“What can that mean?” said he, in amazement.
“It means that this is no accident, sir,” said the man, shrewdly; “it's only damp straw and soot can produce the effect you see yonder; it is done by the prisoners—see, it is increasing! and here come the fire-engines!”
As he spoke, a heavy, cavernous sound was heard rising from the street, where now a body of horse-police were seen escorting the fire-engines. The service was not without difficulty, for the mob offered every obstacle short of open resistance; and once it was discovered that the traces were cut, and considerable delay thereby occasioned.
“The smoke is spreading; see, sir, how it rolls this way, blacker and heavier than before!”
“It is but smoke, after all,” said Darcy; but although the words were uttered half contemptuously, his heart beat anxiously as the dense volume hung suspended in the air, growing each moment blacker as fresh masses arose. The cries and yells of the excited mob were now wilder and more frantic, and seemed to issue from the black, ill-omened mass that filled the atmosphere.
“That's not smoke, sir; look yonder!” said the man, seizing Darcy's arm, and pointing to a reddish glare that seemed trying to force a passage through the smoke, and came not from the jail, but from some building at the side or in front of it.
“There again!” cried he, “that is fire!”
The words were scarcely uttered, when a cheer burst from the mob beneath. A yell more dissonant and appalling could not have broken from demons than was that shout of exultation, as the red flame leaped up and flashed towards the sky. As the strong host of a battle will rout and scatter the weaker enemy, so did the fierce element dispel the less powerful; and now the lurid glow of a great fire lit up the air, and marked out with terrible distinctness the waving crowd that jammed up the streets,—the windows filled with terrified faces, and the very house-tops crowded by terror-stricken and distracted groups.
The scene was truly an awful one; the fire raged in some houses exactly in front of the jail, pouring with unceasing violence its flood of flame through every door and window, and now sending bright jets through the roofs, which, rent with a report like thunder, soon became one undistinguish-able mass of flame. The cries for succor, the shouts of the firemen, the screams of those not yet rescued, and the still increasing excitement of the mob, mingling their hellish yells of triumph through all the dread disaster, made up a discord the most horrible; while, ever and anon, the police and the crowd were in collision, vain efforts being made to keep the mob back from the front of the jail, whither they had fled as a refuge from the heat of the burning houses.
The fire seemed to spread, defying all the efforts of the engines. From house to house the lazy smoke was seen to issue for a moment, and then, almost immediately after, a new cry would announce that another building was in flames. Meanwhile the smoke, which in the commencement had spread from the courtyard and windows of the jail, was again perceived to thicken in the same quarter, and suddenly, as if from a preconcerted signal, it rolled out from every barred casement and loopholed aperture,—from every narrow and deep cell within the lofty walls; and the agonized yell of the prisoners burst forth at the same moment, and the air seemed to vibrate with shrieks and cries.