In the eastern sky abode only the pale gold reflection of the city's
lights. To the westward, across the Common, the soft blackness under
the stars descended even to the treetops. But the attention of Smith
and Helen, gazing north on Tremont Street, was fixed on the unsteady
glow of threatening, reddish light thrown up against the absorbing
fabric of the air.
"Good heavens! Just look at that!" Smith said, pointing.
"It must be a very bad fire--don't you think so?" inquired the girl.
"It looks from here like a corker. It's certainly bad enough to make
it well worth seeing," he returned. "Do you want to telephone your
mother that you're going?"
"Are we going, then?" asked Helen.
"To the fire?" demanded her companion. "Of course we are going. Fires
are my business, besides being the greatest spectacles in the world.
Let's go over to the Aquitaine, and we'll telephone."
A few minutes later they came out again; Smith motioned to the driver
of a taxi.
"Get in," he said to Helen. "You shall ride to the fire like a lady,
in a cab."
As he spoke he noted how the wind was blowing the girl's hair about her
face, and for just an instant he gave that vision its individual due.
"Take us as near the fire as you can get," he directed the chauffeur.
From Boylston Street up Tremont to its intersection with Beacon is a
ride of barely two minutes. It seemed as though almost no time had
elapsed before the taxi came to a stop beside the Palmer House. The
two occupants descended; Smith paid the man; the vehicle slid off into
space beyond their ken. And at that very moment their eyes sprang to
where, barely a block away, great tongues of red fire licked above a
wide building's roof--and all else but that thing faded into nothing.
"This way," said the New Yorker, tersely. They crossed School Street,
continuing up Tremont until they were opposite the old King's Chapel
Burial Ground. From this point, over the top of the City Hall, they
could see the flames riding high in air above a big five- and
seven-story building.
"My God! That must be Black's Hotel!" said a voice in the crowd behind
them.
"Sure, that's what it is," volunteered a policeman who was keeping the
fire lines.
"Were any lives lost?" Smith asked.
"No. Every one got out all right. It didn't start in the hotel.
They're very careful, and they have a fine fire drill, anyway. There
was plenty of time to warn every one."
Out of the north came a crisp wind. Not content with blowing, as it
had done before, Helen's hair about her ears, it also whipped her
skirts urgently about her. Smith calculated this wind, and shook his
head dubiously.
"Twenty-five miles an hour, I should think," he said. "Rather bad
night for a big fire. I wonder if we can get a little closer."
From where they stood it seemed that the fire was in the heart of the
block bounded by Court Square, Court, School, and Washington Streets.
The north half of this block was occupied chiefly by Black's Hotel, one
of the best-known hostelries in New England, and the south half by the
newspaper plant of the Boston _News_ and by several smaller buildings.
Between the two sections of the block ran a narrow lane known as
Williams Court; and at the time when Smith and Helen became spectators,
the fire was pouring from every window of the big hotel and proving
triumphant over all efforts to keep it from leaping the almost
imperceptible southern barrier.
"How long has this been going?" Smith asked the policeman.
"About an hour and a half, I guess. I've been here since quarter to
ten."
"Do you suppose we could go through the lines?" Smith inquired. "I've
got a New York fire badge."
"All right for you, sir--I'll pass you on it--but not for the lady."
This did not admit of an argument.
"Now, aren't you sorry you brought me?" asked the girl.
"Well, no," said her companion. "Hardly--yet. Let's try a little
strategy."
In front of them School Street was filled with wild turmoil. Here were
hose carts and gray, snaky hose lines stretching along the pavement in
weird, curves and spurting tiny streams from imperfect couplings; here
were firemen rushing excitedly back and forth, hoarsely calling orders
which no one seemed to hear. Along the curb were chemicals, hook and
ladders, patrols, all of them now stripped of their apparatus; while at
every corner beside a hydrant, each one chugging steadily away like the
regular, vibrant pulse from some giant heart, were the fire engines.
Out of their funnels poured a steady flare of cinders and smoke; on the
pavement beneath them the embers lay crimson; and the scarlet flashes,
whenever the fire doors were opened, showed the glowing furnaces within.
Retracing their steps toward Tremont Street, Smith and Helen skirted
the Tremont Temple, then east along Bosworth until they came to
Province Street. Up this narrow passage, which passes as such only by
a courtesy peculiarly Bostonian, they went, finding themselves
presently back almost where they had started, but at a point of vantage
whence they could see the western face of the fire, which was now
beginning to threaten hungrily westward toward the stout old stone
walls of the City Hall.
And now the building of the Boston _News_, although protected by a
system of automatic sprinklers, was thoroughly ablaze, as was the Miles
Block immediately fronting City Hall Avenue. It was from this last
building that the City Hall stood in jeopardy.
In Province Street, protected from the surge of activities beyond, the
onlookers could watch most of the fight to save the old building. And
a gallant fight it was, for the space between the fire and the coping
of the old stone structure's eastern wall was a scant thirty feet.
Fortunately, however, the wind was blowing almost directly from the
north, and this gave the firemen a chance. From the movements of the
department and the snatches of orders which could occasionally be
heard, Smith gathered that a similar struggle was going on in at least
three directions from the blazing block. To west, to south, and to
east the flames were leaning, and the narrow streets made the task of
holding them additionally hazardous.
Meanwhile the heat, even in Province Street, had become intense.
Together with the other onlookers, Smith and Helen found it necessary
to take refuge in the doorways and behind an angle of a building which
projected slightly beyond the rest of the row, from which point they
looked forth in turn, shading their faces and eyes with their hands.
All at once, looking upward, they saw a cloud of smoke suddenly replace
the glare directly north. The next moment a dull sound from the Miles
Block was heard, and Smith saw its western cornice sway.
"We'd better get out of this, quick," he said. "A wall fell then--the
west wall of that building there. That ought to save the City Hall, if
they handle it right; but it'll make this alley too hot to hold us.
Come on!"
Side by side the two hurried back with the crowd along the narrow way.
Their departure was taken none too soon. Behind them they could feel a
wave of heat radiated from the ruins of the burning structure; it
forced its way even through the little street down which they were
retreating, and they could feel the hot blast upon their backs.
"Something more must have fallen then," said Smith; but he did not turn
his head. Instead he took the girl's arm with a firmer grip, and they
continued swiftly on their way until they came safely into Bromfield
Street and out of the pursuing wave of heat.
"Let's cross over to Washington," Smith said.
On Washington Street, at first, little could be distinguished, and the
police were none too gently forcing the crowds even farther back. But
a block to the north, at School Street, which only a moment before
these two had just quitted, there was to be seen a wild confusion.
Fire engines were here, too, chugging at every hydrant, and the passage
was fairly clogged with hose and apparatus of all sorts, with nervous
horses, and shouting, swearing, excited men. As Smith looked closer he
saw that the firemen were no longer entering School Street to the west
from Washington; they were being driven back instead. And a moment
later he saw also a lieutenant raise his arm in a signal.
"There comes an ambulance," he said gravely,
"What is it? What do you suppose has happened?" Helen anxiously asked.
"Fireman hurt, undoubtedly. Unless I miss my guess, somebody was
caught when that wall fell. That must have been what caused the wave
that chased us down that alley. See!--they're bringing them out!"
Three times the stretcher moved back and forth across Washington
Street. At last the ambulance drove away.
"All it could carry," commented Smith, grimly.
It was now evident that the department was being forced out of School
Street. The wall which had fallen had entirely blocked the narrow
passage, and the heat from the blazing ruin was so intense that no man
could even obliquely face it. It was also clear that a hard struggle
would be necessary to prevent the fire from leaping eastward across
Washington Street.
Northward along the street from behind them, clanging its gong with
insistence, came now a chief's wagon, its black horses plunging
forward, open of nostril, reckless of all. Standing erect in his
place, this man took an instant survey of the situation, and then began
shouting orders to his subordinates in a way that seemed somehow to
make itself felt above the uproar.
"He must have come around from the other side," said Smith. "Now he's
taking charge in front."
However so, the effect of his instructions could be noted almost at
once. Several of the engines withdrew into Milk Street; others moved
northward along Washington; still others southward, but all away from
the now threatened point, which was the southwest corner of Washington
and School Streets. It was plain that all efforts were to be directed
toward preventing the fire from jumping east of this, and it was with
this purpose that the street was being cleared--the decks cleared for
action. And well might they be, for on the eastern corners, directly
across from this point of highest hazard, were two buildings, each an
object of peculiar interest and even reverence to Bostonians. One of
these was the Old South Church; the other the home of the Boston
_Transcript_--palladia both.
"Clear the street--get those people out of the way," came the abrupt
order, and Smith and Helen found themselves hastily retreating toward
Tremont Street, where for a few moments at least they might hope to be
undisturbed.
Not so. Tremont Street was now all that Washington had been a few
minutes before; and with a tremendous crowd of onlookers the two found
themselves steadily forced back and out into the Common. In the space
before Tremont Temple the fire fighters seemed thick as bees, and from
their manner Smith knew that they were dealing with a situation very
close at hand.
"I bet anything that the Palmer House has caught," he said to Helen.
"You're dead right, Bill," called a voice in answer. "The whole School
Street front's going. This is a _fire_, that's what it is--take it
from me." The voice trailed off into the whirlpool of sounds, but
Smith had heard all that he needed to know.
"This is more than a fire," he said gravely, his lips close to the
girl's ear. "It is a conflagration. With a thirty-mile wind like
this, blowing right into the heart of the city, no one can tell where
it will stop. We had better go home."
"Go home! Why, what time is it?" asked his companion in surprise.
"We've only just gotten here!"
"We have been here," said Smith, consulting his watch, "just about an
hour and a half. It is now twenty minutes to one."
"Twenty minutes to one?" exclaimed Helen. "My mother will certainly
think we're lost. But I hate to go. It is magnificent, even if it is
terrible."
"Yes," said the other. "Just the same, Deerfield Street is the best
place for you. I wonder if there's a cab in sight."
As it developed, there was none.
"Let us try the subway, then," the New Yorker went on. "Perhaps the
cars are still running in there."
It was a silent couple that made its belated way home to Deerfield
Street. Helen's eyes were bright with excitement and her face was
flushed; but Smith was almost too preoccupied to notice the added
brilliance which this gave to the girl's beauty. He parted from her at
the door of the Maitlands' apartment.
"You had better go to sleep as soon as you can," he said. "Try to
forget all about this business. To-morrow afternoon, when it's over,
I'll come around, if I may, and tell you all I know about it."
"I shall be home to-morrow afternoon," the girl replied. "But what are
you going to do now?"
"Oh, I expect I shall go back to the fire for a while," he said
carelessly; "but I don't intend to stay up all night. Don't worry.
I'll see you to-morrow about four--or earlier, if there's anything of
importance to tell you. Good-night."
The door closed on him.
Meanwhile, furiously driven by the wind out of the north, the fire had
taken a giant's dimensions for its own. Shortly after one o'clock the
entire block between Tremont and Washington, School and Bromfield was
one vast seething furnace from whose throat the fire burst now
southward and upward with a roar. The wind was bringing its element of
peril to add to the conflagration's own; it caught the white heat from
the blazing mass of buildings and started it sweeping southward in a
devastating wave of superheated fluid air.
As the man on the Common had said, this was a fire--but rather was it
Fire, the essence of the god, the very burning breath of Loki. The
city was in the hand of something greater than chance and more sinister
than circumstance.
But the firemen did not realize this. When Smith found himself once
more approaching the northern end of the Common, he could see that the
fire had changed its humor. It was no longer a gambler, dicing with
the fire fighters to determine whether it should live or die; it had
taken on surety and become a tyrant, an absolute dictator, a
juggernaut--and it would not pause now till all its grim play was
played, or its humor changed, or some breath mightier than its own
should quell it. But the firemen did not see this.
They were working like madmen now, facing a thousand hazards, unseeing
yet noticing all, undirected save by words which they could hardly hear
and even more hardly comprehend. There was not, however, even for
their stout hearts, any longer the faintest hope of meeting their enemy
face to face. The heated blast, borne on the wind's wings, entirely
prevented that. All that the department could endeavor now to do was
to restrict the conflagration's lateral spread, to keep the daemon in
the track he had chosen, and not allow him to stray to east or west.
But they reckoned without his whimsy.
There was a stray puff of wind to westward; there was a sudden cry of
men mortally hurt, of horses suddenly tortured. Out from the windows
of the Phipps Building a flood of flame sprang west; expelled from the
tottering structure by some inward impulse, perhaps by an explosion of
smothered air, this sheet of heat and flame, of unburned and burning
gases, leaped Tremont Street as a rabbit leaps a ditch. Simultaneously
the Tremont Street face of the old Park Street Church burst into flame,
and along the rear of the buildings which fringed the ancient burial
ground the fire crept. Under the eaves of these buildings it ran, and
a moment later the line of brick structures on Park Street was briskly
ablaze, and once more the fire fighters' flank had been turned.
Quickly this westward adventure proceeded. So unexpected had been this
attack that it was some time before the department could adjust its
front. Tremont Street, moreover, which was now untenable, held much
apparatus, and most of this was burned where it stood. Straight up the
slope toward Beacon Street and toward the gold dome of the State House
the fire errantly went. Blank walls between buildings seemed to make
little difference to it; what it could not pierce it ran around. Only
at the extreme end of the burial ground did it pause. Here a
seven-story fireproof building confronted it, and proved equal to the
task. Against the solid walls of this barrier the impetuous visitor
beat in vain, and then, just as suddenly as he had begun his foray, he
subsided. The final sputter of his dying, under the hose streams of
his foes, sounded for all the world like a chuckle. It was as if this
wandering creature had signified that he had accomplished his purpose
in giving the department a good scare, and that he might as well stop.
The firemen stood for a moment to catch breath, gazing on the havoc
wrought by this wild half hour; then, coiling up their hose, they went
to await new orders.
It was now almost two o'clock. The fire had been burning for four
hours; it had completely destroyed two entire city squares and part of
a third, and its course was manifestly just begun. To the north and
west it had strayed as far as it was to go, for the north wind made it
impossible for it to spread farther in that direction, and its westward
swing, as has just been seen, had been checked. The unrestrained main
line of the conflagration was therefore almost due south, following the
direction of the wind's impulsion, but also it tended toward the east,
since all great fires strive, fanlike, to open out. This tendency on
the west the Common effectually vitiated, and the firemen's plan of
campaign was proportionately simplified.
The obvious course now to be pursued was to mass the opposing forces
along the east flank of the conflagration, restricting so far as
possible its spread in that direction, for since the wind made it
impossible to face the fire, no hope lay in direct opposition save
perhaps through the thunderous agency of dynamite. On these lines the
defense set to work anew.
After a thrilling struggle Old South Church had been saved; the
concentration of the fire fighters around its corner had been
efficacious. The stout old structure which had survived so many years
of winters out of the east had survived one peril more. Its brick
walls stood with their paint cracked and split, its tower tottered,
scorched and feeble, but the building itself was intact. Score one to
Boston, and to the indomitable forces battling for her preservation.
Not without a fearful cost, however, had this victory been gained, for
the east side of Washington Street, from the _Transcript_ down, was now
a flowing field of raging flame. Here there were no fireproofs to give
momentary obstacles; one risk, it is true, had automatic sprinklers
inside and out, but the water from these, while it lasted, only added
steam to the confusion and fuel to the fire, while the great roof tank
in its falling tore out the very heart of the stricken building.
Hawley Street, farther on, was no barrier at all to a fire of such fury
as this, and the unprotected windows at the rear of the Franklin Street
row added their helpless nakedness to a situation in which nothing was
a buckler.
Very orderly, irresistible without vagary, now became the fire's
progress. Terrible in its absolute precision, in its measured advance
down the wind, this implacable river of flame rolled down the city.
Far ahead of the actual fire itself ran its fatal forerunner, the sheet
of gases and superheated air, sometimes level, sometimes high lifted at
the whim of the breeze, but always fierce, always southward, always
with annihilation in its grip. There was no staying this deadly force
and no facing it; farther than any hose stream could reach sped this
outrider in advance of the devastating thing whose messenger it was.
Men from the United States Navy Yard at Charlestown were dynamiting
buildings along Summer Street now, in the hope of gaining a respite by
reducing the amount of fuel in the path of the main advance. The air
was heavy with smoke, with the odor of charred embers and burning wood
and merchandise, and the shock of the dynamiting added new heaviness to
an almost unbreathable element. So acrid had the atmosphere become
that the men in the front ranks of the struggle were compelled to
breathe through rags and handkerchiefs soaked in water. Many men
dropped where they stood, to be dragged back by their comrades and
revived by the ambulance surgeons.
Franklin Street proved no more of a southern barrier than had the
others before it. On the corner of Hawley Street stood an eight-story
fireproof, sprinklered building, filled principally with crockery.
Upon this the conflagration advanced as relentlessly as fate. Long
before the flames themselves had reached it, the windows broke under
the heat of the advancing gases, and little fires began to appear on
the upper floors. Soon all the windows were alight, and this building
too shook beneath the force which there was no escaping. Its frame, to
be sure, stood bravely up, and after the fire was still to be seen,
almost intact, a tribute to its maker and design; but its contents,
alas, were not fireproof, and proved pabulum most welcome to the
element which welcomed almost all things.
The firemen along the eastern fringe had been laboring with
desperation. It was the seventh hour of steady battle, and many of
them were almost overcome by exhaustion; but those who faltered found
their places taken by others, and the unequal struggle went on. At
this point Smith, with his fire-line badge pinned to his coat in case
of challenge, was turning his hand to anything which seemed to need the
doing. A solid wall of fireproofs along Arch Street had held the fire
from spreading eastward there, but as Franklin Street was passed in the
southward sweep, the eastward urging was not wholly to be denied. At
five o'clock in the morning the four faces of Winthrop Square were all
involved, and the buildings along Devonshire Street had begun to yield.
Over at Washington and Tremont Streets the fire had now spread as far
south as Bedford--and the wind was still blowing steadily.
Gradually, for the last half hour, the velvet blackness of the upper
sky had been fading; gradually the sparks, as they mounted unceasingly,
had begun to seem less luminous; and the waves of smoke which had been
rising all night into the upper air became for the first time a little
dark against the sky. All night had this smoke been flung up from the
burning city, and always had it seemed white or reddish or dirty brown,
as it rose; all night had the air hung close in its smoky pall, seeming
to shut in the sad theater wherein this drama was being played; all
night had the fire been torch and lantern and moon and stars to those
who faced the fire.
Now, dimly across the eastern sky, was spread the first faint hint of a
wondering dawn. Far out over the harbor a lightening could be seen, a
prescience of day, and a ghostly half light, like that in a dim
cathedral, replaced the flame-lit darkness. There were mists above the
water, and the light gained progress slowly; still, it gained, and
presently the salt sea odors came rolling in from the bay. The water
turned from black to silver-gray, the shadows faded silently into
nothingness, the hush that precedes daybreak seemed trying to steal
into the tortured air. And men's eyes, turning from the flame and
smoke and crashing walls, gave hopeless welcome to the Day.