emergencies, and the sergeant had in his
charge one precious bottle of whisky, from which he doled out drinks to
those who were utterly exhausted.

But there was no panic. The people were calm, stunned. They did not
seem to realize the extent of the calamity. They heard that the city
was being destroyed; they told each other in the most natural tone
that their residences were destroyed by the flames, but there was no
hysteria, no outcry, no criticism.

The trip to the hills and to the water front was one of terrible
hardship. Famishing women and children and exhausted men were compelled
to walk seven miles around the north shore in order to avoid the flames
and reach the ferries. Many dropped to the street under the weight of
their loads, and willing fathers and husbands, their strength almost
gone, strove to pick up and urge them forward again.

In the panic many mad things were done. Even soldiers were obliged in
many instances to prevent men and women, made insane from the misfortune
that had engulfed them, from rushing into doomed buildings in the hope
of saving valuables from the ruins. In nearly every instance such action
resulted in death to those who tried it. At Larkin and Sutter Streets,
two men and a woman broke from the police and rushed into a burning
apartment house, never to reappear.

The rush to the parks and the dunes was followed in the days that
followed by as wild a rush to the ferries, due to the mad desire to
escape anywhere, in any way, from the burning city.

THE WILD RUSH TO THE FERRIES.

At the ferry station on Wednesday night there was much confusion.
Mingled in an inextricable mass were people of every race and class
on earth. A common misfortune and hunger obliterated all distinctions.
Chinese, lying on pallets of rags, slept near exhausted white women with
babies in their arms. Bedding, household furniture of every description,
pet animals and trinkets, luggage and packages of every sort packed
almost every foot of space near the ferry building. Men spread bedding
on the pavement and calmly slept the sleep of exhaustion, while all
around a bedlam of confusion reigned.

Many of those who sought the ferry on that fatal Wednesday met a solid
wall of flames extending for squares in length and utterly impassable.
In their half insane eagerness to escape some of them would have rushed
into fatal danger but for the soldiers, who guarded the fire line
and forced them back. Only those