e, one of the
few buildings saved. Turk street was the northern boundary of this
V-shaped zone of the flames, but at 2 o'clock this street also was
crossed and the triumphant march onward continued.

At midnight another fire, which had started in front of Fisher's Music
Hall, on O'Farrell street, had gouged its terrible way through to
Market street, carrying away what the morning's blaze across the
street had left miraculously undestroyed.

Into Eddy and Turk streets the flames plunged, and soon the magnificent
Flood building was doomed.

The firemen made an ineffectual attempt to check the ravages of the
advancing phalanx of flames, but their efforts were absolutely without
avail. First from across the street shot tongues of flames which
cracked the glass in one of the Flood building's upper story windows.
Then a shower of sparks was sent driving at a lace curtain which
fluttered out in the draft. The flimsy whipping rag caught, a tongue
of flame crept up its length and into the window casement.

"My God, let me get out of this," said a man below who had watched the
massive shape of the huge pile arise defiant before the flames. "I
can't stand to see that go, too."

Shortly after midnight the streets about Union Square were barred by
the red stripes of the fire. First Cordes Furniture Company's store
went, then Brennor's. Next a tongue of flames crept stealthily into
the rear of the City of Paris store, on the corner of Geary and
Stockton streets.

Eager spectators watched for the first red streamers to appear from
the windows of the great dry goods stores. Smoke eddied from under
window sills and through cracks made by the earthquake in the
cornices. Then the cloud grew denser. A puff of hot wind came from the
west, and as if from the signal there streamed flamboyantly from every
window in the top floor of the structure billowing banners, as a poppy
colored silk that jumped skyward in curling, snapping breadths, a
fearful heraldry of the pomp of destruction.

From the copper minarets on the Hebrew synagogue behind Union square
tiny green, coppery flames next began to shoot forth. They grew
quickly larger, and as the heat increased in intensity there shone
from the two great bulbs of metal sheathing an iridescence that
blinded like a sight into a blast furnace.

With a roar the minarets exploded almost simultaneously, and the
sparks shot up to mingle with the dulled stars overhead. The Union
League and Pacif