He heard, too, the shouts of the Norwegian sailors in their ships along the wharves; the yellow flood flowed steadily toward them, its burning stream melting the snow and riding faster on the water’s surface in great blazing pools. One fire-river had already reached the end of the wharf, and fell over it, in a cascade of flame, through the iron colossal letters to the icy river. The tide took it rapidly down among the ships; the first was now flaming, from the bowsprit up the foremast, licking the tar and oakum from the iron rod. He heard the groups of sailors, in a panic rush behind him where he sat; others stayed at their posts and worked like demons, with capstans and cables, to warp their vessels beyond the reach of danger. The city fire-boat had come; and the burning oil-ship was cut adrift and dropped down the river, the fire-engines of the steamer playing on it vainly; in a few seconds, with a loud explosion, it was shattered to the water’s edge. The very river was blazing like a crater’s mouth with patches of the burning oil; and now, last of all, the huge storage-tanks, each holding its hundreds of tons, were scattered into seas of burning gas. No nook or cranny of the great yard but was lit with yellow light, intenser, vivider than the sun’s; the sky above was like a molten plate of copper, touched with swarms of scarlet sparks; and only beyond the river, above the red-walled houses, were the cold pale streaks of dawn. James went boldly out, mingling among the maddened crowd. His breath had returned; and a faint smile was on his lips as he took his way slowly back through the now thronged streets to the river. His quickened blood poured sluggishly again; and his mind was busy with thought. Do serpents pant in the heat of conflict; or does their blood turn warm when they have withdrawn the sting? He had, perhaps, a faint sense of gratified power; but the mere destruction of one piece of property was, after all, so small a thing! While he was crossing the ferry he looked up the river at the flaming world that he had made; it was a fine spectacle, and he watched it as calmly, as dispassionately, as Flossie Gower had done, when, not knowing that it was her fortune that had gone, she saw it burn from Mr. Wemyss’s window. CHAPTER XXXVII. THE OLDEST MEMBER.