She turned her head many times to look at the wonderful spectacle of the burning city, the red curtain in the background, along whose front rushed the pillars of fire driven by the rolling masses of smoke. Where the fires on Nob Hill had burned low the flames looked like red sprouting corn. Fairmont had caught at last. It stood, a great square pile of white stone against the red background, and from its top alone poured a steady square volume of curling white smoke. The windows, and there were many hundreds of them, looked like plates of brass. The last thing she saw, as the launch shot up the bay towards San Pablo, was a wave of fire roll down Telegraph Hill, and hundreds of black pigmies fleeing before it.
It was a beautiful evening of perfect peace when the launch entered Rosewater creek. The marsh was bathed in all the faint colors of the afterglow. The birds were singing. People were sitting under the trees in their parks or gardens. A fisherman was sailing up to Rosewater with his catch. But for the red light in the south and the faint sound as of a besieging army, there was nothing to recall that a civilization had been arrested and a great city was burning down to its bones.
THE END
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE CONQUEROR
A FEW OF HAMILTON'S LETTERS
THE ARISTOCRATS
SENATOR NORTH
HIS FORTUNATE GRACE
PATIENCE SPARHAWK AND HER TIMES
RULERS OF KINGS
THE TRAVELLING THIRDS
THE BELL IN THE FOG
(CALIFORNIA SERIES)
REZÁNOV
THE DOOMSWOMAN
THE SPLENDID IDLE FORTIES
A DAUGHTER OF THE VINE
THE CALIFORNIANS
AMERICAN WIVES AND ENGLISH HUSBANDS
A WHIRL ASUNDER