RoBards and Chalender ran as long as they could; then walked a while
till the agony in their lungs eased a little; then ran again. At last
they reached the East River.
Moored at the slip were many rowboats, lying far below and rocking in
the tide that bumped them against the high piles and scraped them with
sharp blocks of ice floating out into the bay.
The two men lowered themselves over the edge and dropped through the
dark into the nearest boat, and almost into the river.
It was ticklish business when they worked their way out into the
current; and the oars were of more frequent use for prodding off the
onslaughts of ice than for progress.
The river seemed as wide here as a Red Sea of blood, for the
conflagration streaked every wave with rubric. From one wharf a cargo
of turpentine had run flaming and a little Sargasso Sea, a blazing
island of floating fire, sailed down the bay, singeing the wharf posts
and leaving them charred and tottering. Fleeing from this pursuing
island, sailboats sped seaward in the icy gale like gray owls.
The lower end of Manhattan Island was all alive with fire under a
hovering sky of smoke. RoBards and Chalender craned their necks now
and then to correct their course toward the masts of the live-oak war
frigates, standing like a burned forest against the sky.
At last their skiff jarred the float at the landing place. Sailors and
marines caught their hands and made fast the painter and asked foolish
questions whose answers they knew well enough.
Chalender demanded an audience with the officer in command, and his
voice sent men darting to the powder house. Boats were loaded with
kegs and manned and pushed out into the river.
It was not so lonely returning. But far overhead the river that had
never been bridged, was bridged now by a long arch of driven embers,
a stream like a curved aerial river, an infernal rainbow promising
destruction, linking Brooklyn to New York as Gomorrah was joined with
Sodom in a deluge of brimstone.
When at length the powder bringers reached the docks again, carrying
ruin to fight ruin with, they hastened to the nearest point in the
widening scarlet circle and selected a building once removed from the
blazing frontier.
The owner, Mr. Tabelee, and a few laborers were loading his wares into
a wagon which he had just bought from the driver.
When the marines and civilians came to him and said that they were
about to blow up his building, Mr. Tabelee ordered them about their
business.
Chalender answered:
“Our business is the salvation of our city from complete destruction.
You ought to be glad to sacrifice your store.”
“Sacrifice hell!” Tabelee roared.
An alderman and two city watchmen came up. They lent their authority
to Chalender, and restrained the protesting Tabelee while the marines
entered the building. It was lighted with the new-fangled system of
gas, a dangerous and doubtless short-lived fashion.
Down to the cellar went Chalender, RoBards, and a group of powder
bearers with two kegs. They set down one keg and thrust an upright
plank between the head of it and the ceiling of the cellar, so that the
cellar explosion should be transmitted to the floor above.
There were baskets of champagne in this cellar. Marines stripped the
bottles of their straw jackets, piled them up and made a fuse by
sprinkling powder on a tape they laid along the floor and up the stairs
out into the street.
When the train was ready a spark was snapped at the outer end of the
fuse, and the spectators ran in one direction while the fire ran like a
sparkling mouse in the other.
Boom! The building split and caved in and a cheer went up at the
triumph over the fire. But the fire had the last laugh for the
splintered timbers made a lively kindling and the building which was
supposed to act as a barrier simply added itself as fuel. This was one
of those iron jokes the gods alone can laugh at.
Chalender was not stubborn and dogged. He was elastic. Anybody could
bend or turn him aside, but he always came again with the backlash of a
steel rod or a whip.
The failure in Tabelee’s case only confirmed his determination.
He and his crew proceeded to level a street of buildings one by one.
As if a vast invisible plough overturned them along its furrow, they
rolled over and lay black.
RoBards seeing how the trick was done was eager to carry on the good
work. Chalender assigned to him a number of powder kegs and a wagon to
carry them, and despatched him ahead.
There was a kind of intoxication in this destruction. The fever was
catching. RoBards had a high motive, but he became in spirit once more
a boy on Hallowe’en. He had in his late youth joined the Callithumpian
Band that made New Year’s Eve a carnival of mischief. He had taken a
sign, “Coffin Warehouse,” and hung it on a doctor’s front gate. On the
Fourth of July he had fired a flintlock from his father’s front stoop
and blown the powdered scratch wig from the head of an old-fashioned
neighbor sitting in his window. He had set off spitfire crackers and
squibs under the bellies of sleepy horses.
And now he was exultant in a private Evacuation Day festivity, kicking
over buildings like a naughty young Pantagruel. A kind of grim laughter
filled his soul as he heard the thud of some vast structure, built up
by masons painfully month by month, and knocked down by him in one
noisy moment.
He so lost sight of his progress that he did not pause to see whose
shops he wrecked. In one warehouse filled with Chinese importations
he made his fuse of a bolt of silk strangely exquisite to his numbed
fingers; he had long since discarded his soppy gloves.
As he unreeled the bolt and stretched a royal path for the fire, the
silk seemed to whisper in his fingers, bewailing its use for such a
purpose. He wondered what the Celestial who spun it after the American
pattern had planned it for—a lady’s dress, no doubt. Running back to
the cellar he filled a cornucopia of Chinese paper with powder and
returned along his path, sifting the black grains over the sulphur-hued
fabric.
As he proceeded sidewise, crab-fashion, up the stairs his shoulder
struck somebody’s thighs. He saw beneath his gaze a pair of black
slippers, little ones in India rubbers. His eyes rose with him, and
widened to find at the top of the dress, a face of beauty in such wrath
that he could hardly recognize it as his wife’s.
“Patty!” he gasped, “what are you doing here, in the name of——”
“What in the same name are you doing here?” she broke in, her voice
a-croak with unwomanly ire.
“Trying to save the city.”
“What do you care about the city?” she sneered, so harsh a look in her
eyes that he lost patience and commanded:
“Get out of the way at once! I’m going to blow up this building.”
She forgot her obedience and shamed him before strangers by retorting:
“I’ll not budge! I’ve a better right than you in my father’s warehouse.”
“Your father’s? Good God!”
He looked past her and saw old Jessamine’s face, purple with rage and
the long use of Madeira and the habit of domination. He was ordering
the marine officer off his premises, and the marine officer turned
to one of the city officials who was with him. The official nodded
and the officer beckoned one of his soldiers and, pointing to Mr.
Jessamine, spoke:
“Throw that dunderhead out of here before I tumble the building on him.”
And in a holiday spirit the soldiers ran the old gentleman to the curb.
He almost expired at the sacrilege to his person. Patty whirled, seized
her husband as with claws, and screamed:
“Stop them! stop them!”
The first was a bloodcurdling shriek that knifed the air. The second
was the cry of a rabbit dragged from its warren by a terrier. Her anger
made her faint. Her hands relaxed their clutch, her taut body grew limp
and slid down through RoBards’ arms. She was a heap of cloth under a
hat at his feet.
He bent and gathered her up with vast difficulty. He was worn out with
his toil and she gave him no help. The marine officer had to aid him.
They stood her on her feet and RoBards thrust one arm under her knees
and another about her waist. When he rose, her hat fell back, dangling
by the ribbons from her throat. Her face hung down white and lifeless
as a broken doll’s.
He staggered under the weight of her against his weary lungs and
staggered yet more under the burden of the sweetness of her round body
and her delicate limbs. It was hard to endure that so darling a thing
should have looked at him with such hate.
He was about to lay her upon one of the counters and revive her from
her swoon, when he saw that the marine officer was knocking a flint in
the tinder-box and kneeling to set the burning rag to the powdered silk.
Out of the dark shop RoBards hustled with Patty. Her feet caught across
the door and he had to fall back and sidle through with her. In the
street the world was red again and he fled stumblingly across the rough
cobbles and up the next alley.
The ground quaked and reeled under him and he heard a roar as of one of
the Miltonic cannons the angels fought with in heaven. He glanced over
his shoulder and, through the ravine of the alley, saw the Jessamine
warehouse rise, turn to a quivering black jelly, and splash back in a
heap, releasing to the view a larger crimson sky.
When the reverberations had dulled, the air throbbed with a hoarse
weeping. Against the wall an ancient man leaned his head in the crook
of his elbow, and cried like a birched schoolboy. It was old Jessamine.
“Two hundred thousand dollars gone!” he was moaning. “And the insurance
worthless.”
Patty came back to life with a sigh and lifting her head as from a
pillow, peered up into RoBards’ face sleepily. When she realized who
held her, she kicked and struggled, muttering:
“Let me down, you fiend! Let me down, I say!”
He set her on her feet and steadied her while she wavered. She
recognized her father’s voice and ran to him, crying:
“Papa! poor papa!”
They whispered together for a moment, then he heard the old man groan:
“We are beggars now! beggars!”
RoBards moved to them with hands outstretched in sympathy, but when
they saw him they stared and shrank from him.
The old man cowered over his gold-headed cane, and Patty set her
arm under his to help him as they tottered along the wall, the
father’s white head wagging, the daughter’s form bent as if with age.
They looked to be beggars indeed—and in a city where the rich were
especially smitten.