“Talk about quick burners!” exclaimed Johnny. “Did you ever see anything quicker or hotter than that?”
“No,” said Pant solemnly, “I never have.”
The building, filled with chemicals, diamonds, books and novelties, was a white hot furnace. Johnny had seen blast furnaces, open hearths, and the white flames of the Bessemer, but never had he seen a fiercer, hotter flame than this one. Even at this great distance it seemed to fairly scorch his face.
“Enough chemicals in that place to stock an army for the next war,” he said aloud.
At once he thought of the truck load of chemicals that had arrived at a quarter of six, and of the heavy rolling sound he had heard shortly after the truck drove away.
Never in all the history of Chicago had there been a hotter fire. Johnny could see the firemen, forced from one position to another, fall back, back, and back again. They made no attempt to quench this white fury. The best they could do was to throw a water screen against the buildings next to this to prevent disaster from spreading to the entire business district.
“Oh man!” exclaimed Pant. “Only look! Red flames, white flames, purple, yellow and blue. Must have burned its way through the crust of the earth and turned the thing into a volcano.”
“Chemicals,” said Johnny. He had been looking for an explosion; such an explosion as would wreck every building in the block and perhaps cross the river and shake bricks down upon his own head. But as the moments passed, he began to hope that it would not come. When a quarter of an hour had worn itself slowly away and the fierce flames began to die down, he knew that it would not come, and breathed a prayer of thankfulness for that.
“Pant, I promised Mazie and that little girl we saved from the school fire that we’d go out to Forest City to-night. This is the last night of the Carnival. It’s not too late yet. There’s nothing I can do about that fire over there until it has cooled down. Want to go?”
“I don’t mind,” said Pant. “In fact, I’d rather like to go.”