For a time she stood there alone, thinking of many things. Then, realizing that the hour was late and that there was little chance of finding her friends even if they were still alive, she turned her face toward home.
“If they are still in the land of the living,” she told herself, “they’ll come straggling in. A cup of hot cocoa will do them good. I’ll have the water ready.”
CHAPTER XXVI
SAFE AT HOME
In the meantime alarms had gone in. At the central fire station the third alarm came in before the megaphone had repeated the second. Clanging and screeching, forcing their way down streets swarming with people, the firefighters came. These ranged themselves along the outer walls of that famous place of play and mirth. No attempt was made to save Forest City. It was useless. The home of riotous joy was doomed. All the firemen could hope to do was to beat back the flames and prevent them from spreading to other parts of the city.
Long after the last structure of the vanished “City” had gone crashing down and the great throngs had crept away to their homes, a solitary figure stood in a dark recess between two buildings, watching the heaps of red ruin and desolation.
A short, sturdy fellow, he stood there hatless, and as the heat from the fire played upon his clothes they appeared to smoke, but it was only steam.
His keen eyes, for the most part watching the center of the fire swept area, now and again went roving up and down the outer lines as if searching for someone.
And then, as if fire were not enough, from the sky there came a sudden deluge of rain. One of those sudden torrents that come sweeping up from the lake in summer, it passed as quickly as it came, but in its wake it left black, smouldering desolation.
The hatless figure had moved to a place of shelter, but as the storm passed he came out again and stood staring at the ruins. As he stood there a shudder shook his frame. It was indeed a thing to shudder at. Two hours before, twenty thousand joyous mortals had rioted there, and now only charcoal and ashes marked its place, while above it all there loomed a blackened and twisted spectre which had once been the Ferris wheel.
“I knew it was doomed,” he murmured at last, “knew it days ago. If only I had got him in time! But now, please God, it is over. There will be no others of this kind.”