Of a sudden there came a lurch, a swift sagging of the arch supports at the western face of the arches; the roof quivered a little, then was still. It could now, from the open end, be seen that the supports in several places were wrenched loose from the wall; the steel spans hung free in air, while white smoke lifted unceasingly toward the summit of the vast shed. On the tracks the cars were burning briskly. Presently it could also be seen that the south end of the roof was bending of its own weight. It bent first just a little—then more. Then for a long moment it hung motionless, or with but the faintest quiver of vibration. Then, out of the sightless cavern came the screeching sound of metal scraping upon metal—a wild sound, like the torture of some inarticulate thing; a dull, grinding noise followed, and at last, out of the steaming furnace which the lower part of the train shed was now become, came the dull roar of some great weight falling.
With a crack like that of a gigantic express rifle the western end of the great roof arches pitched down to earth; weakened at the angle, loosened from their laterals, the big roof spans lurched heavily downward. A thrill seemed to run through the whole structure; the roof, strained now to an impossible angle, hung breathless above the abyss. Then slowly, almost in majesty, but with a sound like the crashing fall of a giant tree, the great arch tottered and fell.
On the tracks beneath the shed the cars which there had been no time to remove continued to burn cheerfully, in no wise dismayed by this terrible descent. And far out in the yards, blocked by a mass of salvaged rolling stock, stood a panting Mogul locomotive which had traveled the last fifty miles in something less than fifty minutes, and behind it lay the special train of the New York City Fire Department.
Were it not for the preponderance of the trivial in the affairs of life, all women and nearly all men would believe in Fate. This is borne out by the evidence of great men, who are fatalists one and all—or who were so until these modern, ultrapsychologic days in which overthinking is held to be so dangerously near a vice. Those persons now whose ears are close laid to the breathing of the world all believe in Fate. Not negatively, not foolishly, not in the manner which sets forth that what will be, will be, and any opposing effort is therefore futile; but in the way of the true philosopher, of the man who can look upon the ruin or the loss of all that he held dear, and realize that what is to him a tragedy must, in some light cruelly hidden from him, be conserving some higher, some more inscrutable end.
This is the better fatalism; and the closer one approaches the primitive realities, the nearer this kind of fatalism he comes. Looking on the naked face of life or the crude fact of death, it is obvious to all save the most frivolous that these things were meant to be so. As the Aryan saying has it, looking forward there are a dozen ways, looking backward on the way each man has traveled, there is but one. Crude tragedy carries with it its own conviction of predestination. It would be absurd to suggest that Togral Beg killed thirteen million people by accident or by an extraordinary succession of chances. Admit there is such an element as chance, and between it and Fate is room for a thousand doubts. It is natural enough for men who deal with the tiny, circling ball of a roulette wheel or with the turn of playing cards to deny any power higher than chance; but how of Napoleon, dicing for empires without end?—and how of Columbus, sailing indomitably westward into the wheel of the sun?—how of Shan Tung, surveying the rotting corpses of seven times seven cities of Chinamen slain by the Tartar sword?—and how of Boston, on this February morning, looking white-faced on its own ruin, a ruin which, furthermore, seemed scarcely begun? Whether Fate be Fate or not, Boston believed in it that day.
Only one thing now tended to lift the gloom from the outlook, and this was the fact that the fire seemed to have spread as far from east to west as it was possible for it to do. The Common on the west, and on the east side the Fort Point Channel, held its destructive sweep apparently safe. To be sure, there was just the possibility that where the Common ended, the corner of Tremont and Boylston might be turned and the flames swing west once more; but this, in view of the lower heights of buildings and the fact that the wind had now shifted and was blowing toward the east rather than the west of south, seemed unlikely. Moreover, the combined departments of Charlestown, Cambridge, Lynn, and a dozen other places were massed along Tremont Street to prevent this very thing. It was, however, a significant commentary on the hopelessness of the situation when men could find comfort in the reflection that a strip of city a half mile wide was alone exposed to the direct path of destruction.
Smith had been in the lower yards of the South Station at the time the train shed fell; he had waited only a short time after that, working for a hot quarter hour to save some of the cars not yet exposed to the shed fire. The method adopted was one suggested by a lieutenant of militia from Braintree; his plan, since no locomotives were for the moment available, was to fix bayonets, stick them in the woodwork of the car sides, and then, forty men pushing at once, the car would be rolled out of danger. Dozens of passenger coaches were saved in this way. When the bulk of the close work here was done, the New Yorker turned westward, taking care to keep well south of the burning zone.
"How far south on Tremont has it got?" he asked a passing stranger on
Kneeland Street.
"About to the end of the Common," the man replied, without slackening his pace.
"By Jove! the Aquitaine'll be going next," reflected Smith. "I might as well retrieve my suitcase. It's the only one I own."