White Ashes

by Sidney R. Kennedy; Alden Charles Noble

But the firemen did not realize this. When Smith found himself once more approaching the northern end of the Common, he could see that the fire had changed its humor. It was no longer a gambler, dicing with the fire fighters to determine whether it should live or die; it had taken on surety and become a tyrant, an absolute dictator, a juggernaut—and it would not pause now till all its grim play was played, or its humor changed, or some breath mightier than its own should quell it. But the firemen did not see this.

They were working like madmen now, facing a thousand hazards, unseeing yet noticing all, undirected save by words which they could hardly hear and even more hardly comprehend. There was not, however, even for their stout hearts, any longer the faintest hope of meeting their enemy face to face. The heated blast, borne on the wind's wings, entirely prevented that. All that the department could endeavor now to do was to restrict the conflagration's lateral spread, to keep the daemon in the track he had chosen, and not allow him to stray to east or west. But they reckoned without his whimsy.

There was a stray puff of wind to westward; there was a sudden cry of men mortally hurt, of horses suddenly tortured. Out from the windows of the Phipps Building a flood of flame sprang west; expelled from the tottering structure by some inward impulse, perhaps by an explosion of smothered air, this sheet of heat and flame, of unburned and burning gases, leaped Tremont Street as a rabbit leaps a ditch. Simultaneously the Tremont Street face of the old Park Street Church burst into flame, and along the rear of the buildings which fringed the ancient burial ground the fire crept. Under the eaves of these buildings it ran, and a moment later the line of brick structures on Park Street was briskly ablaze, and once more the fire fighters' flank had been turned.

Quickly this westward adventure proceeded. So unexpected had been this attack that it was some time before the department could adjust its front. Tremont Street, moreover, which was now untenable, held much apparatus, and most of this was burned where it stood. Straight up the slope toward Beacon Street and toward the gold dome of the State House the fire errantly went. Blank walls between buildings seemed to make little difference to it; what it could not pierce it ran around. Only at the extreme end of the burial ground did it pause. Here a seven-story fireproof building confronted it, and proved equal to the task. Against the solid walls of this barrier the impetuous visitor beat in vain, and then, just as suddenly as he had begun his foray, he subsided. The final sputter of his dying, under the hose streams of his foes, sounded for all the world like a chuckle. It was as if this wandering creature had signified that he had accomplished his purpose in giving the department a good scare, and that he might as well stop. The firemen stood for a moment to catch breath, gazing on the havoc wrought by this wild half hour; then, coiling up their hose, they went to await new orders.

It was now almost two o'clock. The fire had been burning for four hours; it had completely destroyed two entire city squares and part of a third, and its course was manifestly just begun. To the north and west it had strayed as far as it was to go, for the north wind made it impossible for it to spread farther in that direction, and its westward swing, as has just been seen, had been checked. The unrestrained main line of the conflagration was therefore almost due south, following the direction of the wind's impulsion, but also it tended toward the east, since all great fires strive, fanlike, to open out. This tendency on the west the Common effectually vitiated, and the firemen's plan of campaign was proportionately simplified.

The obvious course now to be pursued was to mass the opposing forces along the east flank of the conflagration, restricting so far as possible its spread in that direction, for since the wind made it impossible to face the fire, no hope lay in direct opposition save perhaps through the thunderous agency of dynamite. On these lines the defense set to work anew.

After a thrilling struggle Old South Church had been saved; the concentration of the fire fighters around its corner had been efficacious. The stout old structure which had survived so many years of winters out of the east had survived one peril more. Its brick walls stood with their paint cracked and split, its tower tottered, scorched and feeble, but the building itself was intact. Score one to Boston, and to the indomitable forces battling for her preservation.

Not without a fearful cost, however, had this victory been gained, for the east side of Washington Street, from the Transcript down, was now a flowing field of raging flame. Here there were no fireproofs to give momentary obstacles; one risk, it is true, had automatic sprinklers inside and out, but the water from these, while it lasted, only added steam to the confusion and fuel to the fire, while the great roof tank in its falling tore out the very heart of the stricken building. Hawley Street, farther on, was no barrier at all to a fire of such fury as this, and the unprotected windows at the rear of the Franklin Street row added their helpless nakedness to a situation in which nothing was a buckler.

Very orderly, irresistible without vagary, now became the fire's progress. Terrible in its absolute precision, in its measured advance down the wind, this implacable river of flame rolled down the city. Far ahead of the actual fire itself ran its fatal forerunner, the sheet of gases and superheated air, sometimes level, sometimes high lifted at the whim of the breeze, but always fierce, always southward, always with annihilation in its grip. There was no staying this deadly force and no facing it; farther than any hose stream could reach sped this outrider in advance of the devastating thing whose messenger it was.

Men from the United States Navy Yard at Charlestown were dynamiting buildings along Summer Street now, in the hope of gaining a respite by reducing the amount of fuel in the path of the main advance. The air was heavy with smoke, with the odor of charred embers and burning wood and merchandise, and the shock of the dynamiting added new heaviness to an almost unbreathable element. So acrid had the atmosphere become that the men in the front ranks of the struggle were compelled to breathe through rags and handkerchiefs soaked in water. Many men dropped where they stood, to be dragged back by their comrades and revived by the ambulance surgeons.