the bonfires that
the police had lighted to burn up the rubbish, but they soon found it
was much worse than that. Whole streets were on fire and burning, and,
worse than all, a strong wind was blowing the flames right over London.

The houses then were nearly all of wood, and, being old, were very dry.
They burned splendidly; no man could have made a better bonfire. The
flames seemed alive; they leaped from one to the other, they licked up
the woodwork on the gable fronts, they danced into the windows and in at
the doors--no one could stop them or save the houses once they had been
touched. The great red demon Fire licked up house after house as if he
swallowed them with his great red mouth, and the more he ate the more he
wanted; his appetite grew larger instead of less. There were only old
fire-engines, not like those we have to-day, and water was very scarce,
and at first the people stood terrified, staring stupidly, and then
began to run away. It was not for some time that the authorities
thought of pulling down some houses so as to make a gap over which the
great red flames could not leap. But it is not easy work to pull down
houses, and before it could be done the flames leaped on again and again
and drove them back. At first the poor people whose houses had caught
fire threw their furniture and goods into the streets to save them. But
they very soon saw this was no use; the flames got them just the same,
for there was no time to carry the goods away, and what the flames did
not get thieves in the crowd seized and ran away with.

Now the wind seemed fairly to get hold of the fire, and drove it on with
a roar like a steam-engine; the shrieks of people in the streets were
drowned by the crash of the burning timbers as the roofs fell in. The
heat was so great that some persons, pressed too near to the fire by the
crowd, covered their scorched faces with their hands and screamed aloud.
Everywhere was confusion and running to and fro, and yet no one could do
anything to stop those terrible flames. When a big brewery was attacked
by the fire, men rushed in and pulled out the casks into the street, and
then, forgetting the perils of the plague and of the fire, drank until
they reeled about the streets, and some even fell into the flames and
were burnt.

The place where the fire began was not far from London Bridge, and the
red light reflected in the water lit the city up with an awful glare.
Some of the people in the