While some exits were jammed by fallen refugees so as to become useless, others refused to open. In the darkness that fell upon the doomed theater a struggle ensued such as was never pictured in the mind of Dante in his visions of Inferno. With prayers, curses and meaningless shrieks of terror all faced their fate like rats in a trap. The darkness was illumined by a fearful light that burst from the sea of flame pouring out from the proscenium, making Dore's representations of Inferno shrink into the commonplace. Like a horizontal volcano the furnace on the stage belched forth its blast of fire, smoke, gas and withering, blighting heat. Like a wave it rolled over every portion of the vast house, dancing. Dancing! Yes, the pillars of flame danced! To the multitude swept into eternity before the hurricane of flame and the few who were dragged out hideously disfigured and burned almost beyond all semblance of human beings it seemed indeed a dance of death. Withering, crushing, consuming all in its path, forced on as though by the power of some mighty blow pipe, impelled by the fearful drafts that directed the fiery furnace outward into the auditorium instead of upward into the great flues constructed to meet just such an emergency, the sea of fire burned itself out. There was little or nothing in the construction of the building itself for it to feed upon, and it fell back of its own weight to the stage, where it roared and raged like some angry demon. And those great flues that supposedly gave the palatial Iroquois increased safety! Barred and grated, battened down with heavy timbers they resisted the terrific force of the blast itself. There they remained intact the next day. Anxiety to throw open the palace of pleasure to the public before the builders had time to complete in detail their Herculean task had resulted in converting it into a veritable slaughter pen. "Mr. Bluebeard's" chamber of horrors, lightly depicted in satire to settings of gold and color, wit and music, had evolved within a few minutes into an actuality. Chamber of horrors indeed--grim, silent, smoldering and sending upon high the fearful odor of burning flesh. Policemen and firemen, hardened to terrible sights, crept into the smoldering sepulchre only to turn back sickened by the sight that met their eyes. Tears and groans fell from them and they were unnerved as they gazed upon the scene of carnage. Some gave way and were themselves the subjects of deep concern. It was a scene to wring tears from the very stones. No words can adequately describe it. Perhaps the best description of that quarter hour of carnage and the sense of horror when the seared, scorched sepulchre was entered for the removal of the dead and dying is found in the words of the veteran descriptive writer, Mr. Ben H. Atwell, who was present from the beginning to the end of the holocaust, and after visiting the deadly spot in the gray dawn of the following day wrote his impressions as follows: