were blown to atoms, but over the gaps
jumped the live flames, and the disheartened fire-fighters were driven
back step by step; but they continued the work with little regard for
their own safety and with unflinching desperation.

One instance of the peril they ran may be given. Lieutenant Charles
O. Pulis, commanding the Twenty-fourth Company of Light Artillery,
had placed a heavy charge of dynamite in a building at Sixth and Jesse
Streets. For some reason it did not explode, and he returned to relight
the fuse, thinking it had become extinguished. While he was in the
building the explosion took place, and he received injuries that seemed
likely to prove fatal, his skull being fractured and several bones
broken, while he was injured internally. In the early morning, when the
fire reached the municipal building on Portsmouth Square, the nurses,
with the aid of soldiers, got out fifty bodies which were in the
temporary morgue and a number of patients from the receiving hospital.
Just after they reached the street with their gruesome charge a building
was blown up, and the flying bricks and splinters came falling upon
them. The nurses fortunately escaped harm, but several of the
soldiers were hurt, and had to be taken with the other patients to the
out-of-doors Presidio hospital.

The Southern Pacific Hospital, at Fourteenth and Missouri Streets, was
among the buildings destroyed by dynamite, the patients having been
removed to places of safety, and the Linda Vista and the Pleasanton,
two large family hotels on Jones Street, in the better part of the
city, were also among those blown up to stay the progress of the
conflagration.

THE STRUGGLE AGAINST THE FIRE.

The fire had continued to creep onward and upward until it reached the
summit of Nob Hill, a district of splendid residences, and threatened
the handsome Fairmount Hotel, then the headquarters of the Municipal
Council, acting as a Committee of Public Safety. As day broke the flames
seized upon this beautiful structure, and the Council was forced to
retreat to new quarters. They finally met in the North End Police
Station, on Sacramento Street, and there entered actively upon their
duties of seeking to check the progress of the flames, maintain order
in the city and control and direct the host of fugitives, many of whom,
still in a state of semi-panic, were moving helplessly to and fro and
sadly needed wise counsels and a helping hand.

The fire-fighters