It was his impression that, overpowered by the smoke they had sunk senseless upon the floor, but he could nowhere find them, and at last mystified, and all but suffocated, he was compelled to retreat to the window.
The fire was at the door of the room, shooting its long forks of flame into the old wood of which it was composed, and with such intense heat, that it was quickly one mass of flame, and sputtering sparks.
With a heavy heart, the conductor got out of the room, on to his machine, and he was barely upon it, when a long blast of flame followed him with the speed of lightning, and darted out of both windows, cracking and smashing the fragile glass panes, causing them to fly in all directions, playing fantastically over, and wreathing up the architraves of the windows, lighting up as it did so the excited faces of the swaying, yelling mob below.
The conductor slid down the escape, and communicated the appalling intelligence, that in the burning rooms above were two miserable young creatures who, by the time he was relating the occurrence, had become shapeless, blackened, charred masses of human clay.
The scene had now grown intensely exciting; more engines had arrived, and hundreds of persons were added to those already assembled. A body of policemen were employed in forcing the turbulent crowd back, so as to give the firemen room for their exertions. The street was turned into a river, and the fire brigade—accoutred like the heavy dragoons of a former period—were plashing through the muddy stream, getting their engines into working order with the systematic, and, as it appeared to the anxious gazers, the rather apathetic regularity of organised action.
Frantic occupiers of adjoining houses were flinging out their furniture—their little all, and that uninsured. The beds and chairs, tables and drawers, formed, as they were brought, or thrown, hastily into the streets, a motley jumble—some of them being borne away by active parties, never more to be returned to the original owner.
“Two persons burned to death!” was a cry which ran through the crowd, and was again and again re-echoed by the individuals of which it was formed, a thrill of horror accompanying it wherever it went.
An explosion, and up shot a body of flame into the air, attended by a shower of sparks, fragments of burning wood, and flaming articles, the volumes of smoke, of gold and rose-blush tint rolling away, painfully contrasting with the violet-hued heavens.
The roof was gone!
A brilliant glare was thrown over all objects, far and near, making the place around as light as day.