FIRE! FIRE!
Within a minute or two Martin’s mind was taken off the fate of the Indian boy by something much more actual and immediate. On turning the corner he was aware that there were many more people in the streets than was usual at that hour on Sunday morning. They were all hurrying in one direction—the same direction as himself. There was excitement in their looks and in the way they spoke to one another; some appeared to be asking eager questions which those they addressed were in too great haste to answer.
He caught the word Fire!
“Is there a fire? Where is it?” he asked a lad in a ’prentice’s cap who was trotting over the cobblestones.
“London Bridge,” panted the lad, and ran on.
Martin began to run too. The crowd grew thicker; from every street and lane poured men and boys, and a few women, some only half dressed, all excited, all eager. From mouth to mouth ran the terrible word Fire! and as the throng swelled their pace quickened, and their cries, mingling with the clatter of their shoes, raised a din that strangely disturbed the Sabbath quiet of the bright morning.
“It must be a big fire,” thought Martin, and he remembered hearing Gollop speak of a fire on London Bridge when he was a boy, which had burned all night and destroyed more than forty houses.
“Where is it? Where is it?”
The question was repeated again and again as newcomers joined the crowd. No one seemed to know with certainty. Some said London Bridge, others Cannon Street. Nothing could be seen of it. The streets were narrow, the houses high and overlapping in their upper storeys; between their tops the sky was cloudless blue.
The clamour grew louder; every now and then there were strange popping noises which for a moment startled the crowd to silence. They ran faster and faster, jostling one another, pushing aside the less active. Swept along in the pouring tide, Martin found himself in Little Eastcheap, and then, far ahead in that broader thoroughfare, he saw over the roofs a brownish tinge in the sky.
On and on he ran, his excitement growing with every step he took. At the corner of Gracechurch Street the meeting streams of people made so dense a block that for a while his progress was checked; he was hemmed in amid a press of stout citizens, unable to see anything but their backs.
His ears were deafened by their shouts, which rose above the distant roar and crackle. Presently, when he again began to move onward, he heard a man near him say, in a loud voice:
“ ’Tis Pudding Lane, I tell you.”
The words were taken up around him. Pudding Lane! The cry flew from lip to lip, and stirred the crowd into a vast surging movement southward.
“Pudding Lane! What house, I wonder?” thought Martin. “The Three Tuns, perhaps; they’ve a lot of straw in their yard. Or perhaps it’s at Noakes’s, the oil-man’s. His shop would blaze.”
More and more eager to reach the scene of the fire, he began to push and wriggle and worm his way through the mob, getting his toes trodden on, and indignant thrusts and cuffings from those he incommoded. As he drew nearer to his goal the roar swelled; at moments, when he was able to look ahead, he saw dense clouds of smoke, brown and black, sweeping across the housetops westward, carried swiftly along by the north-east wind.
After what seemed to be hours of struggling he arrived at the corner of Fish Street Hill. The air was full of smoke and floating blacks and the suffocating smell of burning. The crowd here was denser than ever; the din louder and more terrible. Martin, already half-choked with the smoke, felt that his breath would be squeezed out of him by the pressure around. But he pushed and prodded, taking advantage of the least gap that opened as the throng swayed, and by and by he managed to force his way to a point where he should be able to see the houses on Fish Street Hill and in Pudding Lane opposite.
But where were the houses? He rubbed his smarting eyes, and looked and looked again. There were no houses any more. Where the great Star Inn had stood, with its galleries and yards and outbuildings, there was now nothing but a black smouldering heap. All down the Hill, all down the Lane, it was the same black waste and desolation: not a house remained standing. And as he looked he saw flames burst from the belfry of St. Magnus Church beyond, and a huge column of smoke shoot up around its lofty tower.
“The church is ablaze!” roared the crowd.
“The parsonage too! Save us all!”
Here and there among the throng were persons wringing their hands and lamenting the loss of all their possessions. Martin forced his way to one of them, and asked eagerly:
“Have you seen Mr. Faryner?”
“My house is gone—my house is gone!” was all the reply he received.
He went from one to another, repeating his question; no one knew the whereabouts of the baker. Martin felt anxious; the house and shop were utterly destroyed, their site was occupied only by heaps of charred and smouldering debris. Had Mr. Faryner and his family and journeyman escaped? It was clear that the fire must have broken out in the middle of the night. Had they been taken by surprise and perished in the flames?
Martin was at a loss what to do. His occupation was gone; there was no bread for him to carry; he could learn nothing of his employer, and he debated with himself whether to stay and watch the progress of the fire or to run home and tell the Gollops what he had seen. Deciding for the second course, he turned his back and tried to fight his way to Gracechurch Street. But the crowd had enormously increased. There were no policemen in those days to clear the streets, no firemen to dash up with their engines and pour water on the flames. In the churches were kept a few leather buckets and metal squirts, but they were useless in so great a conflagration.
An eddy in the stream of people carried Martin into Cannon Street, and he suddenly found himself pressed against Mr. Faryner’s man. He was swept past him, but managed to dodge back, and seized his arm firmly.
“Where is Mr. Faryner?” he cried.
“Safe and sound, thank God, with his friend the mercer in Cheapside,” the man answered. “But he’s in a terrible state of mind, and no wonder, seeing as the fire broke out in his shop.”
“In our shop?” asked Martin, in amazement.
“Ay, about two o’clock this morning. I woke out of my sleep feeling I was choking, and the place was full of smoke. I roused the master. We couldn’t get downstairs, so we had to climb through the garret window and along a gutter-pipe to the roof next door. How we did it, Heaven alone knows, and I wouldn’t venture it again for a thousand pounds.”
“What caused the fire?”
“Who knows? ’Tis my belief——”
But at this moment there was a cry of “Make way for the Lord Mayor!” People pushed this way and that, and in the commotion Martin was torn from the man’s side and swept along the street. It was hopeless to attempt to reach him again, or to take a direct course for home, and Martin allowed himself to drift on the tide.