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The wails of the scorched birds as the fire caught them
were piteous as those of children.
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The brute creation was crazed. The horses, maddened by heat and noise,
and irritated by falling sparks, neighed and screamed with affright and
anger, and reared and kicked, and bit each other, or stood with drooping
tails and rigid legs, ears laid back and eyes wild with amazement,
shivering as if with cold. The dogs ran wildly hither and thither,
snuffing eagerly at every one, and occasionally sitting down on their
haunches to howl dismally. When there was a lull in the fire, far-away
dogs could be heard baying and cocks crowing at the unwonted light.
Cats ran along ridge-poles in the bright glare, and came pattering into
the street with dropsical tails. Great brown rats with beadlike eyes
were ferreted out from under the sidewalks by the flames, and scurried
along the streets, kicked at, trampled upon, hunted down. Flocks of
beautiful pigeons, so plentiful in the city, wheeled up aimlessly,
circled blindly once or twice, and were drawn into the maw of the fiery
hell raging underneath. At one bird-fancier's store on Madison Street,
near LaSalle, the wails of the scorched birds as the fire caught them
were piteous as those of children.
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| ...suddenly the
wind would shift, a puff of smoke would come from a building behind
them, followed by belching flames, and then they would see that they
were far outflanked.
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The firemen labored like heroes. Grimy, dusty, hoarse, soaked with
water, time after time they charged up to the blazing foe only to be
driven back to another position by its increasing fierceness, or to
abandon as hopeless their task. Or, while hard at work, suddenly the
wind would shift, a puff of smoke would come from a building behind
them, followed by belching flames, and then they would see that they
were far outflanked. There was nothing to be done but to gather up their
hose, pull helmets down on their heads, and with voice and lash to urge
the snorting horses through the flames to a place of safety beyond.
The people were mad. Despite the police--indeed, the police were
powerless--they crowded upon frail coigns of vantage, as fences and
high sidewalks propped on rotten piles, which fell beneath their weight,
and hurled them, bruised and bleeding, into the dust. They stumbled
over broken furniture and fell, and were trampled under foot. Seized
with wild and causeless panics, they surged together, backwards and
forwards, in the narrow streets, cursing, threatening, imploring,
fighting to get free. Liquor flowed like water--for the saloons were
broken open and despoiled, and men on all sides were seen to be frenzied
with drink. Fourth Avenue and Griswold Street had emptied their
denizens into the throng. Ill-omened and obscene birds of night were
they--villainous, debauched, pinched with misery, flitted through the
crowd, ragged, dirty, unkempt, those negroes with stolid faces and white
men who fatten on the wages of shame, glided through the masses like
vultures in search of prey. They smashed windows reckless of the severe
wounds inflicted on their naked hands, and with bloody fingers
impartially rifled till, shelf and cellar, fighting viciously for the
spoils of their forays. Women, hollow-eyed and brazen-faced, with foul
drapery tied over their heads, their dresses half torn from their skinny
bosoms, and their feet thrust into trodden down slippers, moved here and
there, --scolding, stealing, scolding shrilly, and laughing with one
another at some particularly "splendid" gush of flame or "beautiful"
falling-in of a roof. One woman on Adams Street was drawn out of a
burning house three times, and rushed back wildly into the blazing ruin
each time, insane for the moment. Everywhere, dust, smoke, flame, heat,
thunder of falling walls, crackle of fire, hissing of water, panting of
engines, shouts, braying of trumpets, roar of wind, tumult, and uproar.
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They smashed windows reckless of the severe
wounds inflicted on their naked hands, and with bloody fingers
impartially rifled till, shelf and cellar, fighting viciously for the
spoils of their forays.
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| He could feel the heat
and smoke and hear the maddened Babel of sounds, and it required little
imagination to believe one's self looking over the adamantine bulwarks
of hell into the bottomless pit.
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From the roof of a tall stable and warehouse to which the writer
clambered the sight was one of unparalleled sublimity and terror. He was
above almost the whole fire, for the buildings in the locality were all
small wooden structures. The crowds directly under him could not be
distinguished, because of the curling volumes of crimsoned smoke through
which an occasional scarlet rift could be seen. He could feel the heat
and smoke and hear the maddened Babel of sounds, and it required little
imagination to believe one's self looking over the adamantine bulwarks
of hell into the bottomless pit. On the left, where two tall buildings
were in a blaze, the flame piled up high over our heads, making a lurid
background, against which were limned in strong relief the people on the
roofs between. Fire was a strong painter and dealt in weird effects,
using only black and red, and laying them boldly on. We could note the
very smallest actions of these figures--a branch-man wiping the sweat
from his brow and resettling his helmet; a spectator shading his eyes
with his hand to peer into the fiery sea. Another gesticulating wildly
with clenched fist brought down on the palm of his hand, as he pointed
toward some unseen thing. To the right the faces in the crowd could be
seen, but not their bodies. All were white and upturned, and every
feature was strongly marked as if it had been part of an alabaster mask.
Far away, indeed for miles around, could be seen, ringed by a circle of
red light, the sea of housetops, broken by spires and tall chimneys, and
the black and angry lake on which were a few pale, white sails....
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Wells and State street bridges were caught by the flames, and were soon
enveloped by them from one end to the other. LaSalle street tunnel drew
in the mighty volume of flame from the south, and became a sub-marine
hell. With electric velocity the flames seized upon the frame blocks
fronting the river on the North, and leaped from square to square faster
than an Arab steed could gallop. The brands formed a kind of infernal
skirmish line, felling the way for the grand attack. The storm howled
with the fury of a maniac, the flames raged and roared with the
unchained malice of a million fiends. Nothing human could stand before
or check these combined elements of annihilation. They defied man's
greatest efforts, and appeared to be kindled and fed by the arch-demon
himself.
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