t and left it swings and leaps in giant
strides. Sudden flames shoot out, curl over and roll like golden velvet
down the black faces of the buildings. The fire leaps the street. All is
pandemonium now. Mad with fear and excitement, men and women rave and
curse and pray. Water! water! is the cry; but no water comes. Suddenly a
mob of terror-goaded men comes surging down the street. They bring the
long hose line that connects with the pump-station on the river. Hurrah!
now they will soon have the flames under control. Water, water is
coming.

The line is laid and a cry goes up to turn on the water. Hurry there!
But no water comes. What can be the matter? Then the dread whisper goes
round that the man in charge of the pumping-station has neglected his
duty, and the engine fires are cold. A howl of fury and despair goes up
to the lurid heavens. Women wring their hands and moan; men stand by in
a stupor of hopeless agony. And the fire, as if it knew of its victory,
leaps up in a roaring ecstasy of triumph.

There we watched, Berna and I, lying in the snow that melts all around
us in the fierce, scorching glare. Through the lurid rift of smoke I can
see the friendly stars. Against that curtain of blaze, strangely
beautiful in its sinuous strength, I watch the black silhouettes of men
running hither and thither like rats, gutting the houses, looting the
stores, tearing the hearts out of the homes. The fire seems a great
bird, and from its nest of furnace heat it spreads its flapping wings
over the city.

Yes, there is no hope. The gold-born city is doomed. From where I lie
the scene is one long vista of blazing gables, ribs and rafters hugged
by tawny arms of fire. Squat cabins swirling in mad eddies of flame;
hotels, dance-halls, brothels swathed and smothered in flame-rent
blankets of swirling smoke. There is no hope. The fire is a vast
avenger, and before its wrath the iniquity of the tenderloin is swept
away. That flimsy hive of humanity, with its sins and secrets and
sorrows, goes up in smoke and ashes to the silent stars.

The gold-born city is doomed. Yet, as I lay there, it seemed to me like
a judgment, and that from its ruins would arise a new city, clean,
upright, incorruptible. Yes, the gold-camp would find itself. Even as
the gold, must it pass through the furnace to be made clean. And from
the site where in the olden days the men who toiled for the gold were
robbed by every device of human guile, a new city wo