White Ashes Part 46

"About an hour and a half, I guess. I've been here since quarter to ten."

"Do you suppose we could go through the lines?" Smith inquired. "I've got a New York fire badge."

"All right for you, sir--I'll pa.s.s you on it--but not for the lady."

This did not admit of an argument.

"Now, aren't you sorry you brought me?" asked the girl.

"Well, no," said her companion. "Hardly--yet. Let's try a little strategy."

In front of them School Street was filled with wild turmoil. Here were hose carts and gray, snaky hose lines stretching along the pavement in weird, curves and spurting tiny streams from imperfect couplings; here were firemen rushing excitedly back and forth, hoa.r.s.ely calling orders which no one seemed to hear. Along the curb were chemicals, hook and ladders, patrols, all of them now stripped of their apparatus; while at every corner beside a hydrant, each one chugging steadily away like the regular, vibrant pulse from some giant heart, were the fire engines.

Out of their funnels poured a steady flare of cinders and smoke; on the pavement beneath them the embers lay crimson; and the scarlet flashes, whenever the fire doors were opened, showed the glowing furnaces within.

Retracing their steps toward Tremont Street, Smith and Helen skirted the Tremont Temple, then east along Bosworth until they came to Province Street. Up this narrow pa.s.sage, which pa.s.ses as such only by a courtesy peculiarly Bostonian, they went, finding themselves presently back almost where they had started, but at a point of vantage whence they could see the western face of the fire, which was now beginning to threaten hungrily westward toward the stout old stone walls of the City Hall.

And now the building of the Boston _News_, although protected by a system of automatic sprinklers, was thoroughly ablaze, as was the Miles Block immediately fronting City Hall Avenue. It was from this last building that the City Hall stood in jeopardy.

In Province Street, protected from the surge of activities beyond, the onlookers could watch most of the fight to save the old building. And a gallant fight it was, for the s.p.a.ce between the fire and the coping of the old stone structure's eastern wall was a scant thirty feet.

Fortunately, however, the wind was blowing almost directly from the north, and this gave the firemen a chance. From the movements of the department and the s.n.a.t.c.hes of orders which could occasionally be heard, Smith gathered that a similar struggle was going on in at least three directions from the blazing block. To west, to south, and to east the flames were leaning, and the narrow streets made the task of holding them additionally hazardous.

Meanwhile the heat, even in Province Street, had become intense.

Together with the other onlookers, Smith and Helen found it necessary to take refuge in the doorways and behind an angle of a building which projected slightly beyond the rest of the row, from which point they looked forth in turn, shading their faces and eyes with their hands.

All at once, looking upward, they saw a cloud of smoke suddenly replace the glare directly north. The next moment a dull sound from the Miles Block was heard, and Smith saw its western cornice sway.

"We'd better get out of this, quick," he said. "A wall fell then--the west wall of that building there. That ought to save the City Hall, if they handle it right; but it'll make this alley too hot to hold us.

Come on!"

Side by side the two hurried back with the crowd along the narrow way.

Their departure was taken none too soon. Behind them they could feel a wave of heat radiated from the ruins of the burning structure; it forced its way even through the little street down which they were retreating, and they could feel the hot blast upon their backs.

"Something more must have fallen then," said Smith; but he did not turn his head. Instead he took the girl's arm with a firmer grip, and they continued swiftly on their way until they came safely into Bromfield Street and out of the pursuing wave of heat.

"Let's cross over to Washington," Smith said.

On Washington Street, at first, little could be distinguished, and the police were none too gently forcing the crowds even farther back. But a block to the north, at School Street, which only a moment before these two had just quitted, there was to be seen a wild confusion.

Fire engines were here, too, chugging at every hydrant, and the pa.s.sage was fairly clogged with hose and apparatus of all sorts, with nervous horses, and shouting, swearing, excited men. As Smith looked closer he saw that the firemen were no longer entering School Street to the west from Washington; they were being driven back instead. And a moment later he saw also a lieutenant raise his arm in a signal.

"There comes an ambulance," he said gravely,

"What is it? What do you suppose has happened?" Helen anxiously asked.

"Fireman hurt, undoubtedly. Unless I miss my guess, somebody was caught when that wall fell. That must have been what caused the wave that chased us down that alley. See!--they're bringing them out!"

Three times the stretcher moved back and forth across Washington Street. At last the ambulance drove away.

"All it could carry," commented Smith, grimly.

It was now evident that the department was being forced out of School Street. The wall which had fallen had entirely blocked the narrow pa.s.sage, and the heat from the blazing ruin was so intense that no man could even obliquely face it. It was also clear that a hard struggle would be necessary to prevent the fire from leaping eastward across Washington Street.

Northward along the street from behind them, clanging its gong with insistence, came now a chief's wagon, its black horses plunging forward, open of nostril, reckless of all. Standing erect in his place, this man took an instant survey of the situation, and then began shouting orders to his subordinates in a way that seemed somehow to make itself felt above the uproar.

"He must have come around from the other side," said Smith. "Now he's taking charge in front."

However so, the effect of his instructions could be noted almost at once. Several of the engines withdrew into Milk Street; others moved northward along Washington; still others southward, but all away from the now threatened point, which was the southwest corner of Washington and School Streets. It was plain that all efforts were to be directed toward preventing the fire from jumping east of this, and it was with this purpose that the street was being cleared--the decks cleared for action. And well might they be, for on the eastern corners, directly across from this point of highest hazard, were two buildings, each an object of peculiar interest and even reverence to Bostonians. One of these was the Old South Church; the other the home of the Boston _Transcript_--palladia both.

"Clear the street--get those people out of the way," came the abrupt order, and Smith and Helen found themselves hastily retreating toward Tremont Street, where for a few moments at least they might hope to be undisturbed.

Not so. Tremont Street was now all that Washington had been a few minutes before; and with a tremendous crowd of onlookers the two found themselves steadily forced back and out into the Common. In the s.p.a.ce before Tremont Temple the fire fighters seemed thick as bees, and from their manner Smith knew that they were dealing with a situation very close at hand.

"I bet anything that the Palmer House has caught," he said to Helen.

"You're dead right, Bill," called a voice in answer. "The whole School Street front's going. This is a _fire_, that's what it is--take it from me." The voice trailed off into the whirlpool of sounds, but Smith had heard all that he needed to know.

"This is more than a fire," he said gravely, his lips close to the girl's ear. "It is a conflagration. With a thirty-mile wind like this, blowing right into the heart of the city, no one can tell where it will stop. We had better go home."

"Go home! Why, what time is it?" asked his companion in surprise.

"We've only just gotten here!"

"We have been here," said Smith, consulting his watch, "just about an hour and a half. It is now twenty minutes to one."

"Twenty minutes to one?" exclaimed Helen. "My mother will certainly think we're lost. But I hate to go. It is magnificent, even if it is terrible."

"Yes," said the other. "Just the same, Deerfield Street is the best place for you. I wonder if there's a cab in sight."

As it developed, there was none.

"Let us try the subway, then," the New Yorker went on. "Perhaps the cars are still running in there."

It was a silent couple that made its belated way home to Deerfield Street. Helen's eyes were bright with excitement and her face was flushed; but Smith was almost too preoccupied to notice the added brilliance which this gave to the girl's beauty. He parted from her at the door of the Maitlands' apartment.

"You had better go to sleep as soon as you can," he said. "Try to forget all about this business. To-morrow afternoon, when it's over, I'll come around, if I may, and tell you all I know about it."

"I shall be home to-morrow afternoon," the girl replied. "But what are you going to do now?"

"Oh, I expect I shall go back to the fire for a while," he said carelessly; "but I don't intend to stay up all night. Don't worry.

I'll see you to-morrow about four--or earlier, if there's anything of importance to tell you. Good-night."

The door closed on him.

Meanwhile, furiously driven by the wind out of the north, the fire had taken a giant's dimensions for its own. Shortly after one o'clock the entire block between Tremont and Washington, School and Bromfield was one vast seething furnace from whose throat the fire burst now southward and upward with a roar. The wind was bringing its element of peril to add to the conflagration's own; it caught the white heat from the blazing ma.s.s of buildings and started it sweeping southward in a devastating wave of superheated fluid air.

As the man on the Common had said, this was a fire--but rather was it Fire, the essence of the G.o.d, the very burning breath of Loki. The city was in the hand of something greater than chance and more sinister than circ.u.mstance.

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.