First harvests

by Frederic Jesup Stimson

The little runnel he had touched, partly choked with broken bits of glass, was full of a thick dark liquid, yellowish in color, but blue with numerous big globules of water. It was almost the last run, too crude or too impure to take fire at a spark. He looked at the other; and in it he recognized the shining stream, and the strange metallic lustre of the naphtha’s flow.

He took a small shovelful of red-hot coals from the little stove, and got well out the doorway with it, standing down as many steps as he could. For this was the light surface oil, taking fire at a spark, more quick and dangerous than the cruder average. And with a careful aim, he sent a handful of the burning coals into the now open trough.

Even with the care that he had used, the first blast of flame was greater than he had thought possible; and he was hurled by the outward rush of air, half-blinded, down the remaining steps of the ladder, and fell into the deep snow. He ran back a few steps and looked up. Already the shed was on fire, and the burning oil, running from it in the trough, was spurting into jets of flame upon the trestle-work. Though wet with rain, this structure, so long soaked with oil, was taking fire rapidly. But there had been little noise as yet, and no signs of an alarm. He ran back some distance, and took refuge beside a brick storehouse, behind a pile of empty barrels.

He looked at his watch; it was a quarter past the hour; and for once, whether from his running or some other reason, his heart beat quickly. He paid no attention to the flaming trestle, but looked in the direction of the spraying-house that he had left upon the stroke of three. For he had left in the spraying-house a fifteen-minute fuse.

And, as he stood there, watch in hand, the whole earth shook beneath him; and with a noise that was more terrible than loud the silence of the city’s night was broken; and the iron roof of the spraying-house was hurled to heaven on a pillow of yellow fire. And Starbuck crouched behind his solid wall and screamed aloud.

It seemed many minutes before he heard the crash and rattle of the falling plates of iron. Then a flood of blazing oil poured forth, and ran in all directions, mixing with the pools of melted snow. Already the trestle was a roaring mass of flame; the woodwork about the receiving-tanks caught one after the other; and Starbuck ran wildly to his distant gate in the fence and cowered there, behind a pile of worn-out iron. He heard far off the shrieks of the sleeping watchmen, and then hoarse shouting from the city. Then, like some titanic minute-guns, the great tanks exploded, one after one, in majestic sequence; and the stars of the sky were veiled in fires of the nether world.

Then came the clang of bells in distant towers, and the shriller rattle of the fire-engines, and shouts of frightened men. In brief time he heard them crying at the outer gate, and saw them pouring into the yard, swarming over the high fence, thousand upon thousand of them; but the pouring oil now flowed steadily, in flaming streams, and cut them off as with a sword of fire from the enclosure; he could see them standing silent on the hither side, in motionless throngs, gazing with pallid faces at the world of fire.

He heard, too, the shouts of the Norwegian sailors in their ships along the wharves; the yellow flood flowed steadily toward them, its burning stream melting the snow and riding faster on the water’s surface in great blazing pools. One fire-river had already reached the end of the wharf, and fell over it, in a cascade of flame, through the iron colossal letters to the icy river. The tide took it rapidly down among the ships; the first was now flaming, from the bowsprit up the foremast, licking the tar and oakum from the iron rod. He heard the groups of sailors, in a panic rush behind him where he sat; others stayed at their posts and worked like demons, with capstans and cables, to warp their vessels beyond the reach of danger. The city fire-boat had come; and the burning oil-ship was cut adrift and dropped down the river, the fire-engines of the steamer playing on it vainly; in a few seconds, with a loud explosion, it was shattered to the water’s edge. The very river was blazing like a crater’s mouth with patches of the burning oil; and now, last of all, the huge storage-tanks, each holding its hundreds of tons, were scattered into seas of burning gas. No nook or cranny of the great yard but was lit with yellow light, intenser, vivider than the sun’s; the sky above was like a molten plate of copper, touched with swarms of scarlet sparks; and only beyond the river, above the red-walled houses, were the cold pale streaks of dawn.

James went boldly out, mingling among the maddened crowd. His breath had returned; and a faint smile was on his lips as he took his way slowly back through the now thronged streets to the river. His quickened blood poured sluggishly again; and his mind was busy with thought. Do serpents pant in the heat of conflict; or does their blood turn warm when they have withdrawn the sting? He had, perhaps, a faint sense of gratified power; but the mere destruction of one piece of property was, after all, so small a thing!

While he was crossing the ferry he looked up the river at the flaming world that he had made; it was a fine spectacle, and he watched it as calmly, as dispassionately, as Flossie Gower had done, when, not knowing that it was her fortune that had gone, she saw it burn from Mr. Wemyss’s window.