victoria and Anne, carrying a large clothes-basket between them,

carefully making their way down to the level. They had a walk of some

thirteen blocks before them, but the streets were full of people and of

ruddy light.

She returned to the house and sat down on the porch, her eyes diverted

from the fire for a moment by the picture of Sugihara, a pair of

eye-glasses in front of his spectacles, comfortably established on a

chair in the garden and reading by the lamp of the burning city. It was

apparent that he had forgotten the 18th of April.

Isabel was alone but a moment. Stone burst in upon her. He had

approached from behind, and came running down the hill.

"Isabel," he cried. "Get a bottle of champagne."

"Champagne?"

"Yes. It may be six months before I see another--but that is a mere

detail. I want to drink to the old city."

Isabel, who liked him best in his dramatic moments, found a bottle of

champagne. He knocked the head off, and filling the glass, went down to

the first landing of the long narrow flight of steps. He held the glass

high, pointing it first towards the middle of what had been Market

Street, and was now a river of fire, then slowly shifting it along

towards Kearney and Montgomery, as he named the restaurants that had

given San Francisco no mean part of her fame.

"Here's to Zinkand's, Tait's, The Palace Grill! The Poodle Dog!

Marchand's! The Pup! Delmonico's! Coppa's! The Fashion! The Hotel de

France! And here's to the Cocktail Route, the Tenderloin, and the

Bohemian Club! And here's--" By this time his voice was dissolving, and

the glass was describing eccentric curves. "Here's to the old city,

whose like will never be seen this side of hell again. Pretty good

imitation of heaven in spots, and everything you chose to look for,

anyway. And the prettiest women, the best fellows, the greatest

all-night life, the finest cooking, the wickedest climate. Here's to San

Francisco--and damn the bounder that calls her 'Frisco!"

Then he drank what was left of the contents of his glass and hastily

refilled it. After he had finished the bottle luxuriously, he held out

his hand to Isabel. "Come along?" he asked. Then, as she shook her head:

"I must go back to Paula and the kids. The mattresses are out in the

Park already. You are in no danger, what with the neighbors above and

the patrol. Good luck to you," and he vanished.

Isabel was alone at last, a state she had unconsciously wished for all

day--it seemed a month since the morning. She sat down and leaned her

elbows on the railing. Now that the sun was gone, the heavens, or the

smoke obscuring them, were as red as that sea beneath which seemed to

devour a house a minute as it rolled out towards the Mission and worked

with all its might among the great business blocks between Market Street

and Telegraph Hill. Some one had estimated that the columns of fire

were seven miles high, and they certainly looked as if they had melted

the very stars. Here and there was a play of blue flames, doubtless from

some explosive substance, and when the dynamite shot the entrails from a

house there was a gorgeous display of fireworks--the golden showers of

sparks symbolizing the treasure that blackened and crumbled in dropping

back to earth.

Before sitting down she had swept the distant hills with her field-glass

and seen thousands of people lying not ten feet apart, like an exhausted

army after battle. In that intense glare she could even study the

eccentric positions of the fallen headstones and monuments in the old

deserted cemeteries--Lone Mountain and Calvary. The cross on the lofty

point of the bare hill behind the Catholic cemetery was red against the

blackness of the west; and hundreds of weary mortals were huddled about

its base. She tried to pity all those terrified uncomfortable creatures

out there, but again the part they played in the greatest natural drama

of modern times occurred to her, and she thought that should console

them.

She wondered at her lack of sentimental regret at the destruction of her

beloved city. But sentiment seemed a mere drop of insult to be cast into

that ocean of calamity. Moreover, she was pricked by a sense that it was

a living sentient thing, that city, and was getting its just dues for

the hearts it had devoured, the lives it had ruined, the merciless

clutch it had kept upon so many that were made for better things. To its

vice she gave little thought; she fancied it was not worse than other

cities, if the truth were known; it was the picturesqueness of its

methods that had held it in the limelight. But that it was one of the

world's juggernauts, and the more cruel for its ever laughing beguiling

face--of that there was no manner of doubt.

She wondered also that she was not in a fever of anxiety about Gwynne.

She had interrogated the sentry and been informed that the automobiles

carrying dynamite dashed straight down to the fire line, often within;

that a number of the soldiers, whose duty it was to lay the explosive,

had been wounded and carried to the hospitals; that there was always the

risk of a laden machine being suddenly surrounded by fire, for many

houses were ignited by the sparks, and, in that wooden district down

there, burned like tinder. Perhaps, like Victoria, she was too sure of

his destiny; perhaps the picture of the future with him that she had

conceived refused to alter its lines; or it may be that there was no

place in the impersonal arrangement of her faculties the double

catastrophe had effected, for fear; or for anything beyond the

impressions of the moment. Her mind worked on mechanically. She was

determined to remain as long as there was a possibility of Gwynne's

returning for food or care. But the soul beneath was possessed by an

absolute calm. She had the sense of having been taken into partnership

with nature that morning; so sudden and personal had been that assault,

from which she yet had issued unscathed. She felt that everything that

would follow in life, excepting only her love for Gwynne, would be too

petty to regard more seriously than the daily meals. Not that she had

more than a bare mental appreciation of the phases of love at the

moment; but it possessed her and it was infinite.

She sat motionless until nearly two o'clock and then went up to her room

and lay down. It was not possible to sleep for more than a few moments

at a time, for the detonations were almost incessant, but she forced

herself to rest, not knowing what work the morrow might have in store.

When she finally rose and looked out of her window she saw that the fire

was coming up the hills.

XV

She barely touched the breakfast prepared by the methodical Sugihara,

who had already buried the silver, and cut the pictures from their

frames, rolled, and tied them securely.

"It is only a question of a few hours," he said. "The dynamiting so far

has done more harm than good. They take a house at a time instead of a

block, and as it falls apart it ignites another on the opposite side of

the street. The army doesn't like to interfere, and the mayor has too

long been obsequious to capital. Mr. Clatt is still there with the

launch behind him. I took him down his breakfast some time ago. He told

me to tell you that he'd 'got his job cut out for him now, as the Dagos

were beginning to leave Telegraph Hill.'"

Isabel had one or two moments of panic as she watched those waves of

flame beat up the hill, and pictured them raging up the eastern slopes

as well; but the panic passed, for she knew that there were two exits

still open. The heavens were black. A disk like a sealing-wax wafer

indicated the position of the sun. The heat was terrific. The dynamiting

was incessant, but it did not drown the roar and the eager furious

crackle of the flames, the reverberating crash of falling walls. And the

flames were the redder for the blackness above. Cinders were falling all

over the heights, and the smoke burned the eyes.

"I shall feel like Casabianca presently, and rather ridiculous," she

reflected, "but I shall stay till the last possible moment." She went

within and packed a pillow-case with Lady Victoria's laces and other

portable objects of value and adornment, then gathered up similar

belongings of her own, tied the case firmly about the neck, stood it

where it could be snatched in flight, and returned to the porch.

The boarding-house district, several blocks of large wooden houses,

seemed literally to be swept from its foundations by those rushing

pillars of fire. The whole quarter was wiped out in an hour, and then

the fire turned its attention to the higher slopes.

It played with them for a while, darting west and returning for a morsel

at which it leaped with the agility of a living monster, went west

again; then, its appetite whetted and its greed insatiable, it started

straight for Nob Hill. The soldiers drove the faithful servants out of

the houses at the point of the bayonet. Then--in a moment--the familiar

curtains were blowing out of the windows--shrivelled to a crisp and

pursued by the red rage behind.

Sugihara did not go through the form of cooking luncheon. He knew that

his mistress would not eat, and he had as little appetite himself. He

folded his arms on the top of the fence and waited for the signal to

retreat.

Isabel went into the house repeatedly and dipped her burning face into a

basin of water, but returned quickly to her post. The fire was running

from the east along California Street hill; she saw the men who had been

cutting pictures from their frames in the Institute of Art flee to the

west, then watched the Gothic structure flare up and burn like an old

hay-stack: that monument to a millionaire whose name would be already

forgotten had it not been tacked to the gift. The fire reached

California Street, on the edge of the plateau, from the south, coming up

the west side of Taylor Street. Other great houses of the rich were so

many roaring furnaces--several were curiously neglected and isolated by

the fire, that seemed to have gone mad with its own lust. The eastern

slopes were a mass of smouldering ruins, not black, but the most

exquisite tints of violet, rose, chrome, gray, sepia, yellow. They

looked, with their arches and columns, towers and broken walls, like the

Roman Forum and the Palatine Hill on a colossal scale. About and through

them floated clouds of fine white ashes, ghostly restless dust of

unthinkable treasure.

Suddenly, hardly crediting her eyes, Isabel saw an automobile labor up

the steep acclivity, through that swirling furnace, and dart across

California Street and in the direction of Russian Hill. She knew that

Gwynne was in it, and a moment later Hofer discharged him at the foot of

the steps, then ran the car out Jackson Street at the top of its speed.

Gwynne walked up the steps and along the plank walk. Isabel recognized

him by his carriage, for he was as black as a coal-heaver and most of

his hair was burned off.

"I should like to wash first," he said, as he came up the house flight.

"The water will go with the rest."

"Of course. Do you want anything to eat."

"No, I had some sandwiches a while ago."

He went up to his room and Isabel awaited him in the farthest corner of

the living-room, where it may have been a trifle less hot and less noisy

than elsewhere.

He came down in a moment. "That was a close shave," he said. "We didn't

know what we were in for, and it was either go on and hope for better

luck at the top, or dive down into a very good imitation of a live

volcano."

He was recognizable, although his khaki clothes were black and burned,

and one side of his head made him look as if he had just been discharged

from a military hospital.

"I shall rest for a few moments and then go back," he said, throwing

himself into a chair opposite Isabel. "I never forgot you, but I made

sure Stone had delivered my message and that you were on the ranch. I

saw my mother and Miss Montgomery an hour ago. You must get out of this

at once."

"Tell me what you have been doing," said Isabel evasively.

"I have been alive," he said, intensely. "Never in all my days have I

found life so wonderful. Battle is nothing to it. For the best part of

two days I have been dodging the open jaws of death every minute; and

the sensation of pitting one's puny human strength and the accumulated

wit of several thousand years of varied civilization against an element

in its might has inspired me with the only consummate approval of life

that I have ever known--although I might have known it the day before

yesterday if you had looked as you do now." He sat steadily regarding

her for a few moments without speaking, but he was sensible of no

immediate wish to touch her. That, too, belonged to a possibly greater

but far different to-morrow. He was keyed very high. He did not feel

himself so much a human being as a component part of one force disputing

every inch of the progress of a mightier.

"Great God, what men!" he burst out. "I have been with some member of

the Committee of Fifty, on and off, these two days, to say nothing of

last night--Mr. Phelan invited me to serve on it yesterday morning. They

are superb, not daunted for a moment, talking already of the new city,

of the opportunity this conflagration has given them to make it over in

every way. Architects were engaged before three o'clock yesterday

afternoon. And the young business men that have been cleaned out! They

talk only of the enormous possibilities of the future. I remember

reading once of much the same spirit exhibited by Londoners after the

Great Fire. It is the most wonderful thing in the world that for a few

days at least you are permitted to cherish an unleavened respect for

human nature. Every mean cowardly and selfish trait that chains man to

earth is moribund to-day, in the normal at least; and the rats have run

to other holes. The higher qualities, those that have inspired the world

since it began, are in full possession. And, by Jove, it is going to be

the pioneer life over again! Do you remember that I regretted once I

could not be in at the foundation and growth of a great city, also that

the drawback to such an opportunity was that one was never conscious of

his part? Well, now we are back to the conditions of the Fifties, and we

know it. We shall work for tremendous stakes, and in no doubt of the

result."

"The enthusiastic moment has come," said Isabel.

"Rather. Here is my part cut out for me. Here I stay and become a chief

factor in making this city greater even than before. That is enough for

any man. And there will be plenty of fight. Politics will crawl back to

new strongholds, as soon as men become egos again, but I shall fight

them here, not in the country."

He stood up, and Isabel asked, hastily: "Have you had no sleep?"

"Hofer and I broke into an empty house in the Western Addition towards

morning and slept on the floor for three hours. I have known harder

beds. I must go. I felt that I must look at you and order you to leave

at once."

"I don't want to leave the city."

"You must go. The fire will have taken this house before midnight. You

will be ordered out before that. They may save the city west of Van Ness

Avenue, for the mayor at last has consented that several blocks shall be

blown up at once. I am carrying dynamite. If I saw Russian Hill on fire

and was not sure that you were out of harm's way, it would unnerve me,

and I need all the nerve I've got."

"I can go down to Fort Mason."

"I want to know that you are out of the city. I think my mother is

better off where she is. She is working with a will down there and

absolutely refused to leave. I did not insist--no fire could cross those

sand-lots, and I fancy she needs occupation. But you must go."

"I should be as safe."

"Perhaps. But I should be beset by fears that you had ventured too far.

I can be quite impersonal, keen, steady of hand and brain, if you are

out of the city."

"Very well, I will go."

"The day the fire is over I will go for you and we will marry and live

in any shanty we can find--begin life together like any Forty-niners.

You can help others as much as you choose then. There will be work for

all--but now there is not, cannot be until organization begins. And I

must be free to take care of you. Will you go at once? The launch is

still there."

"Yes, I will go at once."

He left her, and a few moments later she was walking down the other side

of the hill, the voluminous pillow-case slung over her shoulder. Beside

her trudged Sugihara, the ancestors under one arm, and his library under

the other. The street along the water-front was a moving mass of

refugees from Telegraph Hill, and Mr. Clatt was standing in the launch,

on the alert. He gave a shout of delight as he saw Isabel, and she waved

her hand. As she reached the wharf and forced her way through the

Italians and Mexicans, who regarded her with no great favor, she noticed

a small party of Chinese evidently in distress. The woman, magnificently

arrayed, and hardly larger than a child, was huddled against the

sea-wall, dumbly protesting that she could go no farther. Her face was

twisted and her eyes were staring with pain and fright. A pretty child

in three shirts of different colors, all silken and embroidered, was

wailing in the common language of his years, and the young husband

argued with his wife in vain: she made no response, but her passive

resistance was as effective as if her feet had been six. She would not

let her maid touch her, and her husband dared not relinquish his hold on

his strong-box while surrounded by his formidable neighbors of Telegraph

Hill.

Isabel, glad to be able to do something for some one, told him to hand

the box to Mr. Clatt, then carry his wife on board the launch. The nurse

followed with the child, while Isabel and Sugihara, having cast their

own burdens on board, and drawn their pistols, brought up in the rear.

As the launch entered the current that would carry it east of Angel

Island, Isabel looked at her guests--the Chinese wife and her child

lying on the cushions of the cabin, stolid once more; the big-footed

maid and the husband, his strong-box between his knees, seated opposite;

the Japanese, sitting cross-legged on the roof, his back to the land--no

doubt to emphasize his contempt for the rabble; Mr. Clatt, shaking his

fist at a group of vociferating Italians--and smiled grimly as she

recalled the romantic boat party that escaped from Pompeii. She did not

feel in the least romantic, but she felt something greater and deeper.

She turned her head many times to look at the wonderful spectacle of the

burning city, the red curtain in the background, along whose front

rushed the pillars of fire driven by the rolling masses of smoke. Where

the fires on Nob Hill had burned low the flames looked like red

sprouting corn. Fairmont had caught at last. It stood, a great square

pile of white stone against the red background, and from its top alone

poured a steady square volume of curling white smoke. The windows, and

there were many hundreds of them, looked like plates of brass. The last

thing she saw, as the launch shot up the bay towards San Pablo, was a

wave of fire roll down Telegraph Hill, and hundreds of black pigmies

fleeing before it.

It was a beautiful evening of perfect peace when the launch entered

Rosewater creek. The marsh was bathed in all the faint colors of the

afterglow. The birds were singing. People were sitting under the trees

in their parks or gardens. A fisherman was sailing up to Rosewater with

his catch. But for the red light in the south and the faint sound as of

a besieging army, there was nothing to recall that a civilization had

been arrested and a great city was burning down to its bones.

THE END

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

THE CONQUEROR

A FEW OF HAMILTON'S LETTERS

THE ARISTOCRATS

SENATOR NORTH

HIS FORTUNATE GRACE

PATIENCE SPARHAWK AND HER TIMES

RULERS OF KINGS

THE TRAVELLING THIRDS

THE BELL IN THE FOG

(_CALIFORNIA SERIES_)

REZANOV

THE DOOMSWOMAN

THE SPLENDID IDLE FORTIES

A DAUGHTER OF THE VINE

THE CALIFORNIANS

AMERICAN WIVES AND ENGLISH HUSBANDS

A WHIRL ASUNDER