The Fire
“Get back there!” commands Officer Casey, whose one idea of natural law in a very unspiritual world is that all policemen should always be in front where they can see best. He begins pushing hard at the vitals of a slender citizen whose curiosity is out of all proportion to his strength. “Get back, I say! Ye’d think ye owned the earth, the way ye’re shovin’ in here. Get back!”
“Give ’em a crack over the sconce,” advises Officer Rooney, who can see no use in wasting time bandying words. “Back with ye! I’ll not be tellin’ ye twice. Back!” And he places a brawny shoulder so as to do the utmost damage in the matter of crushing bones. It is rather good fun for a policeman who only a moment before was wondering what to do with his time.
In the meanwhile the flames are sweeping upward. In the basement, where gasoline sat by kerosene, and naphtha by that, the urge of the flames is irresistible. Already one small barrel and a five-gallon measure of gasoline have gone, sacrificing to its concentrated force the lives of Halsmann’s wife and child. Now, a large half-barrel having been reached, the floors to the third level are ripped out by a terrifying crash that shatters the panes of glass in the windows in the next block and Plumber Davidson, on the third floor of the house next door, running to get his pocketbook out of a kitchen drawer and a kit of tools he had laid down before putting his head out of the front window, is seen to be caught and pinioned, and slaughtered where he stands. Street-sweeper Donnelson’s wife, a stout slattern of a woman, who had run with many agonized exclamations to a cradle to pick up her little round-headed Johnnie and then to the mantel to grab a new clock, is later found in the basement of the same building, caught midway between the iron railing of a stair and a timber. Mrs. Steinmetz, the Jewish peddler’s wife, of the fourth floor, is blown to the ceiling from her kitchen floor, and then, tumbling down, left unconscious on a stretch of planking, from which later she is rescued.
Outside, on the ground below, the people are gazing in terror and intense satisfaction. Here is a spectacle for you, if you please, here the end of a dull routine of many days. The fire-god has broken loose. The demon flame is trying his skill against the children of men and the demon water. He has caught them unawares. He has seized upon the place where the best of their ammunition is stored. From his fortress in the cellar he is hurling huge forks of flame and great gusts of heat. Before him now men and women stand helpless. White-faced onlookers gaze upward with expressions of mingled joy and pain.
Clang! Clang! Clang!
And the wail of a siren.
And yet another.
And yet another.
They announce the men of the Fortieth Hook and Ladder Company, of the Twenty-seventh Hook and Ladder and Fire Patrol, of the Thirty-third Engine and Hook and Ladder Company, and the Fifty-first Engine and Hose Company, down through a long list of stations covering an area of a half-dozen square miles.