it is two o’clock of a sultry summer afternoon in one of those amazingly crowded blocks on the east side south of fourteenth street, which is drowsing out its commonplace existence through the long and wearisome summer. the men of the community, for it may as well be called a community since it involves all that makes a community, and that in a very small space, are away at work or in their small stores, which take up all of the ground floors everywhere. the housewives are doing their shopping in these same stores—groceries, bakeries, meat and fish markets. from the streets which bound this region people are pouring through, a busy host, coming from what sections of the city and the world and going to what sections of the city and the world no one may divine. wagons rattle, trucks rumble by with great, creaking loads, a slot conduit trolley puts a clattering car past every fifteen or twenty seconds. the riffraff of life fills it as full as though it were the center of the world. children, since there is no school now, are playing here. the streets are fairly alive with a noisy company of urchins who play at london bridge and my love’s lover, and are constantly getting in the way of one another and of every one else who chances to pass this way.
suddenly, in the midst of an almost wearisome peace,57 comes the cry of fire. it comes from the cleanly depths of number 358, in the middle of this block, where one frederick halsmann, paint-dealer and purveyor of useful oils to the inhabitants of this neighborhood, has apparently been busy measuring out a gallon of gasoline. he has been doing a fairly thriving business here for years, the rejuvenation of a certain apartment district nearby having brought him quite a demand for explosive and combustible oils, such as naphtha, gasoline and benzine, to say nothing of turpentine and some other less dangerous products, all of which he has stored in his basement. there is a law against keeping more than twenty gallons of any kind of explosive oil in a store or the basement of a store, but this law, like so many others of the great city, enjoys its evasions. what is the law between friends?
all the same, and at last, a fire has broken out—no one ever knows quite how. a passing stranger notes smoke issuing from a grating in front of the store. he calls the attention of mr. halsmann to it, but even before that the latter has seen it. he starts to descend an outside stairway leading to his particular basement but is halted by a terrific explosion which knocks him and some strangers down, shatters the windows in his own and other stores four or five numbers away, and tears a hole in the floor of his store through which his paints, a counter, a cash register and some other things begin to tumble. he is too astounded to quite grasp it all but recovering his feet he begins to shout: “maria! maria! come quick! and the children! come out! come down!”
58 but his cries come too late. he has scarcely got the words out of his mouth when a second explosion, far more violent than the first, tears up the floor and the stairs leading to his home and throws the lurid fire into the rooms above. it smashes the glass in the front windows of stores across the street and blows a perfect hurricane of fire in the same direction. people run, yelling and screaming, a hundred voices raising the cry of “fire!”
“my god! my god!” cries an old jewish butcher over the way. he is standing in front of his store wringing his hands. “it is halsmann’s store! run quick!” this to a child near him. then he also runs. an idle policeman breaks for the nearest fire alarm box, and the crowds of the neighboring thoroughfares surge in here until the walks and the paving stones are black with people. a hundred heads pop out of neighboring windows. a thousand voices take up the cry of “fire!”
from the houses adjoining, and even in this one, for the upper floors have not yet been completely shattered, people are hurrying. a woman with a child on the third floor is screaming and waving her free hand frantically. a score of families in the adjoining buildings are gathering their tawdry valuables together and hastening into the street. some policemen from neighboring beats, several from the back rooms of saloons, come running, and the fight to obtain a little order in anticipation of the fire engines begins.
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 where59 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 between60 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.
in the midst of the uproar about the burning building, the metallic cry of this rescuing host is becoming more and more apparent. from every section they come, the glistening surfaces of their polished vehicles and implements61 shining in the sun, the stacks of their engines issuing volumes of smoke. fire boxes drop fiery sparks as they speed past neighboring corners, the firemen stoking as they come. groups of hook-and-ladder handlers are unhooking and making ready their ladders. others, standing upright on their careening vehicles, are adjusting rubber coats and making ready to invade the precincts of danger at once. the art of balancing on one foot while tugging at great coils of hose that are being uncoiled from speeding vehicles is being deftly illustrated. these men like this sort of thing. it is something to do. they are trained men, ready to fight the fire demon at a moment’s notice, and they are going about their work with the ease and grace of those who feel the show as well as the importance of that which they do. once more, after days of humdrum, they are the center of a tragedy, the cynosure of many eyes. it is exhilarating thus to be gazed at, as any one can see. they swing down from their machines in front of this holocaust with the nonchalance of men going to a dinner.
and the police reserves, they are here now too. this indifferent block, so recently the very heart of humdrum, is now the center of a great company of policemen. the regular width of the street from side to side and corner to corner has been cleared and is now really parked off by policemen pushing back the gaping and surging throng. there are cries of astonishment as the onrushing flames leap now from building to building, shouts of “stay where you are!” to helpless women and children standing in open windows from which the62 smoke is threatening to drive them; there are great, wave-like pushings forward and recedings, as the officers, irritated by the eagerness of the crowd, endeavor to hold it in check.
“mcginnity and six men to the roof of 354!” comes the bellowing cry of a megaphone in the hands of a battalion chief.
“hennessy and company h, spread out the life net!”
“williams! williams! you and dubo scale the walls quick! get that woman above there! turn your hose on there, horton, turn your hose on! where is company b? can’t you people get in line for the work here?”
the assurance of the firemen, so used to the petty blazes that could be extinguished in half an hour by the application of a stream or two of water, has been slightly shaken by the evidence of the explosive nature of the material stored in the basement of this building. the sight of people hurrying from doorways with their few little valuables gathered up in trembling arms, or screaming in windows from which the flames and smoke have fairly shut off rescue, is, after all, disconcerting to the bravest. while the last explosion is shooting upward and outward and flames from the previously ignited ones are bursting through the side walls of adjoining structures and cutting off escape for a score, the firemen are loosing ladders and hose from a dozen still rolling vehicles and setting about the task of rescuing the victims. suddenly a cask of kerosene, heated to the boiling point in the seething cauldron of the cellar, explodes, throwing a shower of blazing oil aloft63 which descends as a rain of fire. over the crowd it pours, a licking, death-dealing rain, which sends them plunging madly away. in the rush, women and children are trampled and more than one over-ambitious sightseer is struck by a falling dab of flaming oil. a police captain, standing in the middle of the street, is caught by a falling shower and instantly ignited. an old polish jew, watching the scene from the door of his eight-by-ten shop, is caught on the hand and sent crying within. others run madly with burning coats and blazing hats, while over the roofs and open spaces can be seen more of these birdlike flames of fire fluttering to their destructive work in the distance. the power of the fire demon is at its height.
and now the servants of the water demon, the firemen, dismayed and excited, fall back a pace, only to return and with the strength of water at their command assail the power of the fire again. streams of water are now spouting from a score of nozzles. a group of eight firemen, guided by a rotund battalion chief who is speaking through a trumpet, ascends the steps of a nearby doorway and gropes its way through the dark halls to apartments where frightened human beings may be cowering, too crazed by fear to undertake to rescue themselves. another group of eight is to be seen working its way with scaling ladders to the roof of another building. they carry ropes which they hang over the eaves, thus constructing a means of egress for those who are willing and hardy enough to lay hold and descend in this fashion. still another group of eight is spreading a net into which hovering, fear-crazed64 victims calling from windows above are commanded to jump. through it all the regular puffing of the engines, the muffled voices of the captains shouting, and the rattling beat of the water as it plays upon the walls and batters its way through the windows and doors, can be heard as a monotone, the chorus of this grand contest in which man seeks for mastery over an element.
and yet the fire continues to burn. it catches a dressmaker who has occupied the rear rooms of the third floor of the building, two doors away from that of the paint-dealer’s shop, and while she is still waving frantically for aid she is enveloped with a glorious golden shroud of fire which hides her completely. it rushes to where a lame flower-maker, ziltman, is groping agonizedly before his windows on the fifth floor of another tenement, and sends into his nostrils a volume of thick smoke which smothers him entirely. it sends long streamers of flame licking about doorposts and window frames of still other buildings, filling stairways and area-landings with great dark clouds of vapor and bursting forth in lurid, sinister flashes from nooks and corners where up to now fire has not been suspected. it appears to be an all-devouring nemesis, feeding as a hungry lion upon this ruck of wooden provender and this wealth of human life. the bodies of stricken human beings are but fuel for it—but small additions to its spirals of smoke and its tongues of flame.
and yet these battalions of fighters are not to be discouraged. they guess this element to be a blind one, indifferent alike to failure or success. it may rage on and consume the whole city. it may soon be compelled65 to slink back to a smoldering heap. it appears to desire to burn fiercely, and yet they know that it will give way before its logical foe. upon it, now, they are heaping a score of streams, beating at distant windows, tearing out distant doors, knocking the bricks from their plastered places, of houses not on fire at all and so setting up a barrier between it and other buildings, destroying in fact the form and order of years in order to make a common level upon which its enemy, water, can meet and defeat it.
but these little ants of beings, how they have scurried before this battle royal between these two elements! how fallen! how harried and bereft and tortured they seem! under these now blackened and charred timbers and fallen bricks and stones and twisted plates of iron are not a few of them, dead. and beyond the still tempestuous battlefield, where flame and water still fight, are thousands more of them, agape with wonder and fear and pity. they do not know what water is, nor fire. they only know what they do, how dangerous they are, how really deadly and how indifferent to their wishes or desires. forefend! forefend! is the wisest thought that comes to them, else these twain, and other strange and terrible things like them, will devour us all.
but these elements. here they are and here they continue to battle until a given quantity of water has been able to overcome a given amount of fire. like the fabled battle between the efrit and the king’s daughter, they have fought each other over rooftops and in cellars and in the very air, where flame and water meet, and under twisted piles of timber and iron and stone.66 wherever any of the snaky heads of the demon fire have shown themselves, the flattened gusts of the demon water have assailed them. the two have fought in crevices where no human hand could reach. they have grappled with one another in titanic writhings above the rooftops, where the eyes of all men could see. they have followed one another to unexpected depths, fire showing itself wherever water has neglected to remain, the water returning where the fire has begun its battling anew. they have chased and twisted and turned, until at last, out-generaled in this instance, fire has receded and water conquered all.
but the petty little creatures who have been the victims of their contest, the chance occupants of the field upon which they chose to battle. but look at them now, agape with wonder and terror. and how they scurried! how jumped from the windows into nets, how clambered like monkeys down ladders, how gropingly they have staggered through halls of smoke, thick, rich smoke, as dark and soft and smooth as the fleece of a ram and as deadly as death.
and now small men, shocked by all that has befallen, gather and congratulate themselves on their victory or meditate on and bemoan their losses. the terror of it all!
“i say, john,” says the battalion chief of the second division to the battalion chief of the first, “that was something of a fire, eh?”
“it was that,” agrees the latter, looking grimly from under the rim of his wet red helmet.
“that dutchman must have had a half-dozen barrels67 of naphtha or gasoline down there to cause such a blowup as that. why, that last blast, just before i got here, sent the roof off, they tell me.”
“it did that,” returns the other thoughtfully. “there’ll be a big rumpus about it in the papers to-morrow. they ought to inspect these places better.”
“that’s right. well, he got his fill. his wife’s down there now, i think, and his baby. he ain’t been seen since the first explosion.”
“too bad. but they oughtn’t to do such things. they know the danger of it. still, you never can tell ’em nothin’.”