e millions that a dishonest city
government and its confederates had stolen.

Gwynne, as his eyes travelled more precisely, picked out more and more
evidences of the power of the earthquake. Steeples were gone, walls
fallen outward, roofs caved in, or yawning where a heavy chimney had
gone through, old houses were on their knees, or had fallen into their
cellars. Great cracks and rifts in walls and asphalt, fallen cornices
and shattered windows detached themselves from the general picture of
the half-ruined but oddly indifferent city. Almost immediately, through
the smoke in the southeast, he had caught a glimpse of The Otis, an
immense skeleton of steel, that had defied the earth, and offered
nothing to the fire. But although he experienced a passing gratitude
that he should lose nothing by the disaster, he forgot the incident in a
moment: he felt wholly impersonal.

Everybody in the city, apparently, was out-of-doors. The squares were
black with people, quiet crowds, it would seem, moving slowly where they
moved at all. He saw mounted officers and parading soldiers, and groups
of firemen standing impotently by their hose and engines. In the burning
South of Market Street district rivers of people were pouring towards
the great central highway, their arms and shoulders burdened; fleeing no
doubt with their household goods. Then Gwynne began to study the fires,
and it dawned upon him that he was looking down not upon a mere
conflagration but a burning city. It was more than likely that the fires
would not cross Market Street, and that those near the water-front would
be extinguished by water pumped from the bay; but "South of Market
Street" was a city in itself, and not only did he feel a certain pity
for all those terrified black pigmies down there, but a pang for the
extinction of a region so identified with the early history of San
Francisco. Rincon Hill was obliterated by the smoke, but no doubt she
would go; with all her pretty old-fashioned houses, so unlike the
horrors on the plateau below him--and South Park with its tragic
memories. Moreover, if all the factories and warehouses, and the blocks
devoted to the wholesale business, were destroyed, the city would be
poorer by many millions.

He shifted his glass away from the fires. More and more details arrested
his eye. Inert forms were being carried out of houses where chimneys or
skylights had gone through the roof. Automobiles were flying about,
hundreds of