From that moment no power short of omnipotent could have saved the occupants of the upper gallery.
The coolness of Foy, of the orchestra leader and of other players, who begged the audience to hold itself in check, however, probably saved many lives on the parquet floor. Tumultuous panic prevailed, but the maddest of it—save in the doomed gallery—was at the outskirts of the ground floor crowd.
CHAPTER V.
EXCITING EXPERIENCES IN THE FIRE.
"If you ever saw a field of timothy grass blown flat by the wind and rain of a summer storm, that was the position of the dead at the exits of the second balcony," said Chief of Police O'Neill.
"In the rush for the stairs they had jammed in the doorway and piled ten deep; lying almost like shingles. When we got up the stairs in the dark to the front rows of the victims, some of them were alive and struggling, but so pinned down by the great weight of the dead and dying piled upon them that three strong men could not pull the unfortunate ones free.
"It was necessary first to take the dead from the top of the pile, then the rest of the bodies were lifted easily and regularly from their positions, save as their arms had intertwined and clutched.
"Nothing in my experience has ever approached the awfulness of the situation and it may be said that from the point of physical exertion, the police department has never been taxed as it has been taxed tonight. Men have been worn out simply with the carrying out of dead bodies, to say nothing of the awfulness of their burdens."