It was ticklish business when they worked their way out into the current; and the oars were of more frequent use for prodding off the onslaughts of ice than for progress.
The river seemed as wide here as a Red Sea of blood, for the conflagration streaked every wave with rubric. From one wharf a cargo of turpentine had run flaming and a little Sargasso Sea, a blazing island of floating fire, sailed down the bay, singeing the wharf posts and leaving them charred and tottering. Fleeing from this pursuing island, sailboats sped seaward in the icy gale like gray owls.
The lower end of Manhattan Island was all alive with fire under a hovering sky of smoke. RoBards and Chalender craned their necks now and then to correct their course toward the masts of the live-oak war frigates, standing like a burned forest against the sky.
At last their skiff jarred the float at the landing place. Sailors and marines caught their hands and made fast the painter and asked foolish questions whose answers they knew well enough.
Chalender demanded an audience with the officer in command, and his voice sent men darting to the powder house. Boats were loaded with kegs and manned and pushed out into the river.
It was not so lonely returning. But far overhead the river that had never been bridged, was bridged now by a long arch of driven embers, a stream like a curved aerial river, an infernal rainbow promising destruction, linking Brooklyn to New York as Gomorrah was joined with Sodom in a deluge of brimstone.
When at length the powder bringers reached the docks again, carrying ruin to fight ruin with, they hastened to the nearest point in the widening scarlet circle and selected a building once removed from the blazing frontier.
The owner, Mr. Tabelee, and a few laborers were loading his wares into a wagon which he had just bought from the driver.
When the marines and civilians came to him and said that they were about to blow up his building, Mr. Tabelee ordered them about their business.
Chalender answered: