"But flames are bursting from the roof! Look! look!"
And before long the policemen were convinced that a serious fire was, indeed, in progress. It was in the upper floors of a division of a block of warehouses named F, six stories high, and by eleven o'clock they were blazing fast.
"Fire! Fire!"
The alarming cry rang through the dock, and superintendents, dock managers, and policemen hurried to the spot; while gangs of dock labourers were taken off their work, and set to quench the fire with buckets.
The conditions were somewhat similar to those of the great Tooley Street fire of five years or so before. The fire broke out on a floor where bales of jute and coir fibre were stored; and a huge heap of these goods was seen to be burning, and sending forth such a suffocating and blinding smoke, that the men were compelled to retreat.
"Shut the iron doors!" shouted the officers; and one after another the iron doors between the different warehouses were closed, though with one exception. This was the door connecting the fifth floor of F Warehouse with the fifth floor of H Warehouse. It was open wide, and one man after another endeavoured to close it by crawling towards it on the floor. But the smoke was so suffocating that the men had to be dragged back almost unconscious before they could reach the door.
Meantime, the dock fire-engines and hydrants had been got to work, and the dock engineer was able to turn on full pressure, so that soon powerful jets of water were thrown on the flames. A hydrant is, briefly, an elbow-shaped metal pipe, permanently fixed to a main water-pipe; and when the fireman attaches his hose to it, he can get at once a stream of water through the hose at about the same pressure as the water in the main.
The flames were spreading furiously, and the two upper floors of F Warehouse were blazing fast, throwing out such dense clouds of smoke, that the neighbourhood was darkened as by a thick fog.
The block of warehouses on fire towered up six stories high, and occupied half of the northern side of the dock next to East Smithfield. They formed a huge pile about 440 feet long by about 140 feet deep, the import part of the dock lying on the south side with its ships.
The block was built in a number of divisions or bays, each measuring about 90 by 50 feet, and separated by strong walls, which rose from basement to roof. Happily, the communication between these divisions was afforded by double folding-doors of iron, a space of about three feet existing between the double doors; they were believed to be fireproof; and with the one exception they were closed.