‘None of that! If I’d thought you would take it so hard that we had saved your daughter’s life, but we would have—no, not that exactly, for she’s worth saving on her own account!’
While Charley was delivering this speech, the cinders were raining down on his head, and he shook them off as a lion would have shaken great flies from his forehead, but others were not so insensible to a shower of fire-brands, and the Senor was dragged farther from the scene of ruin.
When the Senor perceived that his Inez was really by his side, he gave vent to the most extravagant exclamations of joy. Rushing to the Chief Engineer, whom he supposed to be the savior of his child, he clasped the sturdy fireman in his arms, called him every name that is flattering to the pride of man, emptied his pockets of all his gold, and tried to force into his hands a precious ring that he wore on his finger, and which was said to contain a diamond of great value. Charley said that his duty called him elsewhere, and we next saw him plunging into the thickest of the throng to bring up his forces to the principal point of attack, and to expedite the tearing up of the planks on the street, for they had become thoroughly ignited in some places, and the flames were marching through the slight wooden buildings of the town with the imperious step of a conqueror.
No sooner had the young lady recovered consciousness, than she raised herself to her feet, and looked anxiously on every side as if in search of some object which she could not find.
‘Here comes your father,’ said Cardwell, who had been the most officious in bearing off the girl to a place of safety, and applying cold water and other restoratives to her face and temples.
Inez took the hand of her father, but still her eyes wandered through the throng as if seeking another, and while she was led away by the old Senor, she walked listlessly and thoughtfully, as if something pressed heavily upon her mind.
By this time every gambling-house, every drinking shop, every pulperie, and every thieving den had poured out its crowds upon the streets of San Francisco, and a vast proportion of the inhabitants of the city were thronging around the scene of conflagration. Here was a gang of thieves, pretending to be very officious in removing the goods from a store-house that had just kindled, while the eager glancing of their eyes, and the half-shy, half-brazen way they shouted to each other, by way of encouragement to preserve and to hasten the work, sufficiently denoted that they had come to purloin whenever an opportunity offered, and that their zeal was merely intended to blind the eyes of others, and lull suspicion in regard to their ulterior purposes; and it would seem that no lack of opportunity was here, for such was the excitement, such was the confusion, the tumbling of men upon others, the running hither and thither, the cries of alarm and distress, the shriek of the wind, and the roaring of the flames as they went leaping, darting, and whirling from house to house, from corner to corner, and from street to street, that the cautious thief whose heart was marbled against human sufferings, and thought only of turning the disasters of others to his own advantage, might carry on his nefarious trade with almost as much impunity as that of the burrowing mole, who treasures his stolen grain under the earth while the plain above is rent by the tempest’s fury.
Yet, even in the general whirl of reason and reflection attendant upon these rapid conflagrations, there sometimes chances to be an eye unengaged for a moment which may light upon the plunderer in the very nick of time, and when least expected by himself. Such was the case now, just as the flames had reached Montgomery street, and were reaching forth their long red tongues towards the pile of stores on Jackson street, the Cockney mentioned at the commencement of this narrative saw a fellow hugging to his bosom a little iron safe, and stealthily escaping under cover of the smoke, along the street towards the harbor.
He raised the cry of ‘Stop thief! Picaroon! Coquin!’ and in as many other languages as he could bring to his aid, he gave the alarm to such individuals as were within the reach of his voice. The merchants themselves who were near the spot, joined in the chase, and in less than two minutes more than a hundred persons were at the heels of the man with the safe. He headed directly for the water, and had nearly reached it, when a couple of Chinamen in blue nankeens threw themselves across his path. The desperate wretch dashed the iron safe into the face of one of them, still retaining hold of it, however, and he fell covered with blood, and then, with one hand, the thief grasped the long cue of the other and jerked him to the ground. He then darted forward again, leaving the two disastered Fee-fo-fums sitting upright in the middle of the street, and uttering the most doleful lamentations. Amain the crowd came sweeping down to the water’s edge, tumbling the two Chinamen over and over, who cried out most piteously while rolling in the dust under the feet of the pursuers. The thief perceiving no way of escape on the land, sprang into a skiff and pushed off from the shore. For a moment, his foes stood panting on the shore like baffled tigers, eyeing the man as with two small oars he ploughed through the waves and receded farther and farther from the strand. At length a loud hail was heard from a point farther down, some three hundred yards from the spot where the pursuers were clustered, and on turning their eyes in that direction, the crowd beheld a slender but well-formed youth tugging at a heavy boat, which lay partly on the shore and partly in the water, and vainly endeavoring to get it afloat.
With a yell that rang on the air like the onset cry of a troop of wild Indians, the whole body of pursuers ran towards the boat.